In Treatment: Sophie – Week One
By fred | January 31, 2008
(S01E03) It’s a daily show, so with a new day came a new episode, and a new patient for Paul Weston, therapist of In Treatment. As I’ve said yesterday, I think than this show might probably not be watched “fully”, but that people will chose their day and patients of choice. You have to give it to them, so, with each episode came a new character, and they’re all different.
This week we met with Sophie, and she was nothing like Alex or Laura, which were both nothing alike already. So at least there’s that. But because they are indeed different, and because each episode that will be about them will entirely depend on them, their story, and whether or not we actually care for it, it’ll be easy for people to decide that some patient isn’t worth their time and they don’t bother with the show on that day.
Sophie was, much like Alex, a new patient. But unlike with Alex, I failed to see anything that would grab my interest and put me into the episode, wanting to know more and find out more about her, caring about her problems. It was not all bad, and I liked some of the things that happened, but mostly it was boring.
By the way I’m not sure why we had that little glimpse of Paul in his personal life and fixing things in his bathroom. Seemed very much like some filler to me. That’s not good, really not, because then when later on came the silence, during the session, you find yourself wondering if those were meant to be silence, or if they just had him reading some reports so that it could waste some time.
Quite frankly I don’t care for Sophie. She’s got problems I’m sure, but I don’t really want to find out if her mother really doesn’t care about her or not, I don’t really care to find out whether she’s been abused by her coach or has this special bond with her father. I watched this episode pretty much like I did the first one, which means that while I was never completely bored, I was never drawn to either Sophie or her story either. Although it was good to see Paul, again, more invested. In fact this episode is the first that, I felt, relied as much on both people present, and not only the patient as before.
Still, just like with Laura, if she was to never come back to see Paul, for one reason or another, it’d be fine by me. The only question I had during this session was to wonder whether all the reference to Paul’s own daughter could have been put there with Friday’s episode in mind, could have all this been planted here so that he’s got something to say to his own therapist on Friday, regarding how he’s affected by Sophie and her story.
Of course, things aren’t always easy when someone goes to talk to a therapist, especially if they don’t really want to in the first place, and it takes time for a “relationship”, for an exchange of trust to occur. And maybe part of what we’ll get to witness if how Paul will get there, but at this point I wonder if if wouldn’t have been better to get us right in the middle on things, finding ways to make us understand how they got to where they were as they kept moving forward.
Now it wasn’t as bad as the first one, but if it doesn’t get interesting next time I’ll pass.
Posted in Reviews
Shows: In Treatment
