The tagline for HBO’s second season of Girls is “Almost getting it kind of together,” which could just as easily apply to the network’s B-side offering, Enlightened. There is a different charm and whimsicality to the latter, however, because the show’s stars/creators/writers are not precocious 26-year-olds but rather the middle-aged Laura Dern (Jurassic Park) and Mike White (School of Rock). The series to this point—which is certainly worth a watch if you are as-yet uninitiated—has centered primarily on Dern’s Amy Jellicoe, whose very public emotional breakdown and rehabilitation ushered in the first season and provides the show with a split personality that teeters between darkly comic and earnest.
The second season begins exactly where the first left off, and that’s the first episode’s main flaw: it felt entirely like a mid-season episode rather than a premiere. This certainly isn’t significant overall, but it was a disappointing follow-up to the first season’s Adele-paired fantasy arsonism finale. Notwithstanding the lack of momentum, “The Key” provided a strong return to the story and characters.
Emboldened by the treasure trove of workplace pettiness and general lack of ethics, Amy takes the ill-gotten company emails of her employer’s higher-ups to a newspaper journalist who specializes in corporate exposés in the hopes that he will assist in her quest to cleanse the world of greed and unhappiness. Her interactions with the journalist, Jeff Flender (Dermot Mulroney), are all tinged with Dern’s brilliantly hyper and awkward performance; the combination of her previously volatile emotions and new life philosophy that made her character so enjoyable in the first season also makes her seem like a bit of a loon to an unwitting stranger.