Dead Tree Alert: In Treatment Returns

HBO

In this week's print TIME, I review season 2 of In Treatment, which returns this Sunday and which (having seen four weeks so far) I like better than the first: 

By the time Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) sits down for a session with his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest), he has had a long week. He's been served with a subpoena in a lawsuit stemming from a former patient. On top of that, he's going through a divorce and has uprooted himself from suburban Maryland to Brooklyn, N.Y., where he's started a new practice. "Oh," Gina says cheerfully, "some new problems to listen to." Wearily, Paul answers, "There are no new problems."

In one sense, he is absolutely right. Season 2 of HBO's In Treatment remains TV's most satisfyingly cerebral drama simply by talking, over and over, about age-old woes: family, regret, sex, mortality. And Paul's patients echo the four he treated last season: a woman with whom he has a personal history, a confrontational control freak, a troubled student with a secret and a bitterly fighting married couple. But like a successful patient, the show has learned and grown, becoming more reliably compelling. ...

Read the rest here. The one drawback to the new season so far is that there doesn't seem to be a single patient who's an amazing revelation like Sophie (Mia Wasikowska) last year. But there are also no clunkers like Laura or the squabbling couple from last season; Paul's four cases are solidly engrossing across the board. I'm told (though I haven't watched the originals to confirm) that where as last season practically literally translated the Israeli original, Be'Tipul, this season is more of an adaptation. Maybe that helped, or maybe the writers, American and Israeli, simply learned from experience. 

By the way, old fans should be aware that the running schedule has changed this year: The first two "sessions" air Sundays at 9 p.m. E.T., the last three (including Paul's with Gina) Mondays at 9. How do you feel about the change? Personally, I watched all of season one on screeners, but I could see the appeal, especially last year, of being able to more easily cherrypick certain patients (although you lose something of the overall experience that way). On the bright side, I don't find myself wanting to skip any of the patients this year.