overnights

Enlightened Recap: Shadows Under the Water

Enlightened

The Weekend
Season 1 Episode 4

Enlightened

The Weekend
Season 1 Episode 4
Photo: HBO
Photo: HBO

It’s business as usual in the fourth episode of Enlightened: We’ve been made uncomfortable. Rom-com moments are followed by a higher quantity of tearjerker-drama moments. Brief peace is interrupted. Bouts of energy and enthusiasm are answered with despair and rage.

The next day, as Amy is dropping him off back home, Levi tells her to please not try to “save” him. He explains that the drugs and booze are usually for the opposite of reminiscence. When he’s high, there are times “when I actually don’t think about any of it,” he says, “it” being the nightmare they went through, “and I need those times, okay?”

Back at her mother’s house, Amy is left to admire her mother’s rose garden and have the revelations that Levi is unable to have. “You can try to escape the story of your life,” she says. “But you can’t.” She’ll continue to look forward, to see the glass as half-full. For now, it’ll have to be without Levi. It’s hard not to see the Levi story as a kind of movie-within-the-show, and at this point, it’s only half-written. But it wouldn’t be a surprise if Amy were forced to abandon Levi for good. Because this isn’t about what we want.

Enlightened Recap: Shadows Under the Water