'In Treatment' Greenlit for Season Three

Remember several months ago when those who have a particular affinity for the insightful, and, at times emotionally sharp HBO therapy drama In Treatment were sending bars of Irish Spring soap to lobby HBO execs to renew the show with its Irish star, Gabriel Byrne, in the leading role as Dr. Paul Weston?

Don't know if it was the strong scent of the soap or not, but HBO recently announced that In Treatment will have a third season. Three cheers for intelligent dramas. According to Reuters, the show will start shooting early next year in New York.

Image credit: HBO.

'In Treatment' in Danger of Being Canceled?

What the heck is wrong with the folks at HBO?

In the past few years they've lost The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Six Feet Under. They've attempted to buck up their roster of shows with the fabulous Big Love (one of the most unique shows on TV right now) and True Blood (although I don't do vampire). But Curb Your Enthusiasm has been AWOL for eons and Entourage has been wildly uneven, though I still tune in like a bad habit.

HBO's once cutting-edge programming is facing stiff competition. On FX in the form of the pitch-black Rescue Me. On Showtime in the form of the brand-spankin' new Edie Falco-driven Nurse Jackie and Toni Collette's United States of Tara, along with other shows such as Dexter, Weeds and Californication. HBO famously took a pass on the award-winning buzzy Mad Men when Sopranos writer Matthew Weiner pitched it to the premium channel. Now Don Draper is seen on AMC, not HBO.

And here HBO has this wonderfully complex, emotionally wrought drama, In Treatment, for which its lead actor, Gabriel Byrne, has won a Golden Globe for his role, which has also been lauded by TV critics. It just completed its second wonderful season and, in the wake of unimpressive ratings (about 1.6 million on average, Broadcasting & Cable reports), HBO execs have placed the therapy drama on the bubble. The announcement of whether the show will continue for a third season will be made this week.

Fans of In Treatment -- perhaps learning from Medium's experience (an NBC exec said there hadn't been any outward expression of love for the program, so it was axed, only to have CBS snap it up) -- aren't taking the precarious situation that faces the fictional Dr. Paul Weston sitting down. According to Newsday, fans are encouraging fellow In Treatment supporters to send boxes of Irish Spring soap (seriously) to HBO's HQ. Why soap? Because Byrne's Irish, I guess. Folks who enjoyed NBC's Lipstick Jungle recently tried to save the Brooke Shields show from cancellation by sending tubes of lipstick to NBC, but didn't succeed. (Television Without Pity had a good piece about fan campaigns to save shows, some which worked, some which didn't.)

As far as In Treatment goes, HBO execs would be foolish to let the exquisitely executed, intelligent drama go, especially with Byrne -- and several of the other supporting castmates from this season -- poised for near-certain Emmy nominations. I thought HBO was supposed to be just the right home for that kind of show. Isn't that why I subscribe to it?

Image credit: HBO.

'Big Love' Finale: Lots o' Surprises

Watched the Big Love finale on Sunday night and was really surprised by how UNpredictable it was. Normally I find season premieres and finales to be huge let-downs. They're so built up, the expectations for the ratings so high, that they can't help but disappoint. (Lost being an exception to that rule.)

Here's how I figured the finale would go:

Nicki would team up with Alby to wage war against Roman and Adaleen, to keep them off the compound and assume power for themselves. (There's always been a weird vibe between the siblings that could've made for good TV.) I figured that Bill's niece would be liberated from the barbaric Greens on the first attempt but that Roman would continue to evade the long arm of the law. I thought Barb had written off Nicki and that we'd be seeing a season of the polygamist-family-gets-divorced. Or quasi-divorced. A third divorced?

Finale plot turns that I didn't anticipate:

-- Nicki brought her 14-year-old daughter Cara Lynn -- born during Nicki's first, forced underaged marriage to the man who seems to be doing cameos everywhere on TV lately (including Heroes) -- back to the Henricksons'. With Barb's blessing. I get that Barb would want to save Cara Lynn from being placed into the "Joy Book," being forced to give up her schooling and be placed into a marriage, but to have her existence suddenly wipe Nicki's odious slate clean? What gives? Barb has put up with a great deal since entering into polygamy seven years ago, most recently losing her church membership, and Nicki's belligerent betrayal seemed like a deal breaker.

-- I did not expect that Margene would become an instant QVC star. How classic Margene was the scene where she went on air while holding her baby because she couldn't get a sitter? I had imagined that she'd be having jewelry parties a la Silpada or something along those lines. However while everyone else in the Henrickson clan seems to have come unhinged (Barb suggesting she and Bill "rent a womb"?), Margene, usually perceived as the flake, has been grounded and forward-looking since her mom died mid-way through the season. Margene has forged ahead, asserted herself and taken care of business, without asking for permission. It was quite the reversal to see Bill freak out in the finale after he learned she'd sold her car in order to buy clothing, while she remained calm, confidence unshaken. (Had it been Nicki, Nicki would've just charged everything, instead of raising the money her purchases.)

-- Poor, confused, wide-eyed Sarah proposed to Scott? I figured she'd run off with him and live in a city someplace and become hipsters while she went to college. She's been longing to break out on her own and get away from what she saw as her family's suffocating lifestyle, that having her take a pass on college and remain in the Henrickson home seems almost unbelievable. To have her get married at 18? Sounds like Juniper Creek.

-- Speaking of suffocating . . . Joey "smothered" Roman with a pillow, though the chances that Roman is actually dead are extremely low. Roman's too delicious of a rival for the Henricksons for the show's writers to kill off. Without him, we wouldn't have had such a creepy scene like the one where Roman kissed Bill in the finale. Betcha didn't see that one coming. And besides, last season Roman was mortally wounded. This seemed like a redux.

