Movie Box Review

You couldn't ask for a better example of the way in which HBO is different from all other networks--even other pay-cable networks--than its decision today to cancel BORED TO DEATH, HUNG and HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA, while renewing ENLIGHTENED.  While none of the shows were hits, even by pay-cable standards, all 3 of the cancelled series had higher ratings than Enlightened, which in the target 18-49 demographic on its initial telecasts has literally hovered between a 0.1 and a rating too low to be measured.

But HBO is all about buzz, because buzz is what makes subscribers feel like their extra monthly payments are well spent.  And while some of us find Enlightened unwatchably smug and a manipulative exercise in monstrous self-indulgence masquerading as idealism, the show has its partisans, and they are passionate:  The Los Angeles Times and Entertainment Weekly are among those featuring the dramedy in their Top 10 Lists for the year. (Undoubtedly the Golden Globe nominations for the show and star Laura Dern this week didn't hurt either.)

So RIP to the too-hip-for-its-own-good but fabulously cast Bored to Death (Ted Danson is a fine addition to CSI, but he was Emmy-worthy in Bored), and to How To Make It In America, a show with more substance than its forebear Entourage that could never quite find its tone.  And a little less of a fond farewell to Hung, well-acted but probably ready for that bordello in the sky.

The good news is that part of the reason for the cancellations is that HBO has a number of new and promising series on the way:  half-hours from the creators of In the Loop (VEEP, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the VP of the United States), Tiny Furniture (GIRLS, co produced by Judd Apatow), and Extras  (the latest Ricky Gervais/Stephen Merchant project LIFE'S TOO SHORT).  Not to mention, on the one-hour side, the new Aaron Sorkin series.  So fear not... it continues not to be TV at HBO.

Our thoughts on the movie Golden Globe nominations are here. 

Meanwhile, in television:

BREAKING BAD:  LOSER - Really, one should say Golden Globes Credibility:  Loser, because when you fail to even nominate the best season of one of the best shows of the decade, that's what you lose.  And if not nominating the series itself is a shame, passing over Giancarlo Esposito for his truly spectacular performance as Gus Fring is a crime.

NEW DRAMAS:  WINNERS - Of the 5 nominees for Best Drama, only one (Boardwalk Empire) is even in its second season.  All the others (Homeland, American Horror Story, Game of Thrones, Boss) are newcomers.  And also Winners:  Pay-Cable Networks, which are responsible for 4 of the 5.

ENLIGHTENED and GLEE:  WINNERS - For managing to garner Best Comedy nominations despite being only barely tolerable most of the time.

CALLIE THORNE:  WINNER - For the WTF nomination of the entire day, a truly bizarre nod to this very talented actress for Drama Actress in the negligible Necessary Roughness.  Among the actresses who didn't get nominated in this slot:  Connie Britton for Friday Night Lights (or for that matter, American Horror Story), Glenn Close for Damages, any of the women in Parenthood, and Anna Torv in Fringe.

MANDY PATINKIN:  LOSER - Homeland won richly deserved nominations for Drama and for its remarkable performances by Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.  But Patinkin, who's been turning in the most restrained, emotionally detailed work of his entire career, was overlooked.

While Showtime's had success with original Monday night programming like Weeds and Nurse Jackie, HBO has had a harder time when it strays from its Sunday base. (Remember when they tried moving the final season of Six Feet Under to Mondays, and then had to move it back a few weeks later?)  Last night, the network tried to launch the night again, with the return of BORED TO DEATH and the debut of  ENLIGHTENED.  The results weren't pretty.

Vulture reports that Bored was watched by a mere 240,000 people in its initial airing on Monday (by way of comparison, Boardwalk Empire had a viewership of almost 3 million people the night before, and even Hung, which is far from being one of the network's signature hits, was watched by about 1 million people).  With that lead-in, Enlightened fared even worse, with only 210,000 viewers.  HBO, of course is in the "buzz" business and that's not necessarily the same as the "ratings" business, as celebrated shows like The Wire and Treme have been happy to find.  But even by HBO's standards, if a show airs in the forest and no one there is watching TV, that's not going to make much of a buzz.  Neither show has to worry about being yanked from the schedule, even if they decline next week (which, absent the premiere marketing campaign, they probably will)--that's not the HBO way.  But the prospect of additional orders seems dim at this point.

As a writer, Mike White is drawn to stories of delusion.  Even though their tones (and commerciality) are widely divergent, his screenplays from Chuck & Buck to The School of Rock, The Good Girl to Nacho Libre share protagonists who are firmly and irretrievably locked into their own head-space, insensible to the real world around them, and often unaware of the chaos they cause.  They're outsiders, fantasists, dislocated from the consequences of their actions.  When White isn't in his full-Hollywood aspirational mode (aka when Jack Black isn't the star), they're often quite uncomfortable to watch.  

Which brings us to ENLIGHTENED, White's new series for HBO.  Co-created with star Laura Dern, the pilot was written and directed by White (he'll also be a regular cast member on the series, although his character doesn't appear in the pilot).  Its main character is Amy Jellicoe (Dern), an office worker with a bad marriage (to Luke Wilson, as a cynical cokehead) behind her and a disastrous affair with her married boss Damon (Charles Esten) in her present.  When she finds out she's being transferred/demoted, Amy has a very loud and public breakdown in the office.  She heads to a healing center in Hawaii for several months, and when she returns, she's adopted the jargon, countenance and gimcracks of the self-helped.  She proclaims her inner peace to anyone who'll listen--and many who won't--but she's still a very angry woman underneath (rather than try to start a new life for herself, she insists on going back to her old job and seeking "closure" with both of her exes and her mother--who's played by Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother--whether they like it or not).

Enlightened feels like it's a few years off the zeitgeist.  Spiritual renewal and its accoutrements aren't exactly a central issue for most in this era of blasted economy and Tea Party politics, and although Dern's emotionally complicated, hugely empathetic performance carries the pilot, it's going to be hard not to become impatient with Amy's stubborn refusal to recognize reality and her blissful memories of feeling God as she swam with sea turtles in Hawaii.  Whether the show accepts or ridicules her--and the suggestion in the pilot is that it will do both--it's going to have its work cut out just making us care.

Enlightened threatens to resemble White's film Year of the Dog, which starred Molly Shannon (and featured Dern in a supporting role) as a lonely woman whose commitment to animal rights, after the death of her dog, becomes such an obsession that it ultimately drives her away from her life and everyone she knows.  That movie was supposed to be a comedy, but it was so off-putting that it never found an audience beyond a few sympathetic critics.  Enlightened is, so far, less extreme, and it has the advantage of Dern in the leading role, but it will be difficult to watch over time if Amy becomes unceasingly pathetic.