Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Patient’ On FX/Hulu, Where Steve Carell Is A Therapist Forced To Keep A Client From Killing Again

Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg are responsible for The Americans, one of the best shows of the 2010s. That show was so good because it dove deeply into its characters’ inner lives and motivations while giving audiences thrilling moments and tense cliffhangers. Now they’ve applied that formula to a much more intimate setting: A therapist and his patient.

THE PATIENT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As the sun filters into a dark room, a man wakes up; he tries to move and realizes he hurts like hell.

The Gist: Dr. Alan Strauss (Steve Carell), a well-regarded therapist, is in a strange room and has no idea why he hurts so bad. He gets out of the bed, looks around the wood-paneled basement room, then realizes he’s got a shackle on one leg and he’s chained to a post on the floor. He screams for help.

Days earlier, Alan is in his sprawling house. He’s still in mourning over the death of his wife Beth (Laura Niemi); he finds her guitar and brings it to where his son Ezra (Andrew Leeds) works. He doesn’t want it, which is the latest in how much Ezra has distanced himself from his family after turning to an ultra-orthodox sect of Judaism.

Among his patients is a new one Gene (Domhnall Gleeson), who wears sunglasses, opens up with the fact that his father beat him constantly, and then talks rapidly around most of the in-depth issues in his life. Alan tells the new patient that he needs to open up more; that night, he hears a noise outside his house, goes to look and gets knocked out.

It turns out that Gene is actually named Sam Fortner, a restaurant health inspector who has a compulsion to kill people. He hates it, but he has no control over it, and he wants Alan to keep him from killing again. Alan begs Sam to let him go, telling him that he can’t properly treat him when he’s in chains and forced to do so. “I met with three different Jewish therapists,” Sam tells him. “I chose you.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The circumstances are different, but The Patient is sort of Misery meets The King Of Comedy meets Analyze This, though not as funny as the latter.

Our Take: The Patient‘s creators, Joel Fields and Joseph Weisberg, also brought us The Americans, and their new show has all the tension that their critically-acclaimed spy series had. It’s mostly a two-hander, with Carell and Gleeson dominating most of the drama. But as Alan gives in to the inevitability of his situation and actually starts to help Sam as much as he can, the world will expand a bit.

First there’s Sam’s mother Candace (Linda Emond), with whom Sam moved in after his divorce. She knows about everything, doesn’t approve of his methods, but will never turn him in. But there’s also the hours when Sam isn’t home, and Alan dives into his own psyche, recalling moments where Beth, a cantor at their fairly reformed synagogue, despises the fact that her son Ezra has turned to what she believes is the sexist and old-fashioned world of his orthodox sect. That rift, and Beth’s decline, will all pop into Alan’s mind in between sessions with Sam, maybe even informing how he helps the serial killer.

The episodes are short on purpose, mainly because of the fact that most of the action involves two people talking, but Weisberg and Fields make sure to end each on enough of a cliffhanger moment to make you want to watch the next episode. Gleeson’s performance is all in his face, with grimaces and other tics that show that how much Sam’s impulses are impeding him in what is an otherwise normal life. After all, his job feeds into (pun intended) his foodie nature, and he brings meals back to Alan that are much better than just bread and water. Gleeson’s friendly but flat accent communicates just how creepily “normal” a serial killer can be.

But Carell is the main attraction here, mainly because he’s dealing with so many pain points at once, yet has to restrain himself from really feeling that pain due to his work. We know he’s suffering, but he’s trained not to show it. That restraint is communicated in his performance. Even when he’s begging Sam to let him go, he’s in control and not hysterical at all; watching Alan give into the situation and actually try to help Sam feels earned because of Carell’s controlled but emotional performance.

Given the short episodes, this is an easy binge, but one that packs a lot of story possibilities in its relatively brief running time.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Sam pushes the food he brought over to Alan, in a way saying, “You should eat; you’re going to be here for awhile.”

Sleeper Star: Laura Niemi does a lot with a little screen time as Alan’s late wife Beth.

Most Pilot-y Line: One of Alan’s patients say, “Well, we’re out of time.” Alan replies, “Isn’t that my line?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Patient delivers a good story and dramatic tension in a compact package. It’s an exercise in “less is more”, and Carell and Gleeson are especially good at reining in their characters’ extreme emotions.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.