-- Bill declared himself a prophet, okay, he didn't use the word "prophet," but he declared himself the head of his own church. This, to me, proved that the character has spiraled far away from the guy he was in the Big Love pilot, and not for the better. At the beginning of the show, Bill was portrayed as a decent, responsible businessman who just so happened to be a polygamist, who just so happened to have added the family babysitter, 25 years his junior, to his marriage. Since then, Bill's become an almost power-mad, manic presence, darting from place to place, putting out fires and trying to fix things without even asking others what they think. Bill's no longer the nice guy next door with three wives. He's a new, 21st century, suburbanized Roman, only without a Joy Book, prairie-like duds, underaged wives and the lingering threat of violence hovering over anyone who doesn't follow his will . . . yet.

Big Love fans, what was your take on the finale? On the Church of Bill?

Image credit: HBO.

'Big Love' Stirs Controversy with Mormon Temple Scene

The writers and creator of Big Love -- the HBO drama about a Mormon, polygamist family in Utah -- knew they weren't going to win any friends among followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when they started airing the critically acclaimed show.

But now word has gotten out that the season finale will include a dramatization of a sacred Mormon ceremony which is supposed to only be seen by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

The show's staff said they researched the ceremony and consulted former Mormons for accuracy, but church members are upset by what they see as a violation, the Associated Press reported. In a statement, church leaders said, "Certainly church members are offended when their most sacred practices are misrepresented or presented without context or understanding."
HBO responded to the controversy by apologizing and saying: "In approaching the dramatization of the endowment ceremony, we knew we had a responsibility to be completely accurate and to show the ceremony in the proper context and with respect. We therefore took great pains to depict the ceremony with the dignity and reverence it is due."

Regardless of the hullabaloo over the temple scene (or scenes, I'm not sure it's one or more), Big Love is down to only two more episodes. And they're shaping up to be intense. The last one, where Nicki was finally unmasked as the manipulating liar she's been -- criminally undermining her father's prosecution by assuming a fake identity (Margene's) to work in the prosecutor's office and then having an emotional dalliance (unconsummated) with the prosecutor -- was one of the strongest episodes of the season, that and the road trip episode.

Any predictions for the last two episodes, other than controversy?

Image credit: HBO.

'Big Love' Prepares for Season Three

While I've been eagerly awaiting the commencement of the new season of Lost, I've also been anticipating the start of the new season of Big Love, whose premiere date was pushed back in the wake of the writers' strike.

The polygamist HBO drama has a weird effect on me. I'm simultaneously drawn to and repulsed by it. I'm oftentimes left wondering what it would be like to have a "sister-wife" with whom I could pal around, but that feeling is quickly followed by the weirdness of "sharing" a spouse and having my power and influence in my family ranked in accordance with when I "married" my husband as compared to other wives. Ick.

That conflict aside, I've become a big fan of Big Love, and, in particular, of Jeanne Tripplehorn's character Barb Henrickson as the powerful "first" wife who agreed to turn her monogamous marriage into a polygamist one after she had a near fatal encounter with cancer which left her unable to have any more children.

Seven new Big Love videos have recently been added to the HBO web site, including one that provided a fictionalized version of the Texas polygamist raids which occurred earlier this year. From the look and the mood of the season three promo, it promises to be a creepy season. (Link to the season promo here.)

What Do You Get for a 232-Year Anniversary?

I know that the first anniversary is paper. The 25th anniversary is silver. The 50th gold. But what about the 232nd? Friday will mark the 232nd anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence . . . provided I did my grade school math correctly. Given the recent attention paid to the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries John Adams (great series, though not for young kids, pretty brutal tar and feathering scene, among others) people's interest in all things Revolutionary have been rekindled. (Programming note: HBO is running a marathon of the Adams series all day on July 4.)

I live in Massachusetts, therefore my view of the Revolutionary War may be skewed because, as one might expect, the Colonial era gets lots of play here. We have, count 'em, not one, but two tricornered hats in our house, including one that my husband bought our boys when they got up in the wee hours of the morning this spring to go to Lexington to see the reenactment of the battle on the Lexington green, preceded by Paul Revere's famous ride, on Patriots Day, a day off for public employees in Massachusetts. (My daughter and I slept late and watched the early Boston Red Sox game on TV.)

But what gets lost during the modern American celebration of July 4 -- particularly this year because it falls on a Friday, which means it'll be a three-day weekend filled with barbecue bonanzas across the fruited plain -- is the actual document whose approval we're commemorating. Now I'm the first to admit that I'm a tad bit of a history/politics geek who really admires documents like the Declaration of Independence and am fond of reading it aloud to my three kids when it's published in the Boston Globe each year . . . even if the kids do lose interest by the second paragraph.

However this year is an election year, some consider it an historic election year. We have the summer Olympics coming up soon. And, lest we forget, we have active duty troops fighting and dying on behalf of our nation in multiple fronts overseas. So why not -- just for a moment before your barbecue, ballgame, fireworks or celebratory beverage(s) of your choice -- recall the reason for the day:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

There endeth the history lesson. Go forth (no pun intended) and glory in your American freedoms and be thankful we don't live in a country where armed militias come to your house and force you at gunpoint to go and vote for someone who you do not support under penalty of injury or death, as happened in another corner of the globe just a few days ago. Voting in America, circa 2008, is a walk in the park by comparison.

Image credit: History Channel.