This came up as a stray comment on some other post, but HBO’s In Treatment is a fine, fine show — the premise is that each season (I’m just about done with Season 1, and 2 is on now) follows one therapist (the excellent Gabriel Byrne) week by week in his sessions with four different patients (and in his own session with his therapist, the quite good Dianne Wiest). Listen, it’s therapy — if you find the psychoanalytic tedious, then the show may grate, as it can be a bit schematic in the long-run structure of these separate treatments’ story arcs. But the acting, oh lord, the moment-by-moment fascination and allure of such great conversation, such subtle and sharp attention to how people LISTEN to one another… it’s great. And we just watched an episode, late in season 1, where the father of one of Byrne’s patients comes in, and it is about the finest acting I’ve seen in some time. Glynn Turman plays the father, and some of us will recall him as The Wire‘s first outsized corrupt fox of a mayor Royce…. It would be impossible, I suppose, to just rent disc 8 and watch this show, but if you commit to the season, which is itself worth the time, this episode will astound you.
It has been a while since I watched the first season but I remember not finding it entirely compelling. At some point I stopped watching, perhaps in part because it required tuning in each evening. That required scheduling skills and it had the effect of diluting the all too brief sessions. The second season was organized so that one could watch two evenings a week to get all five sessions, and either for that reason or because of the storylines, I was utterly hooked. I have no experience of therapy so I have no idea how realistic these sessions are. It doesn’t matter because, as Mike notes, it is the way that people listen to each other, or fail to do so, that makes In Treatment so good. If they choose to call it therapy, that’s fine with me, but it could be any of us. Or rather, there is a clarity to the conversation that I have rarely experienced; it is different from any I have ever had yet instantly recognizable. The show is a perfectly controlled environment for dialogue: one room; two people talking (well, sometimes three or even four).
Byrne is just about perfect for the role with his world weariness, the apologetic smile, the small confessions reluctantly made to patients. The standout sessions in the second season have been April (the college student with lymphoma) and Oliver (the boy whose parents are separating), particularly the latter. They are quite searing, though the emotional energy is different in each: all hot anger with April, entire emotional reversals in the course of 25 minutes; while the sessions with Oliver are low key, half silent, and yet heart-breaking. The sessions with Walter (the executive) got better as time went on. I have never understood the sessions with Gina, perhaps because I missed something in the first season, or because I have no idea what is meant to happen when a therapist is in therapy with his/her superviser. And Mia just failed for me. Too much of an attempt to create sexual tension, too insistent on clever, witty comebacks.