The second season of HBO's "In Treatment" premieres on Sunday, April 5, 2009 @ 9 PM ET. The format will be different and less taxing than last season with the first two patients' episodes airing back-to-back on Sunday, and the last three patients' episodes airing on Monday.

Reviews upcoming.

Variety's review:
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In Treatment
(Series -- HBO, Sun. April 5, 9 p.m.)
by BRIAN LOWRY

Paul - Gabriel Byrne
Gina - Dianne Wiest
Mia - Hope Davis
Walter - John Mahoney
April - Alison Pill
Oliver - Aaron Shaw
Luke - Russell Hornsby
Bess - Sherri Saum

After what I considered a rocky start -- an interesting format, inconsistently and often heavy-handedly executed -- the second season of HBO's "In Treatment" is by every measure more satisfying than the first: less self-conscious and stagy, more convincing, with an upgraded talent roster and a storyline that deftly builds upon what's gone before. Even the scheduling -- pairing two half-hour episodes each Sunday, with the remaining three grouped Mondays -- should enrich the viewing experience. Although never likely to enjoy widespread appeal, this adaptation of an Israeli show has burnished its credentials as an elite drama, as opposed to a novelty for the Prozac-popping set.

To recap for the uninitiated, therapist Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) meets with a different patient in four half-hour episodes per week, followed by sessions with his own therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest), in the fifth. Yet Paul still bears scars from year one -- a fractured marriage, a malpractice suit, questions of an ethical breach involving a patient -- that dog him, making his furrowed brow even more craggy and tormented.

Highlighting his new charges, meanwhile, are Walter (John Mahoney), a harried CEO whose company is being rocked by potential scandal; and Mia (Hope Davis), a high-powered attorney and former patient whose romantic life is a shambles. Rounding out the group are April (Alison Pill), a 23-year-old student concealing her cancer diagnosis from friends and family; and Oliver (Aaron Shaw), a heartbreakingly shy, overweight 11-year-old boy caught between his squabbling and newly separated mother (Sherri Saum) and father (Russell Hornsby).

Byrne remains the show's sturdy anchor, and the story bores deeper into Paul's troubled history -- including his relationship with his parents, which bleeds into how he processes these latest cases. And while some of the exchanges occasionally feel overly mannered and cliched, the series has found a stronger, more cohesive rhythm -- thanks in large part to the fabulous Mahoney, Davis and the stunningly natural Shaw -- that mostly compensates for the claustrophobic, off-Broadway approach.

There are still moments when the writers' Geppetto-like manipulation is too apparent, but the revelations that pile on week to week help smooth over those excesses -- as does the simple pleasure of watching the intellectual tennis match as Byrne goes toe-to-toe with Paul's resistant, each-damaged-in-their-own-way clientele.

"In Treatment" initially felt like a voyeuristic exercise for the everyone's-got-a-shrink crowd in Manhattan and Beverly Hills, only to veer -- awkwardly and too deeply -- into melodrama. Now it's a genuine addiction -- just the sort upon which a pay channel, and a small but discriminating audience, will thrive.

Filmed in New York by Sheleg, Closest to the Hole Prods. and Leverage. Executive producers, Stephen Levinson, Warren Leight, Paris Barclay, Hagai Levi, Rodrigo Garcia, Mark Wahlberg; co-executive producer, Noa Tishby; producers, Sarah Lum, Leonard Torgan, Alysse Bezahler, Sarah Treem; directors, Barclay, Ryan Fleck, Terry George; writers, Leight, Jacquelyn Reingold, Yael Hedaya, Treem, Keith Bunin, Pat Healy, Marsha Norman.

I just started the first week of Season 1 - very good series...Very enjoyable storyline arcs so far, and great acting by all.

B

NY Times review:
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Patients in Therapy, Therapist in Trouble
Published: April 2, 2009
by ALESSANDRA STANLEY

People go into therapy to learn from their mistakes, then make mistakes about what they’ve learned. And if viewers have learned anything from the HBO series “In Treatment,” it’s that therapists can also get tangled in half-truths.

