Unfortunately HBO’s “Enlightened” will join the legendary high school dramedy “Freaks and Geeks” in a tragic category: Cancelled Too Soon  Because It Was Too Good. (Ironically, “Enlightened” director/producer/actor Mike White also worked on “Freaks and Geeks” as a producer.) We never got a Season 2 of “Freaks and Geeks” and now we won’t get a Season 3 of “Enlightened.” Bummer. Big bummer.

“Enlightened” is smart and spiritual. However, like much spirituality in pop culture  it isn’t specific. There are many references to higher powers, fate, doing good, reaping what you sow, etc. That’s reflective of a phobia among filmmakers: identifying a specific religion or spiritual path. It’s more marketable to have the characters fall into the camp  of spiritual but not religious.

But Enlightened’s central character Amy Jellicoe (Laura Dern) is on a definite spiritual path. In the first season, it was conquering her personal demons of addiction, divorce, and a toxic relationship. In the stunning and even better second season (just out on DVD), her spirituality shapes into a mission of exposing injustices at her corporation. She sees her spirituality fused with exposing injustice to make the world a better place.

One of “Enlightened”‘s trademarks is Amy’s poetic spiritual voiceovers which frame the show at the beginning and end of each episode. It’s uncommon for shows to feature a spiritual perspective to bookend its shows. Especially through a female character. Decades on from the women’s liberation movement, TV shows lag far behind. Roles for female characters seem to still be the Madonna/Mary Magdalene split — they’re either supermoms (Julie Bowen in “Modern Family”) or sexualized fetish creatures (Sofía Vergara in “Modern Family”). When they do have power, it’s usually a caricature of power (Julia Louise Dreyfuss in “Veep”) or just a fill-in for a male action hero (Claire Danes in “Homeland”).

There’s not much space for a complex character like Dern’s Amy Jellicoe who is a middle-aged woman in the midst of a thoughtful mid-life crisis. She’s reeling from years of a difficult marriage, substance abuse, and a soulless job. Like most of us she’s a blend of damage and vision. She has an idealism and sense of wanting to do the right thing that enlightens and inspires us. But she’s also undeveloped. She’s sometimes immature, manipulative and can’t read cues from others. But above all she’s a spiritual seeker in a world of materialism and quiet desperate resignation.

For HBO to shut down “Enlightened” is much like the plot of the show itself with Abaddonn delegating problematic employees to the basement and then dumping then. Most media reports follow the HBO spin that the show was cancelled solely because of low ratings. But TV shows often succeed or fail based on promotion. And HBO never really got behind this show. They put their PR machine behind Lena Dunham‘s “Girls,” which is “Sex and the City” on ramen noodles. As long as women — er, girls, as HBO prefers to label them in that show — are on sexual escapades and the main focus is a woman defined by romantic relationships, the boys in the big office will back it. But something as soulful and unique as “Enlightened” won’t get the HBO machinery behind it that it needs to get out to the masses.  It’s a Lena Dunham pop culture world, not a Laura Dern pop culture world.

As I write this, the media is in the midst of covering the Miley Cyrus feud with Sinnead O’Connor. Young Miley says she’s just expressing herself sexually in her music videos, while the middle-aged and wise O’Connor says Cyrus is just pimping herself out. Is is that much of a stretch to go from Miley Cyrus to Lena Dunham? Yeah, Dunham’s a lot less blatant, but ultimately isn’t she just sexualizing her and her friends so the media machinery will feed her? And is it fair to say that the media business just isn’t interested in what wise middle-aged and soulful women like Sinnead O’Connor and Laura Dern have to say?

And how much did HBO screw it up by cancelling what is now a relevant news topic: whistleblowing. The debate over Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange has made the whole issue totally topical. Yeah, HBO, you blew it in so many ways by cancelling this show.

As a tribute to this show’s best and unfortunately last season, here’s a summary of each episode, an important quote from each show, and a key spiritual scene. There may be some spoilers in here, but if you haven’t seen the show what are you waiting for? 

Episode 1: “The Key”

Summary: Amy feels she has found “the key” to making change and doing good in the world: exposing her company Abaddonn’s immoral and greedy policies. She passes that information to Jeff, an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He tells Amy these are the kind of terrible practices that go on at all companies, but it’s not illegal. He asks her to hack into the computer system to expose something illegal: how Abaddonn officials are bribing government officials.

“People are living under the illusion that the American dream is working for them. And it’s rigged by the guys at the tippy top.”

