In Treatment (U.S. TV series)

Overview

Each episode of In Treatment focuses on one patient, including Paul, who is seeing his clinical supervisor and psychotherapist, Gina, played by Dianne Wiest. The first season included 43 episodes, each airing a different night of the week, Monday through Friday. The first season covered nine weeks for most of the characters, except in the final week, which did not have Monday or Tuesday night installments.

The series was renewed for a second season on June 20, 2008, with Byrne, Wiest and Glynn Turman returning. Michelle Forbes, who played Paul's wife in the first season, made two brief appearances in the second season. Production on Season 2 began in New York City in the fall and wrapped up in early 2009. According to The New York Times, production relocated to New York from Los Angeles at the insistence of Byrne, who otherwise threatened to resign. The move and the addition of Sunday night to the schedule were considered votes of confidence in the series by HBO executives.

HBO Canada, a multiplex channel that includes The Movie Network in Eastern Canada and Movie Central in Western Canada, aired the program simultaneously with HBO in the U.S. During the first several weeks of Season 1, episodes were available on HBO's website in streaming video. The free service was discontinued, however, when Apple's iTunes and Amazon Unbox began offering the first 15 shows for download.

Paul Weston

Gabriel Byrne portrays Paul Weston, a charming, relentless psychologist, who is seeking his own peaceful existence, free of self-doubt and ambivalence. Paul is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he earned his undergraduate degree, Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree and The New School, where he received his PhD (however, there's a scene in season one in which two diplomas from the University of Pennsylvania are displayed near the door to Paul's office). In summer 1988, he moved to Maryland, where he worked at the Washington–Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute and later established his private practice in Baltimore.

Season 1

Set in Baltimore, Paul has a private entry office in his home. During this season, the episodes aired on their specific days of the week.

Supporting:

Laura and Paul's relationship grows more complex and difficult to control. After Laura professes her love for him, Paul reflects on his own feelings for her and eventually, in sessions with Gina, comes to the realization that he is in love with her. Midway through the season, Laura decides to end her therapy with Paul after he rejects her advances countless times. She returns, needing to talk to someone, after she learns her father is dying. They run into each other at Alex's funeral, and later, Gina gives Paul the go-ahead to go after Laura, but a panic attack prevents him from going through with it. Laura's personal issues discussed in therapy include the lack of a father figure after her mother died, a pressing need to break up with her boyfriend, and being seduced by a much older man when she was a teenager.

Alex, who at one point meets Laura and has a brief affair with her, finds it impossible to express his internal struggles. As Paul tries to get Alex to break through to his reasons for running himself to exhaustion and his real feelings about accidentally killing Iraqi schoolchildren when a mission went awry, Alex drifts into instability, eventually deciding to end his therapy, and returns to the military just as Paul is beginning to make progress with Alex's repressed insecurities. Alex is killed during a training exercise, and while his death is originally ruled an accident, Paul is plagued with guilt that Alex's death may have been a suicidal reaction caused by the traumas of therapeutic reflection.

Sophie's ambivalence is elicited and broken down by Paul, who is able to successfully examine her sexual relationship (while she is underaged) with her much-older gymnastics coach Cy and its effects on her, as well as her conflicted feelings about her divorced parents and her father's distance from her. In the end, Sophie benefits greatly from her therapy with Paul and begins to repair her relationship with her parents. At the end of the season, Sophie leaves Baltimore to pursue further gymnastic training in Denver. In Season Two, April reveals to Paul that Sophie eventually went to college (we are not told if she abandons gymnastics). April learned this information about Sophie from Sophie's feedback about Paul on Paul's web page on the Pratt (April's school in season two) site/listerv. In her review of Paul, Sophie says that he saved her life.

Jake and Amy's debate regarding whether or not she should have an abortion is just the prologue to an extremely volatile, dysfunctional relationship. During their second therapy session, Amy experiences a miscarriage, but the couple returns to therapy to work on their issues. Amy's inability to hold emotional connection leads her to have an affair with her boss, a man she finds "gross" but uses as a buffer against her husband. Jake and Amy each have an individual session, the first in which Jake breaks down his family of intellectuals, and the second in which Amy recounts watching her father die while he was sitting next to her and was hit by a car after they got ice cream. She and Jake finally and sadly decide to end their tumultuous marriage and split custody of their son. Jake thinks the therapy was helpful, but Amy thinks it hurt their marriage.