The show’s second season doesn’t pick up exactly where the first left off; Paul Weston, the psychotherapist played by Gabriel Byrne, has divorced and set up a practice in Brooklyn with new furnishings and a new roster of patients. But the issues he left behind seep into his fresh start: a malpractice suit on top of marital discord on top of childhood grievances.

If it is possible to find pleasure in other people’s psychic pain — and obviously it is — there is no better place for it than in the therapy sessions that begin on Sunday night. This season of “In Treatment” in particular seems uncannily suited to the times: Paul’s patients include an unfulfilled litigator at a fancy Manhattan law firm and the anxious chief executive of a scandal-ridden corporation.

When first introduced, “In Treatment” looked like an unlikely bet. The scripts were taken, nearly word for word, from a successful Israeli series, “Be’ Tipul.” Almost every scene was set in a therapy session — Paul’s with a patient, and Paul’s session with his confidant and former supervisor Gina (Dianne Wiest) — essentially a chain of two-person, one-act plays without action, sets, or pop-music cues.

Despite a few awkward cultural adjustments, the transposition from Tel Aviv to suburban Maryland worked, partly thanks to the seductive power of the therapeutic process — psychotherapy: the home game. Classic theories of repression, transference, and countertransference were artfully compressed into verbal jousts between doctor and patient. Characters’ inner workings were signaled with an ill-chosen word, an offhand gesture, or a prolonged silence. And when Paul went to Gina with his own troubles (and ethical transgressions), he left his benevolent authority behind and morphed into a typical patient — defensive, self-pitying, and blinkered. And Gina, in turn, proved to have baggage of her own.

The first season was riveting partly because it was so flattering; the viewer was the real supervisor in the room.

In many ways the second season is richer. The stories are again lifted from “Be’ Tipul,” but set in New York, the epicenter of post-Freudian civilization and its discontents. Paul was in crisis in the first season; now he’s also in legal trouble. The premiere begins, as mornings in the Big Apple so often do, with a rude awakening. Alex Prince Sr. (Glynn Turman), the father of Paul’s former patient Alex (Blair Underwood), a Navy pilot who at the end of last season crashed his plane, is at the therapist’s door to hand-deliver his revenge. The father is suing Paul for failing to alert the Navy that his patient was not yet fit to fly. Paul is shocked but invites him to come in and talk. “That’s what killed Alex in the first place,” Prince says. “Talking with you.”

Paul, dazed and distressed, hires a lawyer and finds himself in the hands of Mia (Hope Davis), a 40-something single woman who 20 years earlier had been his patient. That Mia has her own motives for grabbing Paul’s case goes without saying, but Ms. Davis is unnervingly convincing in the role and brings resonance to her character’s every word.

Paul doesn’t want to believe he is responsible for Alex’s death, or that it really was a suicide. But he has reason to feel guilty, and that remorse bleeds into his other cases as he tries to take a more interventionist role in his patients’ lives. He oversteps in his first meeting with April (Alison Pill), a fiercely independent architecture student with a problem that is literally unspeakable: she can’t describe it to Paul in words, and writes it on a scrap of paper.

John Mahoney, who played the father of a shrink for laughs on “Frasier,” is now on the couch in deadly earnest as Walter, an embattled chief executive who comes to Paul for help with panic attacks. Walter wants a quick fix to his problems and is contemptuous of anything that smacks of psychobabble, and Paul, less passive than in the past, occasionally loses patience with Walter’s resistance.

Oliver (Aaron Shaw) is an overweight teenager whose parents are getting a divorce, and their recriminations, which they air in the middle of their child’s sessions, oppress Oliver — and Paul. He hears echoes of his own broken marriage in their squabbling, which makes him all the gloomier — and combative — when he travels back to Maryland to talk to Gina.

