Highly Overrated But Still Good

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

I missed this one back when it came out but am glad I am able to watch the three seasons available on HBO On Demand. I love Gabriel Byrne, and Diane Wiest was the best. Some reviewers did not care for Byrne's character, but I see Paul Weston as just another flawed human being like his patients which is realistic. I don't think you're supposed to like everything about him, especially since his patients' problems and tantrums bring out his worst parts. I think these negative reviewers must have some very unrealistic expectations of a therapist character.In response to those who take a dim view of psychotherapy (I do), the show does question throughout the efficacy of the "talking cure" through the prisms of Paul's perspective and the eyes of his patients. He even gets sued by Alex's father who believes Paul and his services are completely responsible for his son's death and lawyers up to prove his point and take his revenge. Paul himself seriously doubts whether he has really helped his patients and analyzes these feelings in his own therapy with Gina.Dianne Wiest is better in this series than she has ever been in her long acting career. She no longer portrays the winsome doormat that she has generally portrayed in past roles. I am glad this series gave her an opportunity to show what she's really capable of as an actress. In Treatment isn't everyone's cup of tea, I don't think. The intensity alone makes the series difficult to binge-watch in the traditional sense. I constantly have to take a break from these sessions and characters.. These characters are not people who are any more disturbed than any other "normal" people. I believe nearly everyone of us eventually comes to a point where his or her circumstances and the consequences of dysfunctional, immature behavior render us helpless and ineffective, forcing us to suffer through emotional crises and the need to mature and modify our game. Sometimes that requires the need to engage in therapy to at least weather the crises.Like therapy itself, I don't think this series is to be "enjoyed" like standard, mindless entertainment. The writing seems intended to provoke similar questions in the viewer about his own life and behavior. That's rarely an enjoyable experience. Perhaps the negative reviewers are reacting to their nest being disturbed by the troubling questions brought up by this series.

Read about how it was merely doctor patient conversations and stifled a yawn. About 2 minutes into the first episode and was hopelessly hooked.Doubt the portrayal is entirely realistic but don't care. It is gripping and moving. Immersive and addictive. No matter how many episodes passed, still couldn't wait to see what happened next.Have always liked Gabriel Byrne and he brings to life this flawed man trying to display an air of imperviousness. Deeply affected by his patients yet struggling to keep his distance at all times. Inevitably his reserve seeps into his personal life, alienating his family. As an actor he has to depict a wide range of emotions, all the time bound by the chair he sits in and the patient/character he speaks too. Truly a sight to behold. He is helped in no small part by the supporting cast who more than hold their own.In the age of transformers and avatar this is a master class in storytelling and drama. If you are debating seeing this, don't.Wish them well.Thank you.

Guess that season one of "In Treatment" was just an appetizer because season 2 is really hauling out the entrees in a big way. This is Theater with a capital "T". Thoroughly dependent on writing and character development, "Treatment" is delivering the goods week after week. We've already come to expect this performance level from Gabriel Byrne, Hope Davis, Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney but, like the Who said, "The Kids Are Alright". Aaron Shaw and the brilliant Alison Pill are really lighting up the screen this year. HBO has managed to score once again. Almost obviates the need for Broadway (and B'way ticket prices) when you can get this kind of thoughtful writing and acting in the comfort of your own living room.

In Treatment has been a gutsy move by HBO. In the world of television production, where the need to present program content in a hurry, and the rule of thumb that a hurried pace is a substitute for the development of characters, the medium is plagued with mediocrity as much as ever. Of course, many viewers prefer their telly fix with this subtext and the rule of hurry. Things have to be happening all the time, and expeditiously. But this show resists these conventions brazenly: with exceptions in later episodes, each half-hour session is staged in the therapist's office, where each Monday Laura (Melissa George), for example, sits on a couch facing Dr. Weston and the two talk about her problems. This intimacy grows on the viewer and becomes very absorbing - maybe too absorbing to some. A viewer is frequently confronted with profound hardships and misery below the surface that he might not want to bother with – and more,that he might find too close to home to watch. And although there is plenty of intensity and fireworks, the pace is minimalist, using Bergmanesque silence and implication in ways that might prompt some viewers to reach for their remotes. When these features of the program are combined with its dense time slotting, it runs the risk of being too much to ask of even the culturally high-ranked HBO viewer. One has to wonder if a second season might want to spread out the schedule, or somehow do one-hour shows.HBO needs to bring it back in any case, because this is exceptional television. Through the intimacy of the single scene, clear channel dialog between the very able Byrne and his well-played patients, In Treatment moves, provokes, challenges, arouses – and entertains. The writing has its lapses, but they are few.As his therapist (and teacher of years back), Wiest excels and her deeply ambivalent, often riveting exchanges with Byrne at their Friday evening sessions are finely wrought set pieces. Their time together is a well-designed vehicle for Byrne to let us know his story, the one he can't reveal during the rest of the week.The ensemble of patients and his family – perhaps because of the commanding presence of Byrne to spur them – does well, including the sixteen year old Sophie and Byrne's wife, played by Michelle Forbes. Dr. and Mrs. Weston are unhappy – miserable is more accurate – and their row halfway through the show over her infidelity is a match for any excruciating confrontation in a work of an O'Neill or a Williams.But by far the best of In Treatment is in Laura's sessions, and Melissa George informs her role with an energy and inventiveness that is both startling and marvelously disturbing. In a sense, the epicenter of the show is Laura, even when she's absent from an episode. In her raging passion for Paul, loosed in quanta among quieter but suspenseful moments of gazes and pleasantries, George's character takes confessions of impossible, painful love and turns them into potent star bursts. These are not exploding novas light years away, but launched across the table in the therapist's office, and rather than fading they refuse to cool, threatening to melt the covenant of therapist-patient. These days television rarely has the privilege of portraying the kind of tension one witnesses between Byrne and George. His efforts to impose his distance as therapist from her (and his) tormented erotic impulses are matched by her doggedness, however tainted it is by the maladjustment that brought her to him in the first place. In a sense Laura makes her therapist captive, deftly blurring the hallowed ethical line separating them. Somewhere along the line, beyond her casting in unremarkable pictures like Amityville Horror and other television work like Alias, Melissa George dived into the big waves of HBO. Beauty counts for much on television and in the movies, but at some point one has to turn action into character, and George has figured it out. And then some. With more parts like Laura in In Treatment, George just might be the reincarnation of Gene Tierney.