Lately the wife and I have become addicted to In Treatment, the HBO talking-head show about a psychologist and his patients the first four nights of the week, the Fridays being reserved for his own sessions with another therapist. But running down the list, it seems that most of the patients have a specific reason that has precipitated their seeking treatment.
Alex - PTSD after having bombed civilians in Iraq
Sophie - Suicidal tendencies
Jake and Amy - Marriage possibly breaking up
Paul - Seems fairly typical for therapists to seek out therapy for themselves.
Laura - ??
What happened in the beginning, and why did she begin treatment?
I don’t think it was ever stated, but I suspect Laura came in for that post-modern classic, depression/anxiety. I’m not sure there was a specific event, like with the rest of the patients, that brought her in, though she clearly has some stuff in her personal history that is screwing up her current relationships and mental health.
Paul is in therapy because he’s in love with Laura and he knows he should never touch her. He wanted Gina to talk him out of getting involved with Laura, which she seems to have done successfully so far. His wife really is a monster bitch though, isn’t she?
You are the only other person I know who watches this show. I guess it’s a big time commitment, but I’m enjoying it. I think I like the Sophie character the best. Or, I should say, she’s the most interestingly portrayed. I hope Paul keeps his hands off Laura. If they got involved, it would be truly repulsive. He should dump the wife, though.
Not much to add (I agree with Rubystreak) – just checking in as another dedicated follower of the show. I’ve gotten into a groove where I’d watch it in bed right before I fell asleep (thanks to On Demand) so it doesn’t feel like a huge time committment – if I wasn’t watching that, I’d be watching the news, a Seinfeld episode I’ve seen five times already, or the first half hour of Letterman.
I love this show despite HBO going a little off the deep end with therapy. First Sopranos dabbled in therapy, then Tell Me You Love Me kicked it up to center stage, and now In Treatment is nothing but.
I’ve toyed with the idea of starting an In Treatment thread for a while, but I figured there wasn’t much to talk about since the show already talks everything out for us.
When she started playing the martyr on Friday’s show I wanted to jump through the tv and slap her silly.
I quite enjoyed her reaction shot at seeing Laura walk out of the Monday “session.” Speaking of which, I noticed two unusual things in the “next week on” previews for Monday. First, Laura wasn’t anywhere to be seen in them. Second, they always include the name and this time they didn’t. Where before it was always “next Monday on In Treatment: Laura”, this time it was simply “next Monday on In Treatment.”
Don’t lose Laura! She’s gotta stick around long enough to get nekkid…
One thing that really bugs me about this show is how it’s described in the cable guide. The cable guide’s show descriptions always include two actors’ names, and every single episode of In Treatment lists the same two names: Gabriel Byrne, Josh Charles.
For a while I wondered who the fuck Josh Charles was, but then saw in some promotional materials that he plays Jake of Jake & Amy. I have since carefully watched the credits for each day of the week, and Josh Charles does not have a single credit other than Jake. He’s not a writer, (executive) producer, director, makeup, warddrobe; nothing.
So why the fuck is Josh Charles listed alongside Gabriel Byrne? God forbid they should include a woman or a black man in the credits. No, couldn’t have that. Let’s give the credit to somebody whose role is half the size of theirs. He is, after all, a white male.
I mean, seriously, WTF? Am I the only person who has noticed this?
Just a quick post to say that I am glad my clients aren’t as contentious as Paul’s (although I did have a couple end their marriage in therapy today). I agree that Laura is in therapy for depression. I just watched her Week 5 this morning and was struck by how she is trying to re-enact her affair with the older guy from her adolescence with Paul.
Cool…I’m glad somebody else is watching it too. It can be a bit of a time-sink, but I love that HBO is putting all the shows “On Demand” at the beginning of each week. That way, I can watch all the week’s shows on Monday night, when nothing better is on.
With Laura, I agree that maybe the original reason for therapy was likely depression or a poor time coping with stress, but I think it’s definitely brought out some of the deeply conflicting feelings she has about sex.
And if we’re talking about reasons for visiting, we can’t forget to mention the convenient “cover stories” they’ve all had:
Alex - wanted advice on whether or not to go visit Iraq
Sophie - needed evaluation for insurance regarding accident
Jake and Amy - wanted advice on whether or not to get an abortion
Paul - lost patience with his “patients”
Laura - still ??, but note how she even had excuses for why she was breaking up with her boyfriend/fiance when the real reasons were anything but…
It’s interesting to see how they what they come in for and what they actually get treated for are so different. Does this happen pretty often in therapy?
