Having finally caught up with HBO's
In Treatment, I feel a lot like a patient ending therapy. A significant amount of my response has been projection, it has taken me to some dark places in order to ultimately reward me, and it has inspired both dependence and rebellion. This is me urging you to check it out, knowing Season 2 artfully improves upon an excellent foundation. Spoilers from here on out.
You could probably sum up my problems with Season 1 by saying it was too limited--limited by plot convention, strict adherence to format, and source material. It was tough enough to achieve a complete story (or set of stories) every day for nine weeks, much less aim for some philosophical investigation into modern life.
Cue Warren Leight, the showrunner for Season 2, whom I credit with taking a good show and making it one of the best on television. Part of that comes from liberties with the adaptation, which is just the tip of the iceberg; Leight has loosened the series up considerably. Notice how often we leave the two primary sets (the offices of Paul and Gina). Notice how many times a therapy session is merely a part of an episode, instead of the episode itself. Notice how much more comedy is played this season. The effect of all this loosening is to give us respite from the cruelty, and even there, the problems of Paul's new crop of patients pale in comparison to the horrors Sophie or Alex endured. Luke and Bess, parents though they are, come off merely as squabbling colleagues next to the vicious Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? acolytes Jake and Amy.
What's more, free from the tendrils of all that melodrama, Season 2 feels both less conventional and more intoxicating than Season 1. It's funny that the produers at HBO relied on the Laura character last year, thinking the "will-they-or-won't-they" suspense was a primary draw. In the final account, fans hated Laura for precisely that reason. We as television viewers are conditioned to despise the flirty young things that show up to disrupt the marriages of our central characters. It's why Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton joined Friday Night Lights on the condition their characters are never written into affairs.
People also apparently despised Jake and Amy, I'm guessing thanks to the intensity of their battles. There's only so much cruelty we can take. In fact, much as I loved the revelatory performance of Mia Wasikowska, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to handle learning more about her troubled past.
But the cast and crew pulled me through, giving me an excellent return on my investment in those final few weeks as Sophie begins to cope. Perhaps my favorite moment from the series is when April gives her gift to Paul: telling him Sophie credits him with saving her life, she's in college now, and she sounds happy. It's a transcendent moment, earned by In Treatment's unique format. If I hadn't spent all those sessions with Paul and Sophie and April, it would have been merely an epilogue instead of the series' peak, loaded with so much meaning: Paul's been fretting about the value of his work, and here he's shown exactly how much good he can do; Sophie was so far-gone as to attempt suicide four weeks into treatment, and now one of the series' most beloved characters, the one you just want to reach out and hug, is happy; and April presents this compliment to lead into her realization that Paul has saved her life as well.
I don't completely agree with all the criticisms of Laura, Jake and Amy, but I understand. Like I said, last year was intensely claustrophobic. Watching Josh Charles and Embeth Davidtz is a treat, but I won't deny the difficulty of enduring their weekly assaults. In Season 2, and this is also thanks to the relaxed format, every patient enthralls. The stories are unconventional and more subtle, the performances are compelling and never histrionic, and the patients relate to Paul less obviously. Instead of reflecting the surface elements of Paul's plot, like his marital trouble or alienation from his children, the Season 2 patients revolve around Paul's doubt.
Thus, Season 2 deftly challenges my leading criticism of Season 1, that In Treatment fails to have any perspective. What it means to be in therapy is examined deeply in Season 2, as are several criticisms of the process and a constant exploration of its ethical implications. I deflated at the Week 6 downturn, watching Paul receive his punishment for being a good person instead of a good therapist. He had to inform April's mother of her cancer when she collapsed, and he had to make Oliver a sandwich--his parents certainly aren't nourishing him, nutritionally or otherwise. Then he takes a week off for a legitimate emergency and returns to experience the consequences of dependence.
Those episodes exemplify what I wanted to see from the series. The basic requirement of In Treatment is that it be a television drama. In that respect, Season 1 succeeds. Going further, In Treatment ought to be a compelling show, which it is only intermittently in Season 1, mostly during the Sophie and Gina episodes (and, a personal favorite, the solo Jake session). Above that, it should aspire to something more, whether that be a rigorous study of the therapy process, an exploration of the psychological state of modern society, or a metaphor for something else entirely, say, the American political state after the series of democratic crises that introduced the decade.
Season 1 is often a compelling television drama that occasionally seeks to fulfill that higher need, especially toward the end. But Season 2 opens with a break in format--Glynn Turman's Mr. Prince serves Paul a lawsuit--immediately declaring its intentions to add to its surface therapy plots an examination of the value of therapy.
The risks pay off with a final week of involving sessions and natural conclusions for the characters. Overflowing with touching moments--Mia deciding to continue therapy, Paul giving April a new hat, Paul telling Bess he admires her, Paul calling Oliver from the kitchen, Gina and Paul taking in the news that the judge dismissed the Prince lawsuit--Week 7 is as good as television gets.
If this is the end of In Treatment, kept inexpensive thanks to its strict shooting schedule and limited sets but equally low-rated, Season 2 has given us a fitting finale. Personally, though, I think they can do even better. If it's ever ready to return, my door is always open.
