Showing posts with label Dianne Wiest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dianne Wiest. Show all posts

Monday, July 19, 2010

HBO Teases with 'In Treatment' Promo



The new promo from HBO for the third season of the intimate talk therapy drama In Treatment gives us no insight into what the new season may bring, other than a tan sofa with four red toss pillows artfully perched on either side.

The third season of the series, filming now, is supposed to star not only the wonderful Gabriel Byrne as the main character, Dr. Paul Weston, but also Amy Ryan (from The Office) who'll be Paul's therapist, replacing Dianne Wiest who won an Emmy for her role as Paul’s therapist Gina. Additionally, Debra Winger will be one of Paul’s patients.

No formal air date has been announced.

Monday, May 4, 2009

'In Treatment:' Incredibly Insightful, Incredibly Depressing


I dedicated my Pop Culture & Politics column this week to In Treatment and how, at the root of all the HBO show's patients' problems seems to be flawed parenting, which, as the parent of three young kids, is frightening.

But the drama -- which gives you half-hour glimpses into the therapy sessions of five patients (including the therapist, Paul Weston, himself) -- does more than make me hope that my flawed child-rearing idiosyncrasies aren't going to send my kids to a therapists' sofa in a decade or two. It makes you assess and think about your own life and wonder, "Am I doing THAT? Do I respond to situations like this patient?"

There's a college-aged cancer patient who won't take care of herself and won't tell her family because she doesn't want to burden them, a disgraced CEO with panic attacks and childhood guilt, a couple that's divorcing that has a suffering son who thinks he's responsible for the family's break-up and a fortysomething attorney who's angry that she never got married and had children.

Then there's the therapist, played by the immensely talented, Emmy winning Gabriel Byrne, who lives a lonely life in Brooklyn, while his children and his ex-wife live in Maryland. His oftentimes combative sessions with his therapist, Gina (Dianne Wiest) are, by far, the ones to which I look forward the most each week.

While HBO may have cornered the market on death with its provocative Six Feet Under, and put its stamp on the life of thirtysomething single gals in NYC with Sex and the City, I think the network can now claim the therapy arena as well. In Treatment makes the therapy sessions on other shows look positively amateurish by comparison.

Image credit: HBO.