From 2008 to 2010, HBO’s award-winning “In Treatment” was one of the most acclaimed dramas on television, launching the careers of Mia Wasikowska, Allison Pill, and Dane DeHaan, among others. Based on the Israeli show “BeTipul,” the show unfolded in real-time through revealing half-hour sessions between patient and therapist, played by Gabriel Byrne. A decade after the show went off the air, HBO unexpectedly announced it would belatedly return in 2021 with a new doctor and new patients. Still, largely the same structure and subject, once again analyzing how therapists and those who see them affect each other. The original series felt incredibly vulnerable and true, finding emotion through its empathetic portrayal of issues like mental illness, divorce, cancer, panic attacks, abortion, and much more. The reboot lacks some of the truth of the original three seasons, disappointingly feeling overwritten instead of true more than often than it did a decade ago. A phenomenal performance from a future star makes one of the sessions worth watching on its own, but both the patients and the doctor here too often sound like TV writers instead of real people. It’s nice to have “In Treatment” back on the TV landscape, but it needs a few more sessions in the writer’s room before a potential fifth season to find its voice again.
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The action of “In Treatment” has moved from the east coast to the west and is now seen through the eyes of Dr. Brooke Lawrence (Uzo Aduba), a former colleague of Byrne’s Paul Weston, who has become world-renowned in the last decade. Shot in late 2020, the show very much recognizes the existence of COVID, especially through Dr. Lawrence’s first patient every week, Eladio (Anthony Ramos), a home health aide for a wealthy family who works with his therapist via Zoom. Immediately, this creates a different sensibility in that the first three seasons were often about the energy in the room between patient and doctor, how they read each other’s body language, and negativity or positivity. However, Ramos pushes through that disconnection to make it a part of his character, a young man who starts to see Brooke as a mother figure, a role that she doesn’t really push hard against given her father recently passed, and it’s sent her into a spiral to find a son she gave up for adoption as a teenager. In a sense, she too sees Eladio as a child to care for, a surrogate for the child she doesn’t know. Of course, this is never a good dynamic to foster.
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In the second session of the week, Brooke does pro bono work with a man named Colin (John Benjamin Hickey), who is dropped off in the first episode by his probation officer because of anger issues the white-collar criminal displayed behind bars. Colin is a fascinating alpha male in how he’s constantly playing games to control the conversation. He’s defensive, prone to anger, and one of those guys who’s constantly virtue signaling in a way that’s really just designed to make himself feel better. He’s the kind of dude who will march in a women’s rights rally but defends using the c-word when he wants to make a point. A strong character actor for decades, Hickey is very good, but the writing here starts to show cracks, often feeling like a commentary on “wokeness” and “cancel culture” in a way that doesn’t feel organic. He’s the person railing against cultural shifts, someone who likes to blame the climate for his predicament instead of taking responsibility. This guy is out there, everywhere, but the writers here haven’t quite figured him out.
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The third session suffers from a similar problem through the character of Laila (Quintessa Swindell), a young woman dropped off by a grandmother who is basically seeking conversion therapy. She says she only wants Dr. Lawrence to help Laila through her sexual issues, but too many of these sessions feel like archetypal “teenager rebellion” writing. More than any character in the show’s history, through the four sessions sent for press, Laila never feels three-dimensional. It’s mouthpiece instead of character, injecting themes about race and generational divides into a script instead of presenting them in a way that feels organically developed through a real person.
Even more frustratingly, Aduba’s Lawrence has a similar “writer’s voice” issue in her sessions that end each week with a friend named Rita (Liza Colón-Zayas). Here’s where viewers learn about how her father’s death has led her to figure out what happened to her child, as well as that she’s a recovering alcoholic who may have been enabled to return to her demons by an old boyfriend named Adam (Joel Kinnaman). Aduba really fights it, but the dialogue in the fourth session feels melodramatic more often than it does genuine, and that’s a shame given how often this show felt true and pure in its original incarnation. (And it’s through no fault of Colón-Zayas either, who does her best to make the overly scripted material sound real.) The writing and directing staffs have shifted, and they’re no longer working from original scripts from the Israeli version. One can feel both of these things in the texture and veracity of the show.
The man who often pushes through that melodrama is Ramos, star of this summer’s “In the Heights” and a young actor on the verge of superstardom. He finds honesty in the fast-talking Eladio that makes his sessions the easy highlight of the four episodes each week. While one would lose some of the subconscious motives that Brooke displays with Eladio by missing how the other patients and Rita/Adam influence her, a viewer really could watch just the Ramos episodes and see a strong drama. His episodes are a reminder of what “In Treatment” can be at its best and distill what works best about the show historically—that dynamic between patient and therapist that influences both sides. Parts of the other half hours do that too, of course, but not as successfully, often feeling self-aware of thematic purpose in a way that turns characters into mouthpieces. If the show continues and there’s one arc every season that’s as good as Eladio’s, it will still be worth a look, even if the original show produced one of those on every night of the week. [B-]
“In Treatment” Season 4 debuts on HBO on May 23.
