In Treatment
TV REVIEW
Drama: HBO (24 episodes; 16 reviewed); May 23
Starring: Uzo Aduba, Anthony Ramos, John Benjamin Hickey, Quintessa Swindell
“In Treatment” has always felt a bit like work.
The HBO series about therapy drops multiple episodes per week. It features chunky, occasionally hard-to-swallow language. And it asks the viewer to do something complicated — extrapolate nuanced truths about doctors from their interactions with their patients— with some very simple tools. Uzo Aduba’s Dr. Brooke Lawrence sees three people, each broadly drawn personality types built around fairly rudimentary “twists.”
And yet there’s something fundamentally satisfying about the series. “In Treatment,” in its fourth season, does not hit the heights of insight into human nature for which it aims; it does not justify airing four episodes a week. But it makes the case for its own existence thanks in substantial part to the performance of Aduba, who is proving to be one of the essential actors of the st century. For the first time in a TV lead role after Emmy wins for “Orange Is the New Black” and “Mrs. America,” Aduba makes “In Treatment” a success by force of will.
Brooke has various unresolved relationships — including with a boyfriend (Joel Kinnaman) and, enigmatically, with Gabriel Byrne’s character from previous seasons. And the increasing incursion of her life into her work is welcome for us at home, as the therapy she conducts varies in interest. A character played by John Benjamin Hickey seems like an attempt to cram in every hot-button issue — he’s a techworld white-collar criminal with complicated views on race and gender who considers himself a victim of cancel culture. Hickey does his best, but he’s playing a provocation, not a person. More carefully written are episodes about Anthony Ramos’ home health aide character, who either is exhibiting drug-seeking behavior or is caught in the mental health system. Somewhere in between lies the teenager played by Quintessa Swindell, escaping the pressures of school and home into a life of fantasy.
Plenty of shows have commented on the COVID era, but “In Treatment” feels oddly built for it — it seems reactive to a period of intense trauma in a way that resolves some of the purposelessness of its earlier seasons. All of the concerns of this moment appear to encroach at once, hence the Hickey character; the novelty of life under pandemic conditions has made conversation challenging, hence the flat explanations of how and why in-person therapy is able to happen in Brooke’s home.
That’s the most intriguing detail in this flawed, ultimately worthwhile series: That Brooke is working out of her home because she is unready to face the outside. Her enclave, an architectural marvel bathed in golden Los Angeles light, is the ultimate safe space — and each episode she lets the world, with all its possibilities and perils, come in. In the end, trapped and confronted by problems that remind her of her own struggle, Brooke cannot escape herself.
CREDITS: Executive producers: Jennifer Schuur, Joshua Allen, Stephen Levinson, Mark Wahlberg, Melissa Bernstein, Hagai Levi. 30 MIN. Cast: Uzo Aduba, Anthony Ramos, Liza Colón-zayas, John Benjamin Hickey, Quintessa Swindell, Joel Kinnaman