In Treatment

In Treatment: Season 1
HBO

I'm just now finishing the last two episodes of the first season of HBO's In Treatment. In short, it is a show about therapy. Gabriel Byrne plays Paul, a therapist with a private practice based in his house. For the first season, we are privy to four different sets of patients: Laura (Melissa George), a doctor who's been seeing Paul for a year before the show starts; Alex (Blair Underwood), a Navy pilot who comes to Paul after discovering that a target he hit was mistakenly identified as a terrorist stronghold when it was a school building; Sophie (Mia Wasikowska), a sixteen-year-old gymnast who needs a professional opinion from Paul after an accident; and, Jake (Josh Charles) and Amy (Embeth Davidtz), a couple trying to decide if they want another child. These episodes are delivered in week-long groups of five episodes. In the fifth episode of each week, Paul goes to see Gina (Dianne West), a retired therapist, becoming a patient himself.

You have to watch the whole season. You really do. Laura is irritating at first. Alex is arrogant and unlikable. Sophie's a brat, albeit an engaging one. Jake & Amy are the worst; their life seems like a soap opera, and they contain within themselves almost no personality whatsoever. Paul seems like a cool guy, until we learn he's a self-absorbed narcissist in the fifth episode. Consider that we start the show with all of these people in such a state, and, yet, by the end of the season, I'm sad to see everyone go. You spend 43 episodes getting to know all these individuals, getting to know everything about them. I know these people better than I know any of my friends. That's the idea, of course, and it's brilliant. I could never be a therapist. Getting to know people on such a level, and then having them just walk away, it would destroy me.

The information is given out in bits and pieces. You work for it. There are very few major revelations; only small ones. But there are many of them, and they are all staggering, and that is because they are all real. These are fictional characters, yes, but they are so thoroughly constructed, and so brilliant portrayed (It is easily the best across-the-board acting I have ever seen in any filmed medium), that you feel them as real. Week Nine is shorter, with only three episodes; two of them "wrap up" (I put it in quotes because this show is too wise to wrap everything up neatly, it only does so just enough to allow you to move on) Sophie's sessions and Jake & Amy's, and the third is a final session (for this season) with Gina. Throughout all three of those episodes, I was glued to the screen. I could not look away.

Television has rapidly reached a level of sophistication, to the point where I don't think anyone with an informed opinion can call it a lesser medium; it is capable of doing things a feature-length film could never (and should never) do. With shows like The Wire, intricate stories of incredible breadth and depth, with massive scope and huge, detailed casts, can be told without concern for overwhelming the audience. With shows like In Treatment, we can come to know and even care about people in ways that are impossible with only two hours of exposure. We are truly in the golden age, people. Soak it up.

Grade: A

It's Not T.V., It's HBO

I've recently found out about a television program, In Treatment, about a therapist, Dr. Paul Weston, and four of his patients. The concept of the show- therapist treating people may in fact need more help than any of his patients- is not a new one. And, while it has gotten tremendous reviews, those didn't serve to draw me towards it so much as they didn't push me away once I got closer. The reason I was drawn to the show, and I believe this is a first, is its format.

Episodes of In Treatment are thirty minutes long, and each episode spends the bulk of its time in a single session, with the patient corresponding to the day of the week. The show works in cycles of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday episodes, with Paul playing the patient on Fridays to his own therapist. Well that's all fine and dandy, what makes this show so fascinating to me is that each episode, for the first season at least, was aired on its according day; In Treatment was aired once a night, every weeknight, for the nine weeks it took to get through all 43 episodes of its first season. You don't get that on network television.

And this is precisely why I think subscription channels like HBO are such a great thing. There is no doubting the freedoms provided as far as content goes, but that shouldn't be the sole focus anymore. In time, people will be saying "fuck" on NBC. They will. But, mark my words, a show that airs five times a week, once a night, that isn't a news program, would never see the light of day on any of the major networks, or on any channel that's a part of the basic cable package. Any network would, probably rightfully, look upon the decision to back such a program as commercial suicide. New shows that air once a week rarely pull the audience needed to recoup their expenses, let alone a show that airs every weeknight. With the subscriber system, HBO doesn't worry about ratings to bring in its money; this show was already paid for by non-viewers like you.

Not only is it a right of HBO to do shows like this, I think it is a necessity. Television is a relative young medium, but it has already seemingly run its course, as far as new ideas. There are occasional programs that seem to come out of nowhere, like the peerless Arrested Development, but, as its sad fate showed the world, fresh writing alone does not a hit make. Yes, shows like Lost, with its extreme story and requirement of total devotion to even have the slightest idea of what's going on, can be a bit refreshing, but even that is just a more extreme version of shows that have come before. Twin Peaks, anyone? Admittedly, In Treatment is not the first of its kind either; it is, in fact, an adaptation of an Israeli show called Betipul. That program is aired in exactly the same broadcast schedule, five nights a week. And I know some soap operas are aired daily, but In Treatment doesn't have a ridiculous narrative; it's quiet, it's real, it could happen.

For the second season, HBO has taken to airing "Monday" and "Tuesday" episodes back-to-back on Sundays, and then the "Rest of the week" airs on Monday nights, but I don't mind that. They gave the first season a chance to do something unprecedented on American television and I applaud it. The fact that they did it shows it can be done, and that there are still new presentational routes television can take, and this is necessary for its survival. The format of the first season of In Treatment serves as proof that HBO's motto is not only clever, but deserved.