Promotional image for Season One
A friend recommended In Treatment to me about a year ago, and I started watching season one. I became addicted to the show pretty quickly, and luckily season two was there to keep me engaged in the story for another month.
This wait for season three, however, has been pretty dismal. For a while, In Treatment fans on message boards were speculating that there may never be another season.
The show is not like other HBO series.This one is intense with drama, but not the most popular or well-known series on the network. But critics and the dedicated fans become hooked by its stories, characters, and eerily realistic (though amped up for drama) dialogue and acting.
Irish actor Gabriel Byrne plays the enigmatic, brooding and eager-to-help therapist, Dr. Paul Weston. Most of the scenes take place in his office. When it airs on HBO, each season comes on for a half hour Monday through Friday. The audience gets to watch sessions with one of four patients Monday through Thursday, and on Friday (usually, though this changed a bit in season two), Paul goes to see his own therapist – mentor and complicated friend, Gina (played amazingly by Dianne Wiest.)
As a study of life, life’s problems, and how people interact with one another, the show doesn’t seem to play out like a TV show or a mini-film. Instead, it feels like watching a perfectly rehearsed play with highly-trained actors, whose dialogue and movements are fluid, true to life, and yet still grippingly entertaining.
But not entertaining in the way that Entourage or even The Sopranos was. In Treatment did not get ideal ratings for HBO, though it received a large amount of critical acclaim.
On October 23, Variety released a story with HBO’s announcement to renew for season three. As for the not-so-high ratings?
‘The viewership isn’t as big as we’d like but creatively the show works so well for us, if we’re true to who we say we are, we had to pick it up,’ Michael Lombardo, president of the programming group and West Coast operations for HBO, told Daily Variety. ‘We’re not just into ratings and the awards game. We’re here to deliver shows with distinct voices.’
And thank God. Though this show will not start filming until next year and will most likely be aired towards the end of 2010, I am already marking it down as one of my top things to look forward to in the new decade.
For anyone who hasn’t seen the show, I suggest you watch the first two seasons. And really, you have about a year to catch up on it anyway.