Couple of questions that I’ve been thinking about, wondering how it will turn out.
–Do you think that Paul and Laura will consummate? Would you be relieved or disappointed if they went there? I hope that Paul isn’t that shallow, because Laura is so obviously re-enacting a scene from her adolescence, which would only lead to humiliating heartbreak for him.
–Did Sophie’s dad molest her? How completely unethical is it that Paul didn’t blow the whistle on her sleeping with her coach, with whom she is still training? And that he had a lethal dose of sleeping pills in the office where a patient could get them? I really like how the character of Sophie is written, but Paul’s behavior towards her is quite unprofessional. Don’t know if that’s intentional on the part of the writers, or if it’s just bad writing that these issues aren’t addressed.
re: Alex (something that comes up in Week 6)
–Is Alex really gay? Or just having a nervous breakdown?
–Why hasn’t Paul told his wife that their daughter is sleeping with a guy she met at the volunteer work she does at Kate’s work? Doesn’t that seem odd to anyone?
–Does all the antagonism between Paul and Gina seem to be coming mostly from Paul? It comes off to me like a lot of his anger at her is projection, though this last ep (Week 6) she did seem to be undermining his marriage a bit (though maybe it should be undermined). He takes a lot of shit from his wife in those sessions and she takes very little responsibility for the failure of their marriage. It is infuriating to watch at times.
–Is anyone else sick of this theme that seems to crop up in dramas with doctors (Grey’s Anatomy and Lost come to mind) wherein the female spouse of a male doctor feels the need to cheat because her husband is so devoted to his career that he doesn’t pay enough attention to her? And the men in that situation always seem to feel contrite, despite being faithful themselves? It seems astonishing to me that Kate somehow has turned this whole thing around on Paul, even though he has resisted the temptation to be unfaithful and she ran off to Rome with her boyfriend.
Wondering what other folks think, since like I said, none of my friends IRL watches the show, so I have no one to discuss it with.
God I hope so, only because Melissa george is so friggin’ hot. Storywise it would be a disaster, though.
I doubt that she took or that he had a lethal dose of sleeping pills. Killing yourself with pills isn’t particularly easy, and anyway her attempt was so clearly of the “cry for help” variety it was laughable. That doesn’t mean implausible, mind.
But yeah, even worse than Paul not reporting the coach is that he okayed her going back to the gym against the mother’s strenuous objections. Not sure what he’s thinking there.
Agreed on all counts. I’m not sure if Paul is just a dick, or if there is something more we don’t know about his history with Gina. To still be made about a bad review after 10 years strikes me as petty, to put it kindly.
I wouldn’t say I’m tired of it, but it does annoy me every time I see it. You should be careful, though, as this is treading in mysogynyst waters.
The reason I thought he wanted Gina to talk him out of it is because she was in the same situation and she didn’t have the affair. In that sense, she’s modeling the behavior he wants to emulate. Maybe he thinks that, if she said it was OK, then it really would be. However, knowing her history, he couldn’t truly have thought she’d reassure him. I think he knows it’s wrong, deep down, and wants to stop it from happening, despite a very strong desire to go ahead with it. In that sense, Amy’s story in Week 6 is echoing his own struggle.
Misogynist waters? I thought it was just bad writing. I’m guessing it doesn’t happen in real life nearly as often as it does on TV shows.
My take on this is that he thought that the gym was the one place in Sophie’s life where she felt in control, and healthy. Although I agree that having more contact with her coach is a bad idea. I don’t know – maybe he thought that was preferable to having her spend all her free time with her Mom, which, at least right now, would probably end up in another cry for help of some kind.
And apparently blonde. I totally didn’t recognize her as the chick from Turistas, which I saw quite recently. It is also noteworthy that she doesn’t appear averse to nudity.
Nearly as often? How often do you see it in tv shows compared to how many tv shows you watch?
Even still, the exact details (guy must be a doctor, girl must have an affair) are incidental. The fundamental dynamic is that any number of the woman’s sins are glossed over because she gets the trump card of the guy not paying enough attention to her. This phenomenon taps into the “male guilt” corollary to “white guilt”, and I daresay it’s not uncommon at all.
She was also the villainess who married Michael Vartan’s character in Alias.
