The Wall Street Journal-20080125-WEEKEND JOURNAL- Entertainment - Culture -- Review - Television- Secrets and Lies
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WEEKEND JOURNAL; Entertainment & Culture -- Review / Television: Secrets and Lies
The quality of HBO's astonishing, five-nights-a-week drama series "In Treatment" (begins Monday, 9:30-10 p.m. EST) announces itself early. Its capacity to maintain an unyielding grip on your attention becomes similarly evident fast, as does one's strong sense that that grip isn't going to weaken anytime soon. It doesn't. The drama, about a highly principled, successful psychotherapist, played by Gabriel Byrne in the role of his life, and five of his patients -- not to mention the therapist's own therapist, portrayed by Dianne Wiest -- runs for nine weeks.
It is odd that the network that has tried long, hard and haplessly to come up with anything remotely equal to the power and creativity of its blood-drenched "Sopranos" saga has finally succeeded in a series entirely shrouded in the quiet of a therapist's office, where the only threats come from words, revelations, the assaultive force of unwelcome truths. They are an arsenal of terrible power as deployed in the battles waged hour after hour in the intimacy of the consulting room -- the arsenal that drives so much of this series that is, in its invention and artistry (if not in its nonlavish production values), a worthy successor to "The Sopranos."
The first week's episodes introduce, in succession, each of the five patients: Laura (Melissa George), an anesthesiologist and gorgeous, needful 30-year-old; Alex, a Navy pilot with bad wartime memories and an excess of high standards, a neurotic aggressor portrayed so effectively (by Blair Underwood) you're hoping, much of the time, that somebody will punch him out -- in "The Sopranos," he'd have been whacked; Sophie (Mia Wasikowska), age 16, a talented gymnast dripping with acid charm -- and anguish; and, finally, Jake (Josh Charles) and wife Amy (Embeth Davidtz), a couple in their 30s so bitterly at odds that one feels their rage sizzling up from their respective ends of the couch.
No wonder, at the end of a week with such patients, the therapist, Paul Weston, needs Gina, a psychologist of his own. In Ms. Wiest's masterly performance, this soft, semimaternal role can, at any minute, take on a menacing brilliance. A mother figure but not, Gina is at once the sensitive protector, listener, former master -- she was Paul's supervisor in his training days -- and upholder of standards. She picks up every nuance in Paul's reports on his relationship with his wife -- which is not the best -- and with his patients, which is in at least one case nearly as complicated as that with his wife.
To watch any part of the series, not least these sessions with Gina, is to enjoy the luxury of extended scenes and encounters where everything said and everything done has its reaction and its counter- reaction, played out before us, on and on. It's a luxury rarely found in a medium where brevity is king. Where the punchline scene prevails and dramatic encounters are built to end in one final high moment -- splat -- and on to the next scene. Never mind that when some husband or wife finally throws the pan of lasagna at the wall it would be interesting to know what actually happened next.
"Interesting" is, in fact, the word to describe the pull of the first half hour or so of the series. It feels interesting in the way a very good movie does -- engaging, layered in unexpected ways -- though as it goes on it becomes something deeper: a work with an ever stronger feel of the unique about it. The drama keeps a steady, hot light on the patients -- characters who bear, remarkably enough, no resemblance to the sorts of stock figures derived from therapy tales -- and a steadier, much hotter one on Paul, the therapist. What kind of man he is remains for a while a mystery, undone in enticingly slow dribs and drabs. What sort of therapist, we know at once -- one informed by conscience and the capacity to feel for, and fear for, his patients. They don't exactly return the concern, not surprisingly. Paul's clients -- a hot-tempered lot -- have a need for him that comes wrapped in all sorts of hostility and challenges to which he isn't altogether invulnerable.
The result is a struggle centered on the question of who knows what: The therapist hears all, the clients tell all -- sometimes, innocently, more than Paul can bear to learn. Mr. Byrne's expressions, as he listens, can be heartbreaking. But there's not too much of that. This series' strength is in its steely perceptiveness, and its creators seem to know that. Its drama lies in the battle of wits between therapist and patient -- and the patients give as good as they get in their combative way. The series -- executive produced by Rodrigo Garcia -- is based on a highly popular Israeli series co- created by Hagai Levi, also co-executive producer of the HBO show. The scripts are the work of several writers, including Mr. Garcia. It should be said of the writing, finally, that it's remarkably -- indeed, abnormally -- low in predictable dialogue. A rare specimen, all right, and a golden one.
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Viewers desperately seeking entertainment on the days without presidential primaries will have no trouble finding distraction in the pleasures of "In Treatment" -- but otherwise the opportunities are narrow in that department these days. They don't get narrower than in the prospect provided by "Eli Stone," a new ABC series beginning Thursday, 10-11 p.m. EST. Eli (Jonny Lee Miller) is a youngish San Francisco lawyer and certified good guy, as evidenced from the outset by his indication that he has renounced shameful values, like a taste for Armani suits and ambition. Also by his ringing denunciation of law firms like his own, given to defending rich corporations. Soon -- all too soon -- we learn that Eli is afflicted with auditory delusions, hears music nobody else does. There are other hallucinations, all of which lead him to the realization that he is destined to do good in the world. Eli is also television's latest top-nerd -- ABC's answer to the much superior Chuck, hero of NBC's show of that name.
We have here another testament to the low spirits that inform television writing these days, rendering writers unwilling to risk creating flesh-and-blood characters living on this Earth unless they come with enhancements like brain abnormalities, hallucinations, or deadly prophetic vision. The main deadly force in "Eli Stone" is its scripts, which are ever so sprightly in tone, ever so dumb in essence. In episode one, Eli files a civil suit on behalf of clients who claim their child's autism was caused by a flu shot (the echo of a now- discredited real-life belief of parents of autistic children and others who refuse to have their children vaccinated). In episode two, Eli delivers streams of prattle about the evils of the pesticide that caused his client, an immigrant farm worker, to become sterile. Two episodes of "Eli Stone" -- itself no small exercise in sterility -- should be quite enough for anyone.
