HBO wants you "In Treatment"
My review of HBO’s latest effort to get you hooked on Zoloft, “In Treatment,” was missing a couple of key paragraphs in print and apparently never made it to the Daily News website (maybe I got banned from all the Internets, not just my blog), so I’m going to reprint the whole thing here.
And if you don’t have the time to watch every night (and who does?) but are a little interested, the Wednesday night storyline (described below) might be the one to follow.
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HBO’s grim new psychotherapy drama, “In Treatment,” is much like its last grim psychotherapy drama, “Tell Me You Love Me,” except without all that sex.
So why watch? The question occurred to me, as well, but soon, I had watched more than 13 hours of the series – more than five weeks in the show’s run. And the simple answer is, it’s just pretty compelling and astonishingly well acted.
Based on a hit Israeli series, “In Treatment” focuses on psychotherapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) as he treats a cross-section of his patients. The series airs in a unique fashion – a new episode with a different patient every weeknight. Some episodes (and patients) are compelling; others are pretty irritating, but the cumulative effect can be fairly overwhelming.
Every Monday, Paul meets with Laura (Melissa George). She’s slept with a lot of men but has fallen in love with Paul. The upside of these episodes is, they’re the most titillating; the downside is, it can’t end well – either he’ll betray his professional standards or the denouement will be anticlimactic.
On Tuesdays, Alex (Blair Underwood), a charismatic Navy pilot with no shortage of swagger, co-opts Paul’s counsel to justify decisions he has already made. These episodes will draw you because of Underwood’s galvanizing performances; they may lose you because they feel contrived – Alex fairly telegraphs that he’s concealing secrets that he’ll dribble out as the show’s dramaturgy requires.
Wednesdays, Sophie (Mia Wasikowska in a virtually nonpareil performance), a precocious teenaged gymnast who may or may not have tried to kill herself, consults against her will with Paul. These episodes may be the show’s most complex and heart-wrenching, as we watch the witty and seemingly fragile Sophie evolve into something approaching a monster.
If it’s Thursday, it must be time for Amy (Embeth Davitz) and Jake (Josh Charles) to drag their horrific marriage into Paul’s office. Five minutes into their first session, it’s obvious this marriage is a mess; five episodes later, you’re still left with the same conclusion.
And on Friday, Paul, battered by the brutal vicissitudes of his profession and his own unhappy home life (Michelle Forbes plays his brittle, unfaithful spouse Kate), meets with Gina (Dianne Wiest), his heretofore estranged mentor, for therapy of his own. These episodes feel superfluous, a sort of (ital) “Previously on ‘In Therapy’” (end ital) update, at least until Kate joins Paul for couples therapy with Gina.
As Paul, Byrne gives an exquisitely measured performance of a preoccupied, insular guy too lost inside his own head to notice that his real world has gone rudderless. Two weeks into the series, and you’ll likely think him an ineffectual therapist; four weeks in, you might even find him incompetent, as he attempts to shoehorn his own peccadilloes into his clients’ woes. In week five, he grows a pair and stands up to his patients, only to be utterly emasculated by Kate in front of Gina. He’s the last sort of character you’d expect to anchor a TV series, which some will consider genius and others folly.
So what (ital) is (end ital) “In Treatment,” anyway? Stripping episodes across the week makes it look like a soap opera, except that soaps are all about fantasy, not the grimmest of realities.
Perhaps it’s just a postcard from civilization and its discontents, a humane reminder that every person we see on the street has a complex backstory we simply cannot fathom, a notion that our inability to truly connect with one another is what ironically connects us all.
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And, as with “Tell Me You Love Me,” “In Treatment” would seem to deserve its own drinking game. I’ll get back to you on that one.
- "In Treatment:" Weeknights at 9:30, HBO.
David Kronke was appointed Mayor of Television after a bloodless coup in 2000. Since then, he has improved infrastructure, championed greater educational opportunities and fought for reforms that have utterly erased corruption and incompetence from the television industry. Since Mr. Kronke has ascended to power, Television is a far better place.