thebitterbabe

http://www.avclub.com/article/ienlightened-iis-tvs-best-show-right-nowand-it-nee-92934

Yet this isn’t just a show about Amy, either. It’s a scathing corporate satire. It’s a subtle attempt to wake its audience up to the really awful things going on in the world around it. It’s a show about a marriage that fell apart, and a mother and daughter who have never been able to pull their relationship together after a tragedy in their past. It’s a keenly observed relationship drama. It’s a show about how much harder women have to work to make their voices heard. It’s a subtle commentary on privilege, class, and race in modern America, told almost entirely from the point of view of people who are privileged, but not as privileged as some. It’s a story that seems to act almost as a corrective to decades of corporate misrule of the American body politic. Oh, and it’s occasionally a daringly experimental tone poem, bordering almost on an art film.

[…]

Central to this has been Jeff, the aforementioned Times reporter, played by Dermot Mulroney. At first, Jeff seems like a weird interloper on the show, taking time from other characters who are remembered fondly from season one (particularly Amy’s mother, Helen, played by Dern’s real-life mother, Diane Ladd). But as time goes by, it becomes clear that he’s Amy, only slightly more put-together and male. And, what’s more, he’s celebrated for his commitment to the kinds of issues that Amy is written off for. Indeed, it’s not hard to imagine a TV show about a crusading journalist, writing wrongs and putting things back together again.