Thursday, May 28, 2009

The Best Show You Missed!

As the week comes to an end I got 2 nights of sleep without waking up! I also picked up the rest of my super smoothie recipe ingredients today an am going to experiment this weekend to perfect my concoction.

Earlier in the week I finished Season 2 of the little seen HBO drama In Treatment. I don't want to give away anything as I hope you will rent week one of season one and see why this show is addictive as hell. I love this show in the same way that I loved thirtysomthing and Six Feet Under's character development and dramatic plot lines that reeled me in week after week.

As I watched the end to this likely last season, I have thought about why I love this show so much. To read the summary it sounds claustrophobic, stifling, and boring. After all a show set in a therapist's office doesn't compare to the mass appeal of America's great wealth of untapped talent in singing and dancing competitions.

There is a reason why this little known show that swept the TV awards is really that good. The acting is out of the park good and as much as I love Jon Hamm from Mad Men, he was no match for Gabriel Byrne's conflicted lead week after week. The characters leave you wanting to know how the story ends after their session is long over.

Most of all I love this show because it shows anyone's potential for change and how therapy can truly transform you. Whether you have done your time in therapy or not you can appreciate a central theme that change is possible with hard work and a willingness to examine the parts of your life that really wish were not there.

For a really long time I erroneously thought that the end goal of therapy was to simply achieve happiness. I now believe that change in yourself, knowing options never realized on your own, and most of all the ability to accept that some things are not alleviate, just managed has become my goal.

To watch anyone, even TV characters, come to this same revelation is validating of the time, money, and really hard work I have put forth. Check out this show on DVD, as it is time well spent without paying for it.

1 comment:

Beth said...

I often struggle with knowing what things about myself I CAN change--can I be a "different" person--and what things about myself I need to accept and work around. My dad died when I was 18, but he left journals that he had written in his younger days, and there's an underlying current throughout all of his writings that he never lived up to his own potential--he was never quite who he wanted to be. I often feel the same way, and I think therapy would really help me figure that out. But alas, for now, at least, I will have to pursue that journey on my own. But this is a great post, and I might just check out that series!