Nobody’s perfect, and even shows that explore human imperfection have flaws. Some of the patients’ underlying problems seem too pat for a series that traffics in ambiguity and nuance, while Paul’s personal history crosses over into Lifetime movie territory. But nimble, powerful acting, and well-wrought dialogue outweigh the weaknesses.

The first season was shown for nine weeks, with one session per half-hour episode nearly every weeknight. This one unfolds in back-to-back episodes, two on Sunday and three on Monday, over seven weeks. It may seem like a daunting commitment. But the spectacle of other people unraveling moves quickly, particularly when it’s the viewer who gets to look at a watch and say, “I think our time is up.”

Tim Goodman's review:
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TV review: "In Treatment" healthier in Season 2
Tim Goodman
Friday, April 3, 2009

Consider this a therapy session. Have a seat.

At the end of January 2008, HBO began airing "In Treatment," starring Gabriel Byrne as a psychotherapist. The series was imported from Israel almost intact, given American actors and arrayed on HBO in an uncommon manner - five half-hour episodes each week, 45 total. In each episode we met a patient of Paul Weston (Byrne) until the fifth night, where Weston would see his own therapist and longtime friend, Gina Toll (Dianne Wiest). There he would talk about his own issues (a rocky marriage being one of them) and how the woes of his patients were wearing on him.

I did not like "In Treatment." And that's an understatement. I attacked its stagy, claustrophobic stasis, calling it "profoundly boring." Beyond the fact that I thought the series had little dramatic urgency - just actors talking about drama that we never saw take place - I also didn't like the actors (or patients), except for Byrne and Wiest.

I said this: " 'In Treatment' has almost no trouble making 30 minutes feel like 50. No protestations that this is art or that it's important or that there's real dramatic gold to be mined from navel-gazing introspection can change that fact."

A good line, OK?

I'm still proud of the 30-50 line - it's funnier if you've been to therapy. And I believe that HBO committed a fundamental flaw of real-world television: It took too many episodes to improve, even though the channel routinely offered up series that started to get especially compelling in the third or fourth episode, thanks in part to their complex density. (I still think if you watch for two weeks and remain unchanged in your opinion, there's a problem.)

And yet, I'm here to say that my opinion of "In Treatment" in Season 2, which begins Sunday with two episodes, has changed significantly. Before I tell you why, you should know that even if "In Treatment" wasn't much of a hit for HBO, its fans were a loyal and prickly bunch. So they watched every episode and took every chance to e-mail me about what an idiot I was and how fantastic the series became, especially in the third and fourth weeks, etc. I got e-mails about the show months after it had ended.

It's always great to see educated, mostly older viewers get as offensively passionate about a series as younger people do for, say, a Joss Whedon series. But I still thought the series was outright boring and took too long to create any actual drama.

Looking back, part of my spite may have been because HBO had begun its creative slide. After a glorious run of hits, the programming mojo was failing and revealing flaws (too many inside-the-industry shows, for example). And, inexplicably, "In Treatment" was HBO's second series about therapy, following "Tell Me You Love Me," which was also taxing to watch. But I was particularly upset about "In Treatment."

Said I: "It's boring. It's fraudulent rather than Freudian. At least the pain in 'Tell Me You Love Me' seemed honest. 'In Treatment' takes the gravitas out of actors being emotionally naked and replaces it with the empty sheen of actors trying desperately to will drama from artificial angst. At its worst, 'In Treatment' feels like an 'Oprah' show without the commercials."

So, let's just say that reasonable people can disagree, and move on, shall we? Because Season 2 is vastly better, for reasons that make a lot of sense. First, the new patients are less annoying, and the actors are very good, particularly Hope Davis and John Mahoney. The writing seems smarter. There are still hints of a stagy, forced banter, but it works overall.

