The opposite of escapist TV, FX‘s claustrophobic psychological thriller The Patient (streaming on Hulu, where much of FX’s best new material can be found) traps the viewer inside the mind of a desperate therapist and his unhappily murderous client. For many of the 10 episodes (most at a blissfully taut half-hour length), we’re also largely confined to a basement where the killer has chained his doctor in hopes of a miracle cure through uninterrupted one-on-one sessions.
In Treatment was never this riveting.
“He doesn’t really seem to fully respect the patient-doctor relationship,” muses Dr. Alan Strauss at one point during his ordeal. Expertly played by Steve Carell in one of his most effective dramatic performances to date, Alan balances rage, fear, cunning–and grief, because the good doctor is also a recent widower who, in his plentiful downtime in captivity, reflects on the loss of the love of his life, his relationship to his Jewish faith and to his broken family, including an estrangement from his rigidly Orthodox son (Andrew Leeds).
And then there’s the matter of Sam, his unpredictable patient, played by Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson (effectively hiding his accent) with a chillingly deadpan menace that’s the stuff of nightmares. A high-functioning Norman Bates type, this mensch-next-door seems a bit antisocial, but is getting along as a divorced restaurant inspector in suburban California when he’s not succumbing to savage impulses any time he feels someone has failed to show him proper respect. We later learn Sam is devoted to his mom—Norman, is that you?—and his ex still cares about him, but as Alan tries to make clear as soon as he wakes up to his dire situation, this is no way to handle anger management.
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“I have much bigger problems than your other patients,” Sam calmly explains, later adding, “I brought you here so we could work together.” OK, then. The absurdity of his scheme is outmatched only by the suspense of their interactions, which often involve Sam eagerly bringing Alan take-out from the eateries he visits for work. (“One thing you can’t complain about in this place is the food,” Alan later quips to himself.)
It’s impossible to know when Sam, who’s walking an emotional tightrope of barely contained psychosis, will next be triggered or by whom. And as Alan painstakingly tries to pierce the young man’s guarded armor, we don’t always know if he’s being sincere in his attempts to heal his patient or if he’s merely playing Sam to gain freedom. (Dream sequences in which Alan analyzes his dilemma with his own dead therapist, drolly played by David Alan Grier, lead you to believe the latter.)
Attempts to correlate Alan’s imprisonment to that of concentration-camp inmates during the Nazi era are too heavy-handed, even when we discover the philosophical underpinning. But for the most part, The Patient (from the executive producers of FX’s classic The Americans) sustains its intensity with the sick kick of a haunting novella.
The Patient, Series Premiere (two episodes), Tuesday, August 30, Hulu
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