March 11, 2008 - Digging Deeply Into HBO's "In Treatment"

The HBO series In Treatment, which launched in January, will conclude its first season at the end of the month - and once again, TV has found a novel way to tell a story. Novel, as in more like a novel than anything else.

The nine-week, five-nights-a-week story has unfolded layer by layer, as the world of therapist Paul (Gabriel Byrne), his patients and his own therapist has been revealed, slowly but very surely. What began as a series of independent therapy sessions has turned into something much more complicated, interlaced and unpredictable.

With Paul, we've met his wife, Kate (Michelle Forbes), who's had an affair, and last night we saw Paul interacting, in turn, with his two eldest children. All of this lends great insight into how and why he relates to his young patient Sophie, and his troubled married couple, Jake and Amy. And why he's tempted by his smitten patient Laura, and, at the other extreme, why his own therapist, Gina, is probing him so deeply when it comes to both Laura and Kate.

But at this point, we've also met Sophie's mother, and are about to meet her father. And another character's father, but that's more of a surprise. We've seen Laura alone with Alex, another of Paul's patients, and the next few weeks will see more people outside the confines of therapy - and many different conflicts actually come to a head.

I've seen the rest of In Treatment, and it ends up being addictively compelling. By the end, it feels like you're watching real people fight through real issues, not actors working skillfully through subtly written scripts.

I'd like to support, and watch, another season of this series - but if one measure of the success of therapy is how much progress is made during intimate conversations, In Treatment could just as well call it a day and hang up its shingle. It's done its job - very, very well.