Treatment Can't Cure--Even at Five Times a Week

Dosage. If there's one thing a person used to be able to rely on from television networks--quality, comedy, reality, escape, fair labor: we know that's now nearly too much to ask--it was dosage. Watch one show at the same time each week for an entire season. Then, a break; repeat.

But then the world changed with short spurts of mini-seasons and gloriously cinematic cable shows--also available "on demand" and through DVD, to say nothing of the Internet--with which you could prescribe your own way through a contrapuntal narrative. (For instance, like too many David Chase admirers, I watched the whole first two seasons of the Sopranos in about three unforgettable days, and may have been virtually "made" by the time I was done. I know: I'm not unique.)

But no more of this wild-west TV-watching. No more ad-hoc remote-control liberalism. We're all in need of some structure. And now, with In Treatment, the new so-called "therapy show" from HBO starring Gabriel Byrne, a network is asking us to trust it with strict, conservative dosage. (And yes, I think there's a mild if impossible-to-miss political undercurrent here in the same manner that Knocked Up and Juno steer themselves away from abortion. Certain people in America just can't handle having to make decisions. Like one character in In Treatment, certain Americans crave a commanding officer.)

And like the conservative doctor, HBO is more serious about the drugs when it's facing a serious disease (here, loss of control over the zeitgeist in the wake of recent series failures). Watch In Treatment five times a week, thirty minutes a time, this new show-dosage seems to command, and save our network along with the preventative health of your intrinsic TV-love. Pledge your allegiance to our image of quality. Enough watching-sessions of In Treatment, taken like pills, and you may sway back from the reality shows that sucked you in during this writer's strike. Never mind that the entire first week of In Treatment is available "on demand." The real way to grasp the show is on a nearly retro-psychoanalytic schedule.

Hilarious but also troubling, no? Is Freud Communications in on this shtick? I've never seen such a psycho-dynamic attempt to remedy an ailing network's ills.

Of course, ontological and philosophical problems abound due to In Treatment's dosage strategy. But the main dilemma for me is that I don't trust the prescriber anymore.

I tried watching just one episode of In Treatment yesterday. And it didn't matter if I thought it was unusually good (I didn't). The one thing I didn't like about it as a formal experiment is that observing just one session of a patient with one therapist at a time isn't satisfying. Perhaps that's what HBO wants: here's a way to hook'em. But more-more-more also doesn't seem to improve this treatment's cumulative attempt at viewer obsession (I mean, network health).

With this new television format, the show's writers and producers--and let's not insult them too much; they took the show from an Israeli series with a successful run--also attempt to redefine what works and what doesn't on TV. They try to treat us, psych-like, while rendering themselves immune of old-format criticism. But it's an ineffective attempt. Sure, they might ask: How can you say it doesn't work if you haven't tried it for a long time? That's the same question asked by pharmaceutical companies who bring out new brand-namers for higher co-pays. But whether or not there's some deeper meaning to giving this experiment a go--say, some cumulative ah-hah moments awaiting the patient viewer (no pun intended)--this show no longer has to adhere to standard narrative rules. Beginnings, middles, and ends are for suckers! What people really want to watch is expertly scripted versions of our unsatisfying reality even if you're left like a patient being told that time is up! Doesn't that sound like fun?

Worse, the protagonist's cast of clients--"the customer's always wrong," says Byrne's therapist in one episode--seem like a terribly unrealistic combo. I am married to a therapist in a big, crazy city, and I can tell you: Sometimes our docs are just bored to tears with us. Even the best ones. And for real reasons.

It's very unlikely to have: 1) a patient falling in love with you a day before a potentially suicidal Olympic hopeful; 2) a self-deluding bomber pilot fresh home from killing children in Iraq as well as being diagnosed as clinically dead for a few minutes after a running-induced heart attack; 3) a couple who have tried fertility treatments for five years only now to consider abortion (not crazy-rare, but in this mix?); and 4) a senior supervisory therapist needed by a pro doc who refuses to see his own truth (sure, this happens -- but so cleanly and quickly?).