Dramatic developments

Now that "Tell Me You Love Me" has been canceled, it doesn't feel as if HBO itself is in therapy. And Season 2 is able to piggyback on some drama from Season 1 and bring it into Weston's life. Plus, Weston is divorced from his wife, Kate (Michelle Forbes), and he's moved from Maryland to Brooklyn. But he can't escape his personal problems, which added grist to the end of last season and picks up well here.

While I stand by my review, based on the earlier episodes of Season 1, I'm willing to confide that Season 2 hooked me a lot quicker and I like the series a lot more now. Call it what you will - personal growth or Season 2 being less cloyingly self-conscious.

Davis plays Mia, an attorney and former patient of Weston's whose fierce personality is like an electric current on the show. Oliver (Aaron Shaw) is an 11-year-old boy internalizing the divorce of his parents. April (Alison Pill), is a 23-year-old tightly wound student with cancer (she's not nearly as annoying as Laura or Alex from Season 1, but she's the least believable character here). Walter (Mahoney) is a CEO in the headlines for all the wrong reasons (timely). It's a strong cast, and Byrne and Wiest continue to deliver incredibly mannered and minutely shaded performances.

It's quite a breakthrough. Our time is up.

LA Times review:
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"In Treatment"
by MARY McNAMARA, Television Critic
April 4, 2009

HBO's critically acclaimed and viewership-challenged psychiatric drama, returns Sunday for a second season determined to maintain the acclaim and resolve the challenges.

While the basic premise remains the same -- five weekly episodes will depict sessions with psychiatrist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) -- changes have been made, in cast, characters, and configuration (not to mention Paul's rather severe new haircut.)

Last season, each of the five half-hour episodes aired on a different day, approximating Paul's schedule; this season they are bundled, with two appearing on Sundays and three on Mondays, offering a more immersive experience that makes good dramatic sense.

While the patient du jour formula may have worked in the original Israeli version, it was no doubt a bit jarring for American viewers, unused to making a daily commitment to a single half-hour show.

Mercifully, form definitely follows function here and the stories that fill each episode, however you watch them, are even better than they were last season and that's saying something.

Paul and his wife have separated, and he has moved to an office/apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he learns, as the first episode opens, that there is no such thing as closure. Last season ended with the death of Alex (Blair Underwood), a troubled fighter pilot who ended his therapy to return to the air where he subsequently crashed. This season opens with Alex's father informing Paul that he is suing him for not preventing the tragedy.

The malpractice case, and its emotional impact on Paul, overarches the narratives of a host of new characters and situations. They include Mia (Hope Davis), a former patient who is single, over 40, and not happy about either; April (Alison Pill), a young woman who is ignoring her recent diagnosis of lymphoma; Oliver (Aaron Shaw), a boy miserably at the center of his parents' divorce; and Walter (John Mahoney), an embattled chief executive with sleep issues. Rounding out each bundle is Paul's session with his therapist/former mentor, Gina (Dianne Wiest).

It is, to put it bluntly, a cast to die for. Each story line is well-drawn and compelling and each subtly represents a thread of Paul's own issues that come together in Gina's office even more effectively, if a bit more sentimentally, than they did last season.

While many of Paul's patients from last season seemed, strangely, much more concerned with him than with their own issues, this round is much more believably self-absorbed. Oh, they may rail against Paul's methods, but they at least acknowledge that they are in therapy of their own free will, which leaves the writers and the actors free to explore issues that are more wide-flung and resonant.

Mia's love/hate relationship with men her own age, April's apparent belief that if she denies her disease it will disappear, Oliver's utter powerlessness to save his family, and even Walter's issues of fear and control transcend the narrative specifics and speak to the reason people go into therapy in the first place.

It also doesn't hurt that the performances are uniformly terrific. Mahoney, in particular, is mesmerizing to watch, perhaps because it's been a long time since we've seen a man of his age given material that meets his extraordinary range and talent. Although the episodes between Paul and Gina remain the perfect cap to the group, this time around all the pairings achieve the same high standard.

