Analyze This
In Treatment is Bare Bones and Brilliant
The idea was to make a show about therapy. But instead of just focusing on a couple in for counseling, or just on a pilot after a bombing mission to Baghdad, the plan was to cover a bulk of the whole patient list—as well as be about the therapist, himself, (maybe more so than his clients). The result is In Treatment, an ambitious examination of people, the ones with problems as well as those who are supposed to have solutions, and how, really, neither one is better off than the other—maybe just more articulate.
To take on such a girth of material, the show was originally structured to air five times a week, Monday – Friday, with Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) seeing a different patient in each episode—except Friday’s, when he’d meet with his own shrink and college mentor, Gina (Dianne Wiest). Season 1 cleaned up in award season, and both Byrne and Wiest went home with honors. Now, back for its second year, the schedule might have changed, cramped to fit all five episodes into just two days–but the style and format are the same. Every episode is a session, just Paul alone in a room with one of his patients, talking.
I think I can understand why I hear so little buzz about this show, why it seems that no one’s interested. You combine the gimmicky five episode-a-week schedule with the minimalist style and talkiness, and it doesn’t exactly make for exciting water cooler conversation. But it’s exactly that simplicity, that unrelenting focus that makes the show fascinating. Set like a stage-play, the show’s entirely reliant on its scripts and performances. It’s a stripped down exercise in exploration, both artistic and human—a 30-minute shared monologue that demands your attention for the very reason that it is so sparse and unusual. Plus, it’s just flat-out ballsy designing a show this way, putting out 2 ½ hours of material every week completely devoid of the bells and whistles on which other dramas are built. It still tells a story, but unlike any show you’ve seen before.
With almost no blocking, no action and very little music, In Treatment brings you inside the angst-ridden walls of a therapy session. And once it sits you down and makes you comfortable, it reveals to you your part in the drama. You realize that you’re not just a fly on the wall like you initially thought, but actually a willing participant in the therapy. The revelations here don’t come through Paul’s insights but through the ways characters deliver their lines and the ways in which others react to them. You study the words as they leave a character’s lips, and it’s like you’re having a conversation with yourself. “Ok, how do I feel about that?” you ask your reflection off the TV’s glass. “Would I have reacted that way? Why? What does that say about me?”
The problem with a show like this, this 5-a-week structure, is that it’s impossible to avoid comparing each character’s story to the one before: April’s on Tuesdays to Walter’s on Thursdays, and so on. Like Oliver (Wednesday), a kid struggling through his parents’ divorce. His are probably the weakest episodes of the week. Alone, as far as TV dramas go, they’re interesting enough and have their moments. But next to the rest of the characters in Season 2—Mia, a lonely middle-aged lawyer; April, a 23-year-old architecture student with cancer; and Walter, an always-in-control CEO who can’t sleep—they feel light and ordinary.
My biggest complaint, though, has to do with the episode length, the sitcom-standard 30min. The creators here certainly don’t skimp on material for the week—2 ½ hours is nothing to sneeze at—but episode-wise, the sessions always end right when I want them most to continue. And I guess that’s a good thing, as far cliffhangers and watchability go, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being had, that it’s all a ploy, a device to make the five episode-a-week structure not get thin or tired, to always end in the air so I’ll come back to “see what happens.” And due to the short runtimes, sometimes liberties are taken to move the narrative forward. A patient’s hang-ups will suddenly come out, in stories they tell but don’t put together the pieces of consciously, or in passive aggressive actions that are not so passive aggressive. And every once in a little while the characters look like caricatures—which really has all to do with the length of the episodes, because the writing in general really is just stellar. It has to be, in order to make a show like this even remotely work.
Because we do only get to spend 30min with these characters. though—instead of the standard hour for most dramas—sometimes it feels that the writers are more or less forced tell us straight-up things that would otherwise surface more gradually. And it’s jarring because most of these patients claim that they don’t need therapy, and act opposed to it. So when their issues pop out at you as if the characters are introducing themselves to the camera— “My name is Alex and I’m overly confident to mask underlying insecurities,” or “I’m Bess and I over-mother my son to feel close to my estranged husband”—you question their tact. There’s a level of human pride that gets lost in these moments—especially considering that the show deals with educated people clearly familiar with the basics of pop-psychology. But, there is an argument to be made, too, that no matter what these characters say, they do want treatment—or else they wouldn’t have shown up; so they actually want Paul to see their issues. It’s a whole conscious/subconscious thing. And on the one hand it’s smart, but the other hand, the lazy hand, it’s iffy.
Worse than that, though, is how in some of Paul’s sessions with Gina he’ll respond to his own emotions in a way less detached than he ought to be, his reactions not seeming to come from a mind as used to constantly analyzing words and feelings as his is. Sometimes he’ll react in sheer contempt or even avoidance, utter black and white instead of grey, and it just doesn’t ring completely true. At times it works, when he gets to that “fed up” stage and rants as a rebellion against the omnipresent air of “deeper meanings,” introspection and over-control in his professional life. But when he seems to be truly unaware of what he’s doing, that’s when it feels cheap and the chords their striking tinny. Thankfully, though, those moments are rare, and his sessions with Gina are chock-full of that special kind of grey, that sober sense of self-evaluation and back-and-forth that any self-explorer knows all too well.
Despite any nitpicky complaints I may have, this is the one show on TV right now that everyone really should be watching. Its persistent refusal to ever offer any kind of answers, any sort of relief or finality or definitiveness, is in large part what makes it outstanding. It remains a palette of grey, with not one stroke of red, or one dash of white or black anywhere to tell you who’s right or wrong or good or bad. I’ve seen every episode from the outset of the series and it’s clear that Paul cares for his patients, that he’s genuinely concerned and even slightly hopeful that he might make a difference; but I still debate with myself whether he’s a “good” therapist, or “good” father, or “good” anything. They introduce him early on as weary and annoyed; “I’m just so sick of listening to other people’s problems,” he tells his analyst, Gina, in a flash of anger. And with Gina he’s angry often. He’s angry at how his life turned out, at his regrets, his broken marriage; he’s angry at his patients and how they resist his treatment; he’s angry at just how messed up people are and at the people who mess them up; and he’s angry at anger.
With his patients, though, he’s calm and reserved; you can almost see the words build and correct in his mind before he says them, always careful to be unaggressive and tactful. From watching him with Gina, though—in the “Paul Unplugged” episodes, as my brother calls them—we know that he’s actually boiling under his calm exterior, craving to break all the rules, scream at his patients or take them by the hand and “save” them. Every stutter takes on a new light, every twitch and pause. As a supposed-to-be neutral party, the therapist becomes just as empathetic, real and tragic as every one of his loud and talky patients.
Any given episode of In Treatment is a constant string of questions and epiphanies, contradictions and almost-payoffs. That’s why, even when the show might fall short, you’re quick to forgive it—because even in its lower points, it’s still trying and accomplishing far more than most any TV drama does.
So go ahead, project away. See yourself in the faces of these characters. And love them for it.
Sun. and Mon. @ 9:00pm HBO
This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 4:34 pm and is filed under television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
