Tuned In

The Morning After: That Isn't Cricket

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HBO

If you have not been keeping current with HBO’s In Treatment this season, I can’t really judge you: even as a professional TV critic and fan of the show, I often fall behind the show (at two hours a week) and catch up in bursts. But if you’re considering catching up and wanted to pick a single therapy storyline to follow—possible, if not the ideal way to watch the show—then last night’s In Treatment showed how Irrfan Khan has been absolutely nailing his storyline as Sunil.

The most striking moment in the episode, of course, was Sunil’s turning over the broken cricket bat he found to therapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne), to prevent himself from being tempted to bludgeon his daughter-in-law (Sonya Walger) with it while his son is away at a conference. (Sunil says he suspects Julia of an affair, but it’s become clear that his feelings about her are bound up with his feeling of helplessness as a widower and immigrant, his cultural alienation from his son and grandchildren and possibly some level of attraction to Julia.)

As disturbing as the physical presence of the jagged bat is Sunil’s calm in describing his impulses, and the ease with which he could sneak into Julia’s study. In his mind, seemingly, his impulse is entirely understandable, and his ability to recognize it admirable and even moving. (He lingers lovingly over his description of the light in Julia’s room, just as he did over the lyrics of the mournful song he sang to / forced on his grandchildren. There is a sense in Sunil that even as he suffers, he is also somehow taken by, even on some level proud of, the poetry of his suffering.)

In response to this, Paul pushes back on Sunil’s statement harder than ever before, particularly his evasive way of answering a direct question without answering it. Paul has dealt with volatile patients before, and ones who are threats to themselves, but probably not (that we’ve seen) one who is so imminently a possible threat to another person. (There has already been a pushing incident that injured Julia, which Sunil diminishes without denying it.)

Complicating the whole issue is that Paul, on some level, does seem to feel an identification with Sunil, as an immigrant, as an expatriate of the former British Empire and as someone who has felt at times like an exile in his own home. (And we feel it too, because Sunil is thoughtful and in many ways sympathetic.) This may well have been an asset, as Sunil has opened to Paul as a result, but it also appears that vanity may be influencing Paul’s perception of their sessions; he wants to believe, as he argues to Julia, that he is reaching Sunil—but if she is right and he is wrong, the consequences could be far more than theoretical.

So much of In Treatment is about how perception colors how we envision events that we haven’t seen at first hand: we have Sunil’s version of the story, we have Julia’s, and we have Paul’s interpretation of each of their perspectives. Paul’s sympathy for Sunil is admirable and at least to some extent justified. But there are also the occasional moments where we see how his experience and bitterness cause him to see his world through an entirely different lens. He recalls, for instance, coming across his grandchildren watching an animated movie—obviously Finding Nemo—for the umpteenth time. But where you might see an innocent Pixar movie, Sunil—who sees his culture and family heritage betrayed by his daughter-in-law and a son he scarcely knows anymore—sees “senseless poison.”

On the one hand, it’s an understandable reaction to his feeling of abandonment. On the other hand, if this is how Sunil sees Nemo, who knows how he sees anyone else around him? With one more week of therapy left, it’s clear that this domestic cricket match is more than a game.