Sigh. You know what I mean. It’s turned into an iconic theme when there is a plot about a doctor. He works so hard, he doesn’t pay attention to his wife, so she cheats, but it’s his fault. Frankly, it seems so narcissistic to me. You marry a doctor, knowing full well that’s what he does and how many hours he puts in… what is the problem that you’d feel so completely justified about being unfaithful? He’s AT WORK, for god’s sake.
In the case of In Treatment, it’s more complicated because work and love are a bit too intertwined for Paul. It’s hard to know which came first, Kate’s disaffection for Paul or his affection for Laura. Each of them would probably blame the other, and maybe it’s impossible to know. His wife does come off as very shrill and judgmental, unable to examine her own behavior, unwilling to let him try to figure anything out either. It’s hard to know what exactly she wants from him. Seems like they don’t want to be married anymore, and Paul is just holding onto it because it’s the last thing keeping him from jumping Laura. Bad reason to stay married in the long term, but compelling nonetheless I imagine.
I don’t know any doctors socially nor do I have any stats on how often male doctors are cheated on by their self-righteous and self-pitying attention-starved wives. It is played up for drama on TV though, I bet. That was my point-- however often it happens in real life, the number of TV doctors who have it happen to them is rather disproportionately high. I admit I have no idea how doctors’ marriages work in real life. I’m just not willing to rely on TV shows to tell me. If anyone is being misogynistic, it’s the writers who all too often portray doctors’ wives as being such needy, selfish adultresses. It’s kind of a boring “meme” now (hate that word but it applies here).
According to Kate, Paul’s came first. We know from earlier episodes that Paul started seeing Laura a year ago, and when he admitted his extramarital feelings, Kate asked how long this had been going on. When he remains silent – exchanging overly melodramatic looks with Gina, incidentally – Kate says she bets it started a year ago. Hamfisted, sure, but the writers are clearly trying to portray Kate as the aggrieved party.
This dynamic has long been used in reverse to portray a cad. It’s as cliche as cliche gets, where the husband cheats because the wife withholds sex. The husband is rarely portrayed as the victim, and the wife never acts contrite, because cheaters are bad, m’kay? The reversal is at least a little more interesting in its comparitive rarity, with the wife cheating because the husband withholds emotional intimacy. Odd that the wife is usually portrayed as the victim in this reversal. Sexism for the new millenium, I guess.
I agree with you that Paul’s work and love are (way) too intertwined.
Well, of course, according to Kate. Gina said that she thinks that Kate is becoming more independent of Paul, pulling away, so he went looking for a replacement dependent woman. That does seem to place blame on Paul for their alienation. I guess I don’t think that adultery is necessarily a defensible way to demonstrate independence, nor to raise the issue that your husband isn’t paying enough attention to you.
Then why is Kate coming across as so… awful? She seems like an utterly unpleasant person. Laura is crazy, but she’s still much more appealing, and I don’t mean physically per se.
Yeah, I guess it might be more interesting if it weren’t so overdone on TV these days. And I do think that, if you cheat, you pretty much automatically lose the moral high ground AND the Blame Game, but that’s just me. I think Paul would have left Kate if he weren’t so worried about succumbing to Laura, though, and in that sense, he is using Kate. Their marriage is totally screwed.
Is that a common problem for therapists, I wonder? Or doctors in general? That’s another thing that pops up in doctor shows-- doctors falling in love with patients. How true to life is it?
Kate is way hot, but Laura is on another level altogether.
I disagree that Kate comes across as so awful. She was pretty endearing in that Sophie episode when Sophie had to change clothes.
Toward Paul she is awful, granted, but from what we’ve been told she’s been aware of him pulling away emotionally for a year now. It’s over-the-top passive-aggressive to suffer in silence for almost a year and then start an affair as opposed to just confronting Paul a year ago, but there you go.
From my perspective she didn’t tell Paul she was going to Rome. What she really did was dare him to stop her, hoping he would by hook or by crook. But Paul didn’t do jack shit. Is that how a man who loves you acts? It was all a test, as evidenced by the fact that she didn’t really want to go in the first place. (“We stayed in separate rooms after the first day.”)
Again, over-the-top passive-aggressive, but in my experience it’s only the male gender that considers “passive aggressive” a pejorative.
Is it mandatory to watch all of the patients’ stories? Or am I the only one watching just one (Sophie)? I tried watching them all for two weeks, but I only found Sophie to be an interesting character (plus the time commitment of course).
Anyone else watching just one? and which one are you watching?