In Treatment: Laura - Week Five
By fred | February 26, 2008
(S01E21) And we’re back for a new session of In Treatment. Truth be told, I didn’t review the last two episodes, on Thursday and Friday. But I’ve grown bored out of those two sessions, and I just finally dropped them. Kind of. Before tuning in for this Monday’s session, I rapidly went over the two ones I had missed, just to see how it went. Jake and Amy are still the same, although it looked like finally Jake started to accept help form Paul. Jake: I think that was a real mistake.
On Friday it seems that Paul finally admitted to Gina that he was in love with Laura ! Interesting, I almost wished I had seen the entire episode. Not really, no, cause there was still lots of things I don’t care for, but for him to admit not an attraction or some fantasies but that he is “in love with her“, that’s huge. I wondered if/how this was going to affect her session…
I have to say that this session was a very special one, it was different form any other sessions of Laura we’ve seen so far. First off, there was something different with Laura, I think. I’m not sure what it is, is it that she kept her coat on all the way through or something, but something wasn’t as before, or so I felt.
Another thing that went down unexpectedly was when Laura quite rapidly announced that this was her last session, that she wouldn’t come back anymore. And she seemed pretty clear on that, she wasn’t questioning herself at any point during the entire session, and in the end she even hugged Paul goodbye, and left, for good. Or so she thinks, but of course we all know that this isn’t the case, we all know that she will be back next week, though I do wonder how they’ll play this out.
This session was also different because of how things went down. At some point, Paul started to ask Laura about the time soon after her mother died, when she was alone at home with her father, and had to take care of him. And as he was asking her about all this, I started to laugh at Paul again. Because I thought that for him to ask those questions just now, and this started already a few weeks ago when he asked Laura about the time she spent with that couple in Los Angeles, when she talked about it and how at some point she wanted them to adopt her, for him to do this only now, shows how bad a therapist he is.
I remember hearing him say to Gina on the Friday session that he was a good therapist, probably even better than she was. Honestly, he’s not, neither. There’s no question about it. Just like when I think he told her that it was stupid to have the pills on the patient’s bathroom, the pills Sophie took last week, something he claimed to not usually do. Yet I’m pretty sure we seen someone before (Laura, or Amy maybe, I can’t really remember…) open that thing, it wasn’t locked, nor was it empty.
Anyways, there’s no way this guy is a good therapist, if he’s only asking Laura now about the time her mother died, how she dealt with it, with being alone and having to support her grieving father, with spending time within another family and then coming back. You have to remember here, that unlike any other patients, Laura isn’t just starting her therapy with Paul.
So while it may look normal to us, because we’ve only seen her for about a month, she’s been coming here to talk to Paul for over a year now ! One year ! That’s dozens and dozens of sessions already, and if it took that long for Paul to question her about such major events in her life, there’s no question he sucks at his job.
And he never suspected anything and was truly shocked to find out that Laura had “an affair” with an older man, David, at that time. When she revealed this to Paul, I have to admit I was laughing, I’m sorry but I couldn’t help myself but to laugh at Paul. This guy is really bad at his job, at the very least with Laura, there’s no doubt about it. How dared he say to Gina he was a better therapist than she is, even if she was terrible that’d still be a huge insult !
Anyways, this was also the first time Laura actually seemed to be in therapy, maybe because she was relieved, knowing that Paul knew about her feelings, and that she wouldn’t come back. Maybe she felt like she could let it all go. I’m still pretty curious to see what will happen next, starting with what reason she’ll have to come back next week. Sure, they’ve flirted with each other more than they ever had before, and Paul really liked that hug too, and looked in pain as he forced himself not to kiss her then, but there was still no indication that she would come back…
Although, and that made me laugh a little as well, as it seems to turn into a recurrent thing on the show : she did not pay him. She announced this was their last session, that she had no intention to ever come back, yet still no payment. And there shouldn’t be any coming tomorrow with Alex, since she ended things with him. Which instantly had my interest in Alex’s session drop, so he better have some pretty good stories to tell tonight or I might stop watching on Tuesdays as well…
Posted in Reviews
Shows: In Treatment