Byrne and Wiest, who won an Emmy for her season one performance, seem to move even more easily with their characters, as if use has stretched them a little, giving the actors a bit more room to breathe. Together they make the contrast between the comfort we offer others and the comfort we allow ourselves much more marked and haunting.

With his crookedly handsome face and sad, sad eyes, Byrne's Paul is obviously a man who has too long been giving what he has not gotten. "I hate my life," he says to Gina in one early episode. "It's broken. Every day, it hurts . . . OK, I have you. But you can't give me what I need."

Of course she can't, of course she won't, but the point of being "In Treatment" is that at some point the patient will give voice to precisely what that need is often enough or loudly enough that he or she will finally hear it.

I loved season 1, can't wait for season 2.

Episode Title: "Mia -- Week One"

Synopsis: A surprise subpoena brings Paul back into the life of a former patient and current malpractice lawyer named Mia.

Guest Star: Glynn Turman
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Episode Title: "April -- Week One"

Synopsis: Paul is alarmed to learn that his new patient April, an architecture student, harbors a life-threatening secret she refuses to share with her parents.
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Episode Title: "Oliver -- Week One"

Synopsis: A conflicted sixth grader named Oliver is brought to Paul by his parents Bess and Luke, who are getting a divorce.
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Episode Title: "Walter -- Week One"

Synopsis: A high-powered CEO with anxiety issues turns to Paul for therapy at the encouragement of his wife.
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Episode Title: "Gina -- Week One"

Synopsis: Paul resumes his Friday sessions with Gina, who agrees to give a deposition in the lawsuit against him while also helping him through the new changes in his life.
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Discuss.

I so cant wait for this

I loved the first two episodes!! I thought Alison Pill was great! Really.

Hope Davis and Alison Pill made strong first impressions, Alison Pill especially. She had this Lauren Ambrose vibe that was so captivating to watch. Glynn Turman made the most of his brief screentime and nailed it too.

I won't start watching this season right way because I don't have enough time (and because, considering what happened last year, I will always want to know what happens in the next episode, so I want to have a large number of episodes available to watch one after another), but I'm thrilled to see that Glynn Turman's back! Can he come back as an Emmy nominee this year?

Also, do you know if anybody else from season 1 will be back? I would love to see Melissa George back, at least, for one episode. I wouldn't mind to see Paul's family too, especially Michelle Forbes. Anyone knows if this can happen?

Great start to the season with 2 terrific episodes. Byrne is strong as always, Turman shows us why he won that guest Emmy last year(and deservedly so) with his brief scene, and Hope Davis and particularly Alison Pill, can be real contenders in the supporting actress category.

This show is so stripped down, if you aren't a good actor, you won't pull it off. The material is superbly written and all of the actors just pull it off so well. It is a bit of an investment, 5 episodes in 2 nights, but well worth it. I didn't watch season 1 when it aired, I waited until it was over to watch the almost 40 episodes in a week. Addicting to say the least.

John Mahoney was everything I thought he'd be and more. No "Frasier" redux here. Goodness.

I'm confused about a detail from Season 1. Could someone explain the backstory between Gina and Paul? They have mentioned Charlie and some folks at the Institute, but it's a little confusing for me. Who is Charlie? What is their past?

All I do know is that she was his mentor and he was up for a promotion and she wrote letter saying she didn't think he was fit for the promotion. That part I get. What is the rest?

Thanks!