Throughout the season, Gina and Paul battle each other over issues regarding their shared history and opposing views, but by the finale it appears that they have made peace and will continue therapy.

Season 2

Paul, now divorced and quite lonely, has relocated to Brooklyn, and uses the living room of his small refurbished walk-up brownstone for patient visits. He has brought his books and his patient files with him to his new apartment. In Session 1 he states that he attended Columbia University, but this is in complete contradiction to the two University of Pennsylvania diplomas that hung in his Maryland (Season 1) office next to the patient exit door. He never mentions anything about Penn. He is served with a malpractice lawsuit from Alex's father in the first episode, and becomes preoccupied with the consequences.

Paul's personal neurotic and self-aggrandizing behavior was a significant theme throughout the series. He identified with all of his patients' issues and interpersonal conflicts on some level. Ironically, he was their composite personality, except he was intended to be the resolution expert. His self-doubt and feelings of personal inadequacy revealed over the seven weeks made him appear even more vulnerable than those he was treating. As the final episode drew to a close, Paul pulled the plug on his own desire for treatment, with the same ambivalence his patients had exhibited. Was it really making a difference? Alex's father has a meeting where he makes this offer: he will drop his lawsuit if Paul will write him a letter taking 100% of the blame for Alex's death. Paul considers this offer but later concurs with Gina's advice and tells Alex Sr. his offer is rejected. The lawsuit was dismissed as frivolous, and his angst involving his professional competency was alleviated, at least temporarily.

The final symbolic message Paul delivered to his audience by that decision was, there are times in one's life when therapy is valuable for a person to become more grounded in reality. However, more often than not, therapy alone only serves as a road map to find a patient's way in the world. Paul realizes he "needs to stop analyzing his life and needs to start living it". Given enough time and patience, and by accepting that there are past events that cannot be controlled or changed, everything in life tends to work out by itself and not by recreation or reparation of former deeds.

The season had seven episodes for each character. The "Monday" and "Tuesday" sessions aired back-to-back on Sundays, while the remaining three ran on Mondays. HBO repeated the episodes in sequence, several times each week. The season's executive producer was Warren Leight, who previously worked on Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Season 3

Following the final episode of the second season, Leight said in an interview that a third season remained a possibility, but pointed out that the show had been exhausting for everyone involved and also somewhat less than a "breakout hit" for HBO. However, on October 23, 2009, HBO announced that it had picked up In Treatment for a third season. Production began in early 2010 for a premiere in late October. The show remained set in Paul's apartment in Brooklyn, New York—the same location of his office in season 2.

Unlike its first two seasons, In Treatment's third season contains only four episodes per week.

In Treatment's third season aired on Mondays and Tuesdays and, like season 2, had seven weeks of sessions.

On March 30, 2011, HBO said In Treatment would not continue in its existing form but the network was talking with the show's producers about possibly continuing in a different format. The final result was the ending of the series, with the third season being the last.

Critical response

The series was generally well-received, attaining positive reviews. On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the first season scored 70/100, the second season scored 85/100, and the third season scored 83/100.

The Los Angeles Times' Mary McNamara called it "cleverly conceived," well-written and -acted, though "stagey" and "strain[ing]... believability". Variety's Brian Lowry deemed it "more interesting structurally than in its execution". On Slate, Troy Patterson found it tiresome for its "nattering" and "ambitious hogwash". In Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker gave it a "B+", with "lots of great soapy intrigue". The New York Times praised the show: "In Treatment [...] is hypnotic, mostly because it withholds information as intelligently as it reveals it. [...] The half-hour episodes are addictive, and few viewers are likely to be satisfied with just one session at a time. [...] In Treatment provides an irresistible peek at the psychopathology of everyday life — on someone else’s tab."

Differences from BeTipul

The script of the first season of In Treatment was heavily based on BeTipul's Hebrew script, and the Israeli writers are credited in the episodes' final credits. The following are the main differences between the shows:

Awards and nominations