Key spiritual scene: Amy leaves journalist Jeff’s apartment and slips into Tyler’s car parked car where he’s waiting for her. No, Jeff isn’t impressed with the company e-mails Amy gave him. That’s just normal corporate greed and recklessness. But he had an idea for a bigger story to expose something illegal at Abaddon. It requires the duo to hack back into the company network.

Tyler resists. But in a turning point for the entire season, Amy says how she feels.   

“I’m just tired of feeling small,” she says, nearly in tears.

For a few moments in the reporter’s apartment she felt important, she says. 

“It felt good to feel alive for once and not just dead and plastic and numb, “she continues. “I don’t want to go back to being nothing, I mean do you?”

Tyler quietly answers, “I don’t know anything else,” before agreeing to help her.

The spiritual component here is that there’s something oppressive in the business world that can make its workers feel marginalized and helpless. It produces a waking coma of numbness, blind acceptance and routine. Many spiritual belief systems emphasize that the first step to enlightenment is seeing reality for what it is. No matter what awaits them, Amy has taken a big spiritual step by saying she won’t go back to being dead and lifeless on the inside. Once awakened, you can’t go back to a numb life. It’s a death when hope and meaning disappears, Amy tells Tyler.

“Let’s be hopeful, you and me, “she says. “We can try to do something, not just be dying. I’m so sick of dying.”

Episode 2: “Revenge Play”

Summary: Amy convinces Tyler to go back into the computer system again to look for the information that Jeff wants. But the duo run into trouble when executives can’t log on to their computers. They suspect a hacker and Amy and Tyler could be in trouble. But Tyler finds a way to get them out of danger. Krista is rushed to the hospital, and an awkward encounter between Amy and Krista follows.

“Are others blind? Do they not see? Is pain the only thing that can wake their sleeping compassion? Whatever it takes, I must sound the alarm.”

Key spiritual scene: The opening voiceover indicates Amy’s determination to stop reflecting so much. Immersed in a mid-life stage of actively analyzing life, she stirs herself out of it by saying that thinking so much and good intentions also enough. No, one must act.

She’s reassuring herself thatJeff”s plan to expose corruption at her company is the right thing. But here’s a key point: her spiritual reflection makes her realize she’s got a responsibility. Because she is somewhat enlightened and because of her sensitivity, she feels she must act for others.

“The powerless are calling, the lonely and forgotten,” she says. “They want someone to speak for them.”

She’s not afraid because she believes the greatest power is goodness.  And she’s confident that her intentions are good.

This is an important spiritual recognition. The spiritual life requires courage. Amy is smart enough to know the spiritual life is not about being blissed out in a comfortable spot, it’s about taking on challenges. If we feel our intentions are good and that we are working for the good of others, than it’s easier to have the courage to take on powerful people and dangerous situations. And Amy has a lot of that coming. 

Episode 3: “Higher Power”

Summary: Levi goes to Open Air, the same rehab center in Hawaii that Amy went to in season one. He writes a letter ridiculing the programs there saying he doesn’t believe in the holistic philosophy. He escapes for a night of partying with some younger people at a local hotel. But the debauchery turns him off and he returns to the rehab center with a new attitude and tries to reform.

“Today we had another guided meditation. They told us to remember a time when we were our best self. I’ve never been my best self. The closest to it I could come was the person you thought I was in the beginning.” 

Key Spiritual Scene: Levi has an epiphany during his stay at a holistic rehab center in Hawaii. But it happens at an unexpected time and place. And that’s the point.

Here’s what I mean: Levi loathes the New Age/New Thought philosophy. But there’s something he seems to dislike more: himself. In one voiceover he says that his past “is a junkyard, everything rusted and broken.” But he’s too angry to confront his demons. The self-loathing is in the way.

He’s so disgusted at all this spirituality and psychology that he’s persuaded by Danielle and Travis, two other cynical rehab participants, to sneak out to a local hotel for a night of partying. They go to a local hotel to snort coke and drink beer. But the party later turns ugly. Levi ends up in a hazy after-hours session with the two young partiers in a hotel room with a drunk pilot. 

Then comes a pivotal moment. Travis lies in bed talking in a pitiful voice like a guilty teenager. He says he’s screwed up his life. He hates himself and can’t see a way out.

On the one hand Levi looks uncomfortable hearing this. But there’s a reason. I think it hits home. This is an alter ego voicing his self-hatred and hopelessness.

After hearing this painful confession, Levi falls asleep. But when he wakes up, he tries to get Travis to go back with him. But he won’t go. So Travis goes on his own.

