Customer Reviews

In Treatment: Season Two

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

'In Treatment: Season Two', is as riveting as season one. Gabriel Byrne, as Paul, continues as the impassioned psychologist, dealing with a new set of patients. He sees a female college student with lymphoma, a boy whose parents are divorcing, a female attorney who he was his patient twenty years prior, and an aging company CEO . Meanwhile, he continues to have both clinical supervision and personal counseling with Gina, Diane Wiest.

Paul struggles with many of the same issues that were difficult for him in season one - - boundaries with patients, his marriage, his relationships with his children and anger and dissatisfaction with his personal and professional life. On top of that, he is being sued by the father of a patient from Season 1.

TV series do not get any better than this. As a clinical social worker and marriage and family therapist, I can vouch for the authenticity of the sessions. Therapists are human beings and 'In Treatment: Season Two' reminds the viewer of this with every episode.

In Treatment's second season continues in the "does programming get better than this?" fashion we became accustomed to in Season One. The first episode has us meet up again with Dr. Paul Weston who is newly divorced in his Brooklyn apartment/office but this time around he is faced with a malpractice lawsuit from a former patient's father. We are also introduced to new patients, a female laywer whom Paul had treated 20 years prior, a college student with cancer, a preteen boy whose parent's recently divorced and a very highly ranked executive. Paul continues as a patient himself with his former therapist and mentor, Gina. The acting is intense and Gabriel Bryne can do more with an eyebrow or a flare of one nostril than most people can do with their entire bodies and vocal chords.

If you like intelligent shows with a great deal of realism, you must watch this. I hope we see at least one more season of this remarkable show.

I'm not gonna rehash the basic premise and stars of this series; you probably know that already. I'll just say that TV shows as intelligent, literate, and adult (not to mention well-acted) as this one are few and far between, and I intend to enjoy it for however long it lasts. I didn't think Gabriel Byrne was ever gonna find a better part than "The Usual Suspects," but he fits into this role like Kingsley into Gandhi or George C. Scott into Patton. And Alison Pill was robbed by not receiving an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of the grad student with cancer. I bought season 1 on DVD, and I'll be all over season 2. HIGHLY recommended.

I've had unipolar depression my whole adult life. Thus, I had to get into medication and outpatient therapy for many years in my 20s. Decades later I still must take the medication but I haven't needed therapy in a long time. However, those early intense years of therapy were extremely helpful for the rest of my life. This series absolutely faithfully duplicates the entire experience. Gabriel Byrne could be a real psychiatrist. I've never seen a movie or tv shrink this faithful to the real deal. Even better, when he himself is in therapy, it is absolutely real to life that he himself is a mess when he is the patient in therapy. The patients are diverse in age, sex, race and problems. In short, there is something for everyone with this patient base. I especially enjoyed the college girl with cancer who would not get treatment, Josh Mahoney (the father in FRASIER) as a CEO under fire, and the young boy with the constantly battling, divorcing parents. This season, Paul is also under siege with a malpractice suit, which was filed against him by the family of a patient who killed himself. The ends of treatment for each patient are realistic as well. Rather than seeing the patient off to a "happily ever after life", which would be impossible, Paul instead sees them off to an uncertain future but one in which they probably have a better idea of who they are as individuals and what they have as strengths and weaknesses. Season 1 was excellent as well. HBO does it again.

The second season of "InTreatment" is more polished than the first season, which wanted to take on too many characters' problems. This season, Gabriel Byrne's character is living alone, separated from his wife and family and the target of a malpractice lawsuit that has him questioning his capability as a psychotherapist. He hires a lawyer, a former patient played by Hope Davis who tries to seduce him throughout this season and works on her issues of feeling inadequate without a husband and children. He also consults a college-age woman dying of cancer, a family going through a divorce and a deposed CEO whose company made defective baby formula that killed children. In his own therapy with Diane Wiest's character, he examines his own insecurities and depression rooted in his mother's suicide when he was a teenager. A lot of heavy-duty stuff that makes you think, which is an important message for today's youth.