Week 1 recap:

This looks like a strong set of new patients this season. I still miss Melissa George, Embeth Davidtz, Mia Wasikowska, and especially Blair Underwood, but these new cases are instantly compelling, and already they're doing a lot to inform on Paul current life (divorce, malpractice suit, estrangement from kids, etc.) and past life (death of a parent, lost loves, doubt over patient care, etc.). Gabriel Byrne carries all of these episodes wonderfully. He doesn't get enough credit for that, and hopefully he'll be Emmy-nominated again this year. I'm instantly pulled into April and Walter's cases. Alison Pill is really on the verge of something great soon. I'm expecting her to be an Oscar nominee one of these days. John Mahoney lived up to the early praise and then some with Walter. He already has a tape submission, and this is just the beginning of the season. Just like with Bryan Cranston with "Breaking Bad" where a past notion of an actor is shattered once making the comedy to drama leap, John Mahoney has done the same thing here with "In Treatment." The scenes where he was talking about his daughter were brilliant. Mia's episode is interesting, but from next week, it looks like her storyline has the potential to be sort of whiny, or she'll be an excessively needy character that plays into Paul's past somehow with Kate. Hope Davis was strong, though I almost would rather have seen her just be Paul's attorney than his patient again. Glynn Turman blew the roof out of his one scene, and though it's probably not enough to get him nominated again, it should be. Not sure I'm going for Oliver's sessions yet, mainly b/c of his bickering parents being in the way. I hope they get back to the one-on-one's with Paul and Oliver soon, b/c that was where the great potential was. Aaron Shaw could be another young breakthrough this season too. Gina's session was more open and less confrontational than they usually are, and Dianne Wiest has such a strong presence matched up with Gabriel Byrne's. Their dialogue meandered and wasn't as focused as it should have been, but I do like that Paul's going back into therapy with Gina again. The train-ride scene opener with the fat guy was funny. "I'm in sales." Solid opening week.

Grade for "Mia -- Week One": B
Grade for "April -- Week One": A-
Grade for "Oliver -- Week One": B-
Grade for "Walter -- Week One": A-
Grade for "Gina -- Week One": B

I definitely miss Melissa George on this show.

quote:

Originally posted by NativeNYer:
I'm confused about a detail from Season 1. Could someone explain the backstory between Gina and Paul? They have mentioned Charlie and some folks at the Institute, but it's a little confusing for me. Who is Charlie? What is their past?

All I do know is that she was his mentor and he was up for a promotion and she wrote letter saying she didn't think he was fit for the promotion. That part I get. What is the rest?

Thanks!

There are two men that were really important to Gina in the past: Charlie and David (I think that's his name). One of them was her husband and the other one was a really close friend of hers that was actually the love of her life. Unfortunately, I can't remember right now who is who: it's been a while since I watched Season 1... But, in the end, she decided to stay with her husband. Both Charlie and David are dead now.

I hope I'm not giving you any wrong information, but I think that's it. I'm just not sure who was the husband and who was the "special friend".

Episode Title: "Mia -- Week Two"

Synopsis: In her first session, Mia admits to wanting to impress Paul by flaunting her job and relationship with a married co-worker.
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Episode Title: "April -- Week Two"

Synopsis: April details her detachment from a former boyfriend and his current partner, both of whom are concerned about her current illness.
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Episode Title: "Oliver -- Week Two"

Synopsis: Fearing his behavior has led to his parents' estrangement, Oliver outlines the difficulty he's having living between two homes.
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Episode Title: "Walter -- Week Two"

Synopsis: Paul links Walter's panic attacks to a childhood tragedy.
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Episode Title: "Gina: Week Two"

Synopsis: Paul looks to fill in memory gaps about his mother's attempted suicide by reconnecting with a childhood crush.
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Discuss.

Does anyone else find it interesting that the patients this year are very similar to the ones last year? Is that intentional? Because Mia reminds me a lot of both Amy and Laura with the abortion situation and the career woman who might be in love with Paul.

April is a lot like Sophie in that she's young and very set in her ways. They both show signs of suicide and have huge anger issues, but they both really like Paul as a confidant.

Oliver and Company are in the same situation Jake and Amy were in. The fighting over their overweight kid. Divorce looming.

Walter reminds me a lot of Alex. The arrogance, the belief that therapy doesn't actually help anything, walking the line between life and death.

And of course, Gina is Gina. Does anyone know if this was intentional or not?