Web of pain

In 2004, one in four Americans had received therapy treatment in the last two years. About the same number of adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. And anti-depression use is on the rise. Hell, someone can even get prescription drugs for an ailment called “restless leg syndrome.”

People are looking for fast cures for whatever ails them, in growing numbers, and if one pill doesn’t work, the next one might, at least according to your doctor and his free samples and lunches from pharmaceutical companies. Mental health cures seem to be as ubiquitous as Atkins salad wraps were five years ago. Tom Cruise thinks it’s all bullshit, and as much as we’d hate to admit a scientologist is right, he might be partially on to something. He’s still Tom Cruise, though.

The obsessions from the real world have been bleeding onto the fictional world of TV. First, there are the reality shows. Both Celebrity Rehab and Intervention are highly emotional shows that cover mostly interminably fucked patients. These people probably can’t be cured by reality TV, just like it’s doubtful Donahue saved any marriages, but it sure is entertaining to watch them try.

What do the above shows have in common? The problems of the “patients” (or in Donahue’s case, guests) are unavoidably linked to the shows and their ratings. Which begs the question: How can these shows offer solutions when personal destruction is their greatest draw? This might be one for the doctors and pharmaceutical companies also.

Which brings us to one of HBO’s newest series, In Treatment. The half-hour drama, running five nights a week, matches the above reality shows in emotional intensity, but also offers the ingenuity people have come to expect from HBO. The show is an intricate web of patient-therapist relations, while staying in the confines of one office.

Paul Weston is a successful psychotherapist, with a wife, kids and an at-home practice. Each day of the week, Paul sees a patient. On Mondays we see Laura, a 30-something who is in love with Paul. Tuesdays it is Alex, a Navy fighter pilot who feels no remorse for bombing a school in Iraq. The 16-year-old Sophie comes to Paul’s office on Wednesdays. She recently got into a biking accident. The insurance companies think it was an attempt at suicide, so she needs a psychiatric evaluation. On Thursdays Jake and Amy come by for couples therapy.

And on Fridays Paul doesn’t receive any patients. Instead, he becomes a patient himself when he goes to visit longtime colleague Gina. In these sessions we see that Paul’s problems are just as grandiose as those of his patients: His wife is cheating on him, his relationship with his daughter is flimsy, and he’s finding his patients unbearable.

Surprisingly, we see that the shrink lacks the same self-awareness of his own patients, and as the show progresses, Paul’s problems become more and more linked to his work.

Question: Can a therapist administer therapy to the people who have become his own topic of discussion in his therapy sessions? The best part about In Treatment is that it asks this question with all the self-awareness lacking in its basic-cable reality counterparts.

In TreatmentMonday to Friday8:30 p.m. HBO