Enlightened, "No Doubt"
In any serialized story, there are bound to be one or two hiccups along the way to the ending. This is true for even the best ones, like Enlightened's second season. This season has been impressively well plotted, achieving enormous developments with a light touch, but it too showed some contrivances along the way. Nowhere is this more obvious than in "No Doubt," which I think was a great display of both the best and worst of the season.
I talked a bit about tonal issues in my review of this week's Girls episode, and that was a problem for Enlightened this week as well. Most serialized TV shows string along a few ongoing storylines, and they all reach their climaxes at around the same time, usually in the same episode. Enlightened has been very subtle with its plotting choices this season, frequently deploying things ahead of time or not at all. But it too is falling into that pattern as the season winds to a close, with practically every story thread coming to a head around the midpoint of this episode. Jeff's article is on the verge of being published, both of Amy's romantic relationships explode, Cogentiva is shut down, and Amy and Krista resolve their issues just before she gives birth. This makes for a lot of different sorts of climaxes, as well as a lot of different tones, flying around at once. While each one was a great development on its own, smashing them all together takes away from just about all of them. This may well be a result of the season's shortened eight-episode order: Breaking Bad also struggled with climaxes last year, making the sixth and seventh episodes of its own eight-episode season feel particularly muddled.
Tellingly, "No Doubt" was the first time the story actually felt written to me. Until now, every ongoing plot and character beat felt natural and logically followed from what came before. The show reached huge developments, bigger than anything shown in its first season, so effortlessly that it felt completely acceptable that Amy was (seemingly) on the path to take down a multinational corporation. But in this episode, the boundaries became more obvious, and it was clear that we were watching a series of ongoing conflicts between Amy and someone else: Jeff, Levi, Krista, Tyler, and Abaddonn itself. There's nothing really wrong with that, exactly. But it's a different feeling from the rest of the season, where we're watching Amy simply live her life, even though now it involves being on the warpath against corporate America. In short, despite never really feeling like anything else on TV before, "No Doubt" finds Enlightened feeling just a bit more like any other TV show.
That's just a small knock against it, however, as otherwise it really did feel like a great, momentous episode of television. In particular, the biggest bomb to go off, Amy's meeting with Abaddonn CEO Charles Szidon, was a genuinely unexpected development, and it was handled with Enlightened's characteristic light touch. The meeting itself was a wonder, with Amy at her most shrewd and self-aware, at least until she too is smitten by Szidon's standard white-collar charisma once he offers her her dream job. The aftermath too was played very well, with Amy slowly realizing just what she's achieved by being a whistleblower, and what she has to give up because of it. It's a very clever climax to leave us on, and even though it was a huge development, it felt just as earned as anything else shown this season. The show has used its slow-build to its advantage this season, turning it into a way to reach new plot points, instead of just to explore its characters.
As penultimate episodes go, "No Doubt" has a lot to achieve in thirty minutes, and if it isn't perfect, that's certainly easily accepted. But in a lot of ways, it feels like the penultimate episode of the series, instead of just the season. For one thing, Cogentiva is shut down, and that's been an element present in the show since its second episode (some nice mirroring there). But "No Doubt" brings a lot of ongoing elements of the show to a close, so much so that it seems like Mike White is planning for the series' inevitable cancellation (what with its ratings being abysmal even by HBO standards). I'm sure next week's finale will still leave a lot of options open for a third season, but this one has been so wonderful that I don't know if that's strictly necessary. Of course, I'd adore more Enlightened, and would love it to last years and years, but how could it ever top this season? I'm sure I'll have a more definitive outlook on it next week. For now, it's enough to know that the series is sticking the landing on a season this ambitious, even if it's doing it a little tentatively. I'll check back next week when I'm drowning in tears.
I talked a bit about tonal issues in my review of this week's Girls episode, and that was a problem for Enlightened this week as well. Most serialized TV shows string along a few ongoing storylines, and they all reach their climaxes at around the same time, usually in the same episode. Enlightened has been very subtle with its plotting choices this season, frequently deploying things ahead of time or not at all. But it too is falling into that pattern as the season winds to a close, with practically every story thread coming to a head around the midpoint of this episode. Jeff's article is on the verge of being published, both of Amy's romantic relationships explode, Cogentiva is shut down, and Amy and Krista resolve their issues just before she gives birth. This makes for a lot of different sorts of climaxes, as well as a lot of different tones, flying around at once. While each one was a great development on its own, smashing them all together takes away from just about all of them. This may well be a result of the season's shortened eight-episode order: Breaking Bad also struggled with climaxes last year, making the sixth and seventh episodes of its own eight-episode season feel particularly muddled.
Tellingly, "No Doubt" was the first time the story actually felt written to me. Until now, every ongoing plot and character beat felt natural and logically followed from what came before. The show reached huge developments, bigger than anything shown in its first season, so effortlessly that it felt completely acceptable that Amy was (seemingly) on the path to take down a multinational corporation. But in this episode, the boundaries became more obvious, and it was clear that we were watching a series of ongoing conflicts between Amy and someone else: Jeff, Levi, Krista, Tyler, and Abaddonn itself. There's nothing really wrong with that, exactly. But it's a different feeling from the rest of the season, where we're watching Amy simply live her life, even though now it involves being on the warpath against corporate America. In short, despite never really feeling like anything else on TV before, "No Doubt" finds Enlightened feeling just a bit more like any other TV show.
That's just a small knock against it, however, as otherwise it really did feel like a great, momentous episode of television. In particular, the biggest bomb to go off, Amy's meeting with Abaddonn CEO Charles Szidon, was a genuinely unexpected development, and it was handled with Enlightened's characteristic light touch. The meeting itself was a wonder, with Amy at her most shrewd and self-aware, at least until she too is smitten by Szidon's standard white-collar charisma once he offers her her dream job. The aftermath too was played very well, with Amy slowly realizing just what she's achieved by being a whistleblower, and what she has to give up because of it. It's a very clever climax to leave us on, and even though it was a huge development, it felt just as earned as anything else shown this season. The show has used its slow-build to its advantage this season, turning it into a way to reach new plot points, instead of just to explore its characters.
As penultimate episodes go, "No Doubt" has a lot to achieve in thirty minutes, and if it isn't perfect, that's certainly easily accepted. But in a lot of ways, it feels like the penultimate episode of the series, instead of just the season. For one thing, Cogentiva is shut down, and that's been an element present in the show since its second episode (some nice mirroring there). But "No Doubt" brings a lot of ongoing elements of the show to a close, so much so that it seems like Mike White is planning for the series' inevitable cancellation (what with its ratings being abysmal even by HBO standards). I'm sure next week's finale will still leave a lot of options open for a third season, but this one has been so wonderful that I don't know if that's strictly necessary. Of course, I'd adore more Enlightened, and would love it to last years and years, but how could it ever top this season? I'm sure I'll have a more definitive outlook on it next week. For now, it's enough to know that the series is sticking the landing on a season this ambitious, even if it's doing it a little tentatively. I'll check back next week when I'm drowning in tears.