Getting It Right - Page 7


Paul comes up against his own hard and unyielding realities in the same way. Gabriel Byrne's hewn face, its paleness a chiaroscuro against the darkness of the office walls, is the center, the anchor and harbor, of the actions set in motion around his character. All the twists and folds of what moves around Paul are registered in his face and in the movement of his hands, whether they gesture outward or knit together "in steepled comity," as a friend put it. As we watch his face and gestures, we come to understand how these shoving, pulsing lives push on the Paul character, and quicken or forbear his responding. Well, I thought, the writers got that right.

To this extent In Treatment approaches the heart of what it is to be a psychotherapist. As we register Paul's empathic nod or smile or gesture, session after session, we develop a gathering sense of what all this responsiveness and/or forbearance costs. The picture builds up, the palimpsest of what this patient or that patient writes and overwrites onto the pulpy layers of Paul's motives and desires. He's caught in the thick of it, this business of being human—the insufferable risk of making one's way in a world perceived imperfectly, with a self perceived imperfectly in a dark mirror.

The Therapist as Oedipus

In one scene, Jake and Amy, the married couple, are fighting again in Paul's office, when Amy abruptly rises and rushes into the bathroom. After one of the few jumps in the continuous time of each 30-minute show, we next see Paul alone in his office, looking with dismay at his sofa. It seems Amy has had a miscarriage, the couple has rushed off to a hospital, and there's blood on the sofa.

Paul bellows for Kate to come help, and as she ministers cleaning solution to the besmirched sofa, the two fall into their own argument, until Kate blurts out that she's having an affair. She's tough and unyielding; Paul's retaliatory entreaties don't engage her. He asks her to leave, but now there's movement outside the French doors: someone has arrived.

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