After he’s back he’s less angry at others and more revealing about his own shortcomings.

Spiritual turning points can sometimes come at the lowest moments. It reminds me of some of the Psalms when the narrator finds God in his deepest despair. And it took another substance abuser to get him to realize that despair, not a rehab counselor.

Episode 4: “Follow Me”

Summary: Although she’s cynical about technology, Jeff convinces Amy that social media is a vehicle for change. Jeff invites her to a talk by a blogger librarian where she meets a group of intellectuals and activists that she is drawn to. Amy and Tyler’s boss Dougie figures out that they are responsible for hacking into the company’s computer system. But after Amy shows him some derogatory e-mails about him, which reveals that his whole department will be fired, Dougie changes his mind about informing HR about the computer hacking.

“We will all unite in a single current of compassion and action. The new world is so close you can hear its angels buzzing. It is here. Follow me, follow me.”

 

Key spiritual scene: After Amy shows Dougie the e-mails by other employees ridiculing him and showing that they will all soon be fired. Dougie is so distraught, his self-image so shattered, his worldview so instantly crushed that Amy has to take him outside to talk to him. It’s a reminder of how soon the world’s illusion of security can be quickly decimated. With all of that gone, Dougie lets his spiritual side to show some vulnerability and emotion.

“This whole time I was was working I thought I was somebody, I thought I had some power,” he says.

Amy tells him he still does have power. He can help her take Abbaddon down by working with her to expose how the company is bribing public officials.

Then she tells him something that shows the spiritual dilemma of working in the modern workplace. Employees are commodities, not investments. Amy has a name for how she thinks the company operates.

“This company is evil…We give them the best years of our lives and they treat us like dogs…What’s the point of loyalty?..Let’s turn the tables on them!”

The way companies treat some workers in the post globalization, post 2008 bailout, post rev up productivity world is spiritually bankrupt. With no such things as loyalty, job security, or good working conditions what’s left? A collective spiritual problem that Amy wants to rectify in some way.

Episode 5: “The Ghost is Seen”

Summary: Dougie and Amy are desperate to hack into the computer system to find private e-mails from Abaddonn’s CEO Charles Zyden. Tyler befriends Zyden’s assistant Eileen. He offers to put some music onto Eileen’s computer. When he does this, her computer goes onto the network and Dougie snatches the private e-mails that Jeff needs. However, Tyler is attracted to Eileen and the two of them begin a relationship. 

“Some pearls are never found. They hide on the sand under the ocean floor. No one knows they’re there. But the pearl knows.”

Key spiritual scene: Tyler’s introductory voiceover depicts the loneliness and disconnection of modern life. Tyler’s car, his apartment, his job, his clothes, his computer, may all look like luxury to anyone in the Third World. But there’s a deep sadness from the lack of connection and purpose.

Material needs being met isn’t enough. There’s an emptiness of going through the motions to attain what to most of the world is an enormously high standard of living. As a way to fight this emptiness, he refers to himself as a ghost who anonymously drifts through life. He detaches and doesn’t want the pain of hope. We see him alone grocery shopping, eating in a dimly-lit kitchen, and watching television. Then he turns out the light and goes to sleep.

“I am my own secret, a secret kept by me,” he says.

By the end of the episode he’s found an awkward but sweet spiritual connection through romance. But the era of ghostly isolation bothers him. It makes him aware of the ghostly withdrawal too common in the modern world: “All those years of being invisible haunt him now. Why didn’t he try or care, or be?”

Episode 6: “All I Ever Wanted”

Summary: Jeff is elated about the goldmine of e-mails which links Abaddonn to corruption. In all of the celebratory passion, Amy and Jeff end up spending the night together. Amy daydreams of a new life with a man who she believes she manifested to get her out of her rut. But her joy is interrupted by an unexpected visit from her ex-husband Levi who returns from the rehab center in Hawaii. Amy is emotional and disturbed, but it’s clear that she has moved on from him.

“Is is possible? Can it be? Can you make your own heaven in this life? Can you really get all you ever wanted?”

Key spiritual scene: Amy’s ex-husband Levi shows up at Amy’s home unexpectedly from rehab. And he couldn’t pick a worse time. Amy is expecting her love interest Jeff any minute.

“I can be the person you’ve always wanted me to me,” he says, making his case as they walk to a small baseball field nearby. This isn’t just a desperate plea. Something in Levi has changed. He’s seeing the world through a spiritual lens.

“This is sacred land,” he says while they sit on the bleacher seats. This was the spot that he first realized he wanted to be a baseball player, and the site of some of his first dates with Amy.  But then he says what feels here:  “I see heaven…and hell.”

