OK. I'll admit it. I've been holed up the last couple of evenings catching up on the "good" TV I missed while I was in the Middle East. So, now I'm up to date with John Adams (brilliantly played, in my view, by Giametti and Linney as John and Abigail ), and have a new dose of respect for the complexities surrounding the first 50 years of American independence. I watched the first three episodes, and look forward to the next ones in April.
But here's the real news.I am in love with In Treatment, HBO's series about psychotherapy --and the shrink--and the shrink's shrink. Now that's what I call covering all the bases. I watched every single half hour episode, 43 to be exact. I was mesmerized by the whole thing.
I'm not sure I can parse my absolute devotion to this series. But let me try.
1. It is an unusual opportunity on television for pages and pages of REALLY GOOD dialogue.And these scripts are excellent. Who wrote these, I asked myself after viewing a couple of episodes? The credits said: Rodrigo Garcia--writer/director of the first episodes. That name meant nothing to me. Not wanting to miss a minute, I sat crosslegged on the couch and googled him.
Of course. Of course. Wikipedia reports that he is the son of Gabriel Garcia Marquez , the stunnng South American author of A Thousand Years of Solitude ( and many other superb books ), a book that took all of my stamina to slog through--and was well worth the trek.
2.Gabriel Byrne's performance is so believable that after the first two or so episodes, he blurs the line between actor and Dr. Paul Weston. He is the reasoned, caring, controlled, safehouse therapist that every person who has ever considered therapy wants. And he is, likewise, deeply flawed.
Just for the record, I've always loved Byrne's work from the time I saw him in Miller's Crossing; then made a point of seeing him as the lead in Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway a couple of years ago. In fact, my dear Irish friend Yvonne knows him. On a recent visit to New York, she invited a mutual friend to meet Byrne for lunch during the filming of the series in Brooklyn last summer. What about me, I asked mournfully? I adore him. Ah well, missed opportunity.
3. A confession. I'm taking acting classes at NYU. This is my second semester. And I'm loving it. Loving the challenge, and the chance to integrate the words of some wonderful playwrights, make them my own, and perform them for a small group in a little theater off 42nd Street.
Thus far, I've done two monologues, maybe 10 minutes in length each. I sweat bullets over the preparation, beseeching friends to run my lines with me, especially as the due date loomed closer. And both times, I found a depth of emotion that I wasn't sure I could tap into--often based on reading the lines over and over, learning first hand that, as my professor said at the first class: "Every word is there for a reason. So find it."
Because the dialogue IS the new series, In Treatment, it gives the viewers a real chance to see some terrific acting without the smokescreen of a lot of action. The actors who play the "patient of the day" really dig into the words, and bring out the suffering that brought them to Dr. Weston in the first place without making it a vulgar soap opera.
4. I believe that a life unexamined is, essentially, a wasted life. OK. Now I've said it. It's what Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk meant when he talked about finding the "true self". It requires according to Merton and other spiritual masters, a willingness to finding God (or the Other or whatever unifying principle is ones guidepost) not by reason alone but by a knowing, a willingness to move toward a deep love for others. A search for the primordial center.
So, on a spiritual level, the roadmap, so to speak, that Weston offers each of these groups of patients isn't about outcomes--it's about looking at the process of their behavior and it's impact. And their reaction to uncovering the wounds that each of us have, each of us fight, or embrace, or ignore, or allow to victimize. Can't get much more universal than that, can you?
So, I'm encouraged actually, that in a culture that has frequent feeding frenzies on Britney, Paris, Orange County, the Hamptons, and consumption of all things pleasurable, there is room for a journey inward. For me, life without a search for meaning would be hopeless. For our culture, in this time when a black man, a woman, and a decorated Vietnam-imprisoned veteran are running for the top office of the land; when the Middle East, China and North Korea present daily threats to life as we have known it; when we as a culture are struggling to make sense out of a war that will not end--this seems like a good move.
A move inside out.
M.C
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