In Treatment: Laura – Week One
By fred | January 29, 2008
(S01E01) So last night was the premiere of HBO new drama, In Treatment. And it’s not a show like any other, starting with the way it airs : you got five half-hour episode a week. Monday to Thursday Paul Weston, the therapist, he has appointment with a different patient, and on Friday he switches roles and becomes the patient as he go see his own therapist.
Okay so before going any further I have to make this little completely unrelated side note, but every time I see that word, therapist, I can’t help myself but remember that Jeopardy bit on SNL, where “Sean Connery” would ask for a question from category “the rapist”. I know it’s silly but that had me laughing so hard, and I’ve obviously been traumatized because now that’s what I always see. Sometimes I actually read it as two words, and it makes me laugh.
Okay sorry, back on the show, and today’s session.
So I’m not sure how this is going to be, but before I watched this episode, right after seeing the trailer that I posted yesterday, I was worried about this show because it kinda seemed like a lot of drama, but really, a lot.
I was afraid that this was going to be a constant flow of people crying and complaining about how bad their lives were, how hard it was for them, the terrible things they were going through… and not that I intend to make fun of people in pain or anything, but while obviously when you’re having problems they seem, to you, like the biggest and most important thing in the world, to an external eye they’re nothing more than the every day problem of everyone, they’re nothing special, and they’re definitely not more important than our own, quite obviously.
That is, unless you’re a therapist, and are getting paid to care for problems of others. But as a viewer of a TV show, I’m not getting paid and I don’t think I’ll be willing to care about four or five people and their own little problems just because they’re on TV.
This episode started with a girl, crying. To tell you the truth I laughed a little at that opening, because it felt exactly like what I feared : people crying & complaining. “Yay!”. And to make things worse, guess what’s the biggest problem in the life of our first patient ? That’s right, the girl is in love with her therapist.
Now I’m not saying this doesn’t happen, I’m sure it happens many many times every day. Just like people reading reports and writing new reports and doing some boring desk-job all day long for weeks and weeks while they work at CTU. Oddly enough, when we put the TV eye on one of those people, who chose Jack Bauer, the one guy who’s never behind his desk doing boring things, but constantly torturing people and running towards the next nuclear explosion, jumping for helicopters to helicopters, shooting dead all the bad guys around while on the phone with the President…
I am not trying to say say show should go the completely extraordinary road and stop carrying about making sense or whatever, but at least don’t open with the biggest cliché of all, because a bad start is quite enough to get people not to come back to see what comes next, even if it turns out to be much better.
Now I have to give credit to Melissa George I guess, because pretty much the episode was on her shoulders. Just like all the others will be on whoever will come next and sit in Weston’s chair. Basically the show is two people sitting in front of each others. One of them is the patient, he’ll be talking. The other one, Paul Weston, is a therapist, and much like they do, he listens. So for half an hour pretty much all he had to do was to look at her, to smile on occasion, and then add a little “No you’re right, go on…” or a “Is that why you did it? Go on…” or maybe a “I see, go on…”
So far I wouldn’t they it was bad, but I wouldn’t say it was good either. It failed to get me interested, and I were to never see any of them again I wouldn’t care, at all.
One last thing, that kinda really annoyed me because it was so obvious, and repeated : at some point she says how cold she is, and he gives her a rug, he puts it over her shoulder. Then it’s like a ping-pong game, at one point it falls off her shoulders, then it’s back, then gone again, and back, and gone again. Every time the angle changes, every time they use a new shot, that rug changes position. And it’s not like you can miss it, it’s just there in front of you, and it’s not like it’s a small details, they even showed him putting it on her on part of the only bits of “action” of the show, and it really annoyed me.
Although to be fair, maybe it kept people watching. Things were slow and a bit boring, maybe people kept on watching only to see whether or not it would keep going on and off…
I haven’t been impressed or drawn to this show, but I’ll probably at least try to keep watching the full week. Although, many good things are one this week so, I’m not sure I’ll keep up to that promise. We’ll see. Tonight, Alex comes by Weston’s office, at 9.30 on HBO.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: In Treatment