I likely don't have the words to do inTreatment justice. One would think in 2010 "therapy", a therapeutic alliance, would be recognized as a good thing, a place to go and talk of anything...with one who knows you perhaps better than anyone (over time). There are friends, relatives, troubled, issues, disorders...who would no more seek mental-health treatment, than walk naked into a high-school reunion. inTreatment allows you to be the proverbial "fly-on-the-wall", having almost embarrassingly candid/intense/intimate access to people in trouble. The show allows you to see how both therapist and patient struggle to find answers, understandings, and how growth comes in 'peal-experience moments...or over a number of sessions. Gabriel Byrne is the very invested, ultimately 'spot-on' therapist/analyst, finding fascinating correlations, articulated beautifully to his patient, that raises an eyebrow, or finds them in tears. Byrnes in very human, as the series allows you to see the therapist uncertain and seeking...though he rarely falters.

In season One, and season Two, the patients are three-dimensional, and stunningly portrayed by the actors selected for the roles. Monday you see patient #1 & patient #2 in session, Tuesday patients #3 & #4. The following week, you watch all four patients continuing his/her treatment. Very clever arrangement. I've likely overdone this review, but I so enjoy each moment of the show.

inTreatment in not "light" viewing, and parental discretion is called for. Rather an opportunity to tune-in to a stunning look at people in emotional pain, and see them working hard to get better...and they are better for the effort. The series will either bind you to every episode, or leave you cold (if you just don't get it...smile). Highly recommended for the intuitive, empathic, introspective and feeling viewer. I own season one, now season two on DVD, and hope those who can truly appreciate the honesty this HBO production delivers, will out-number those who find the series "boring". :sigh: smile, HIGHLY recommended!

In Treatment Series 2 (like Series 1) is just superb! There is only one problem which couldn't possibly bring me to give it any less than the highest possible rating. The problem for me is that the episodes are so short, being something like 22 minutes and I register a kind of not-quite-enoughness at the end of every watching ... something like being served a highly nutritious and delicious but skimpy meal. I understand that each episode has to fit into a 30-minute TV time slot that would also include several commercials. And I'll watch whatever they put out in the next series, but it would be even better, in my view, if they could add several more minutes to enhance the sessions and character development a bit more. Enough is a banquet, but not quite enough is still not enough.

I only caught onto "In Treatment" during it's second season and I literally couldn't watch it enough. I watched episodes over and over. The stories are so connected and so real. I then went back and purchased the first season and learned so quickly how much the second season built off the first season. Just brilliant. October can't come soon enough for me to get my hands on the second season so I can experience them again. Now just bring on the third season.

What is it about sitting in on other people's therapy sessions that is so entirely compelling? Vouyerism, I suppose. There are five clients - six if you count the therapist - each with awful problems of the most satisfyingly grusome type. I couldn't stop watching and I couldn't stop crying for a lot of it. Sad though most of it was, and recognising most of us don't need to gratuitously add sadness to our lives, the show offers something that feels remarkably like human wisdom, making it extremely worth the emotional investment.

IN TREATMENT is back for a second season, and the now divorced and living in New York psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne), is not only the defendant in a malpractice suit stemming from the death of one of his first season patients (Blair Underwood), but he also has four new people occupying his couch. They include Mia (Hope Davis), an top attorney who Paul had treated twenty years earlier, April (Alison Pill), a college student denying the fact that she has cancer, Oliver (Aaron Shaw), caught in the middle of his parents' divorce, and Walter (John Mahoney), a successful CEO who is suffering from insomnia. In addition, Paul continues his own therapy with Dr. Gina Toll (Dianne Weist).


This half-hour, 5 times each week series from HBO may not be for everybody, but it is certainly one of the best written, acted and directed series on television (cable or otherwise) today.


With a minimum of exceptions, the entire show is set in the offices of either Paul or Gina, as they hold their therapy sessions, thus each episode unfolds like a one-act play as the characters reveal more of their inner selves and turmoil.


There are no action sequences, no CGI, just two (sometimes three or four) people talking about themselves, their relationships and their problems, some of which are probably not too far removed from our own. That makes for riveting drama.


I can't recommend this show too highly.


© Michael B. Druxman