Levi is taking stock of himself and his life. He’s no longer angry and bitter. He says “life is beautiful” as if he believes it. And then he says a spiritual word that makes Amy take notice when he tells Amy they should get back together.

“I can be like grace.”

“Grace?” Amy replies, startled that he understand this important spiritual concept.

Amy is eager to leave to see Jeff. But Levi insists on staying to see the sunset and watch the kids play baseball. In this place of innocence and spiritual grounding for him, Levi discovers his peaceful nature. He’s in a spot where there is peace and possibility. But this spiritual moment doesn’t last. In the next episode in a difficult meeting with Amy, he’s antagonistic and self-obsessed again.

But at the moment Levi feels a spiritual connection with the world. And he wants a redemption reunion with Amy. He wants commitment that contrasts strongly with what Jeff previously said to Amy — which should have been a red flag for her.

“Sometimes relationships close off your world and make you smaller, I definitely don’t want that,” he said.

Episode 7: “No Doubt”

Summary: Tyler is increasingly nervous about the expose that may come out in the newspaper. So he persuades his new girlfriend Eileen to set up a meeting with the company CEO Charles Szidon. He offers her a job in corporate community outreach. She wonders if taking this job will enable her to do greater good than exposing corruption. But Jeff tells her the story with her name will be published and there’s no turning back. It’s now official that Abaddonn will be shutting down Amy’s workers in the Cogentiva section. Amy tells her old friend Krista about the upcoming expose. 

“Welcome the consequences when your heart is alert and lucid. What bad can come?”

Key spiritual scene: Amy and Tyler’s boss Dougie is often an  unsympathetic control freak. A hipster looking dude with metrosexual button down shirts who has drank the corporate kool-aid. But when he tells his employees will be fired, that tough exterior is cracked. In this scene, his resentment explodes into a surprisingly heartfelt speech fueled by both moral outrage and compassion.

He sounds like a modern day version of the Biblical figure Job with a dose of an angry Old Testament prophet. Dougie lets out his deepest feelings of outrage out at the unfairness of life and the illusion that the working world offers security or meaning.

“Maybe you knew along we were surfs toiling away down here until we were voted off the island,” he says. “Or maybe you were like me and thought you had a career here. thought that somebody respected you. Or that maybe life was looking out for you. Well life is a sneaky bitch. And she’ll pull the rug out from you everytime. Just when you build a castle, here comes the tidal wave!”

He catches his breath and then shifts to offering some emerging sense there is something higher.

“You can’t count on life for anything. so be free, live for today, love each other,” he says. “And for whatever it’s worth I”m sorry for each and every one of you.”

Episode 8: “Agent of Change”

Summary: Abaddonn officials find out about the impeding article that will expose corruption at the company. Amy wrongfully accuses Krista of informing them. It was Eileen who told them after Tyler told her. Amy tries to leave Abaddonn, but she is cornered by officials who try to coerce her to tell what she knows. She refuses and Zzidon flies into a rage. Amy goes to see Levi to ask him what she think about what she’s done.

“You don’t have to run away from life your whole life. You can really live. You can change. And you can be an agent of change.”

Key spiritual scene: With no job, no boyfriend, and with the threat of no place to live, Amy knocks on the door of her ex-husband Levi’s apartment. She doesn’t go in. She sits on the steps. She doesn’t want to physically or emotionally enter his space too much. Levi is courteous but appears to be drinking again. But he carefully and sympathetically listens to her.

She asks if she’s crazy for what she’s done. Instead of being perceived as the heroine she imagined in her daydreams, everyone is angry at her for upsetting the status quo. The world fights back hard when a whistleblower strikes. Despite so many times that she was so sure about what she was doing, now she’s not so certain.

“You’re just full of hope, you just have more hope than most people do,” Levi tells her. ‘It’s a beautiful thing to have a little hope for the world.”

One of the strong elements of this show is that all characters are complex enough to have strong insights along with their flaws. Levi has his addiction problems and anger management issues. But he knows something about Amy that others don’t get. Hope is one of our strongest spiritual qualities. And in a world with its often oppressive status quo which forces quiet acceptance of social ills, hope for change can seem like an unrealistic emotion. When Abaddonn CEO Charles Szidon yelled at Amy earlier in this episode, he scolds her that she feels but doesn’t think. It makes us wonder: is the power structure taking away our ability to feel? This scene shows that sometimes hope is the gateway to feeling, to change, to doing good.