In season four, Dr. Brooke Taylor helps a diverse trio of patients navigate a variety of modern concerns and issues such as the global pandemic and recent major social and cultural shifts – all while she deals with complications in her own personal life.
The weak spot is Brooke's weekly episode - she's struggling, and it's a struggle that's overly familiar. Still, the show does provide viewers with plenty of messy situations to distract from the real world's messy situations.
The clear standout for me was Ramos and the Eladio story, which has the perfect In Treatment combination of centerpiece performance, deliberately presented character arc and reactive material for the therapist.
It still comes alive in spurts thanks to great performers bringing human moments to life. But the new season has lost that sense of personal discovery, and even mystery, that drove so much of the early stories.
The theatrical nature of the format can occasionally yield moments that feel a little too perfect or precious. Overall, though, "In Treatment" remains a compelling way to spend an hour, and as they say, it's cheaper than therapy.
The new revival does find plenty of emotional fireworks within that limited format... but it's a decidedly mixed bag. The series rotates its episodes among four storylines, and some end up being more compelling than others.
