A man and a woman sit across a coffee table from one another in the opening episode of In Treatment, a new 5-times-a-week, 9-week series on HBO. He's the therapist. She's the patient. But be careful in making too many assumptions from that information because the half hour that follows keeps working against your first impressions.
Gabriel Byrne plays therapist Paul Weston, who runs a highly respected, and, by all appearances, quite successful practice out of his home. Melissa George plays the patient, a woman named Laura first seen dolled up in last night's party dress and the remains of last night's make-up. She looks a mess and keeps breaking down when not excusing herself to vomit. But she's not the party girl she appears as we learn in the course of her story about what brought her to that state. After arguing with the boyfriend to whom she can't commit, she hit the clubs only to end up in a compromising position with a stranger, a situation that leaves her disgusted with herself.
There's more to the story. I won't reveal it here since much of the episode rides on the careful skirting and undermining of expectations. But I will say it's worth watching the way Byrne keeps insisting that he's not disgusted with what she tells him but also wants to end the story before it gets to any point that might disgust him. Much of the drama of his performance comes from the struggle not to convey emotion or suggest judgment. That, after all, is part of the job and he's very good at his job. But it's also, quite obviously, a struggle.
Laura sees Paul each Monday and, following the pattern of the show, that's when we'll see her as well. Adapted from the Israeli show Betipul, each nightly episode will focus on a different patient. Tuesdays, find Dr. Paul treating a fighter pilot and self-styled Übermensch (Blair Underwood) coping, or failing to cope, with an action performed in Iraq. Wednesdays are given over to Sophie (Mia Wasikowska), a teenage gymnast recovering from a peculiar bike accident. Thursdays see the calamitous arrival of a couple played by Josh Charles and Embeth Davidtz. Their marriage is on the rocks in part due to her not entirely wanted pregnancy. On Fridays, Paul reunites with his estranged mentor Gina (Dianne Wiest) for a therapy session of his own that lets his cryptic façade drop as he revisits the previous week from his perspective. He also has to work through some issues with Wiest, though what those are remain unclear at the end of the first week.
I've watched the first week all the way through and I'm really impressed with this show. Though somewhat reluctant to return to the HBO therapy genre after spending a lot of time there this fall, I was immediately impressed with the tight focus and deceptive simplicity here. The drama comes from two, sometimes three, people sitting in a room and struggling to get to a destination that none of them can see and sometimes heading in different directions in their attempts to get there. I find myself more interested in some stories than others and liked none of the episodes quite as much as I liked the first. But I left the two-and-half hours committed to seeing executive producer Rodrigo Garcia's whole experiment through to the end.
Good casting doesn't hurt. Though it's a bit too easy to see the typed dialogue of the script pages behind some scenes, particularly some moments in Tuesday episodes, the acting remains superior throughout. It's good to see Byrne getting a substantial role and he plays the part as both kindly and cryptic. But when he lets the mask drop–with Wiest and occasionally in a session–there's no disconnect from the character we've seen so far. As a man with a mania for perfection, Underwood gets to play with his polished TV star image and relative newcomer Wasikowska more than holds her own against her veteran co-star. I'm less on board with Davidtz and Charles' episode but that probably has more to do with the deep unpleasantness of their characters than anything else. (The reliable Michelle Forbes appears later as Mrs. Dr. Paul but she remains off camera in the first week.)
Is this project sustainable? I don't know. It worked in Israel where the series has entered its second season. But the outlook looks good. I sense I know where some of these stories are going in the long term, but I hope I'm wrong. The week one scripts zag when they look like they're going to zig and I get the sense that Garcia and his crew have mapped out the stories with the attention to detail they bring to Paul's office, a place filled with model ships, books, and one rhythmically undulated desktop wave machine. It's the kind of space favored by a man used to exploring whole worlds without moving an inch.
Grade: B+
Stray observations:
– I'm not going to be blogging this show regularly. It's just too much television. But I'll try to check back every couple of weeks.
– Who's the last TV therapist with a home practice? Was it Alan Thicke on Growing Pains?
– From Tuesday's episode: Add "angel lust" to your dictionary of the macabre.
– From Thursday's episode: Hey! A Roland Barthes reference on a prime time television. (Well, cable television.) I get that. I didn't go to grad school for nothing after all.
– From Friday's episode: Is this ultimately all a story about Paul?
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