It's a pretty simplified and dramatically packed life for Byrne's character. Roll up Beverly Drive or Fifth Avenue and ask most high-priced therapists of a similar so-called quality if their practices are so jam-packed with "drama" of this variety. Actually, these dramatic setups don't hold one's interest because they aren't real enough. There is--surprise!--a middle ground between the true, hellish boredom of everyday life and the scripted stories of a TV show: Give us these nuanced experiences along with subtle commentaries on our culture in whatever dosage you like and maybe we won't snooze. Watch some episodes of the Sopranos if you don't understand, and don't just rejigger a show that's already had some success abroad in another language.

Certainly, one reason the five-times-per-week dosage works on paper is because: Who could handle all this stuff at once? Well, I watched all the currently available shows on demand in one sitting, and to that question I'll be all therapeutic and respond with another: Who can handle little bits of these stories every night of the week? It's a lot for a network to ask. Too much, if you ask me. Better to overdose a bit and then render your opinion.

I'll come clean: I love my HBO. So I want the network to succeed. But by changing the rules so severely and running what seems like a pre-packaged hit at the same time, HBO's just trying too hard while seeming just a tad too slick.

Don't wow us with new dosages or innovative, "high-concept" strategies for success; wow us with true content.

I'd karate-chop Tom Cruise in the face if he told me what he thought about psychiatry in person, but I also know that the last thing anyone needs is one therapy session with a different -- but amped-up -- serious problem every night of the working week. Especially if you already know the therapeutic experience from either the patient or doctor's point of view.

Life is too hard for such "entertainment." But maybe I'm just projecting.

Comments

[aznurse]

Well, how is it compared to Celebrity Rehab?
At first, I thought it was a joke show, after watching some, it was!

[DickTater]

Well, go softly into that goodnight, as you main-lining tv addicts swaddle reality with cottoncandy hollywood illusions.

You realize these shows dictate whether someone joins a dart-league or a volleyball league? They dictate when we have supper done and cleared, and when you go to the bathroom. American Idol and Dance Fever and Survivor, etc. are commanding more attention from us than our children, and more on-call attention than a dying person or a pack of house-puppies.

That's called "eyeballs" in da bidness. Commanding your eyeballs.

[Jane]

Well, I do think it's a little dramatic. The first episode had too much stuff, and the second did, too, but I like GB's hint of the old Irish (even though have I ever heard of an Irish therapist?). I watched. More than a half an hour would be deadly. But its way better than that Monkees update, the Flight of the Conchords.

[StephenSmoliar]

When you consider the abundance of options that HBO provides for watching the episodes of IN TREATMENT (not just On Demand but multiple airings on multiple channels), it is hard to assign much (any?) creditability to this "dosage hypothesis­." It is even harder when the whole argumentation structure culminates in the phrase "true content," which has to be one of the most content-free expressions in our contemporary language (which provides no end of competitors)! My first impression of the scripts for IN TREATMENT is the intensity of the text, the way in which nothing is superfluous because every word and phrase is charged with both denotation and connotation. This demands far more attention than most television scripts, which is probably why each episode is constrained to half an hour. Unfortunately, even a duration of thirty minutes is too long for a generation of instant gratification, as is the principle that understanding will only emerge after several of these episodes (or, perhaps, the entire series of episodes) accumulate. (This was certainly the case with TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. This was far from my favorite television viewing, but I was still fascinated by what the production team was trying to do.)

Having said all that, I appreciate all the reasons why IN TREATMENT is not going to be the smash hit that THE SOPRANOS was. I also appreciate that HBO is in a slump, but I do not feel particularly emotionally invested in whether or not they recover from it. I take the good stuff where I can find it. However, I had better "come clean," too: I found JOHN OF CINCINNATI to be one of the most intriguing narratives I have ever seen on television!