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The incisive back-and-forths. The immaculate casting. That earworm of a theme song.
In Treatment is back after a 10-year hiatus, and the HBO psychotherapy drama has not lost a step.
Since its inaugural season,
In Treatment has followed the same effective formula. In the first few episodes of its weekly cycle, the lead psychologist sees patients for standard hour-length sessions, compressed to 25 minutes for the sake of television. On the last day of the sequence, the good doctor visits his or her own shrink and experiences a profound role reversal. Among the benefits of this design is its acknowledgment of something that every talk-therapy recipient has likely intuited at one point or another. Behind the mask of professional composure, psychologists are just as screwed up as the rest of us.