Take a moment
HBO's new nightly series, In Treatment, follows pyschotherapist Gabriel Byrne as he tries to make the world a happier, more actualized place for weepy but fetching mopes one intensely compassionate stare at a time. Each episode consists of an hour-long session between Byrne and one of the five patients he treats. Mondays are devoted to Laura, "an attractive young anesthesiologist ... in the midst of a relationship crisis," Tuesdays to Alex, "an arrogant Navy pilot" who has suffered "a recent brush with death and a disastrous mission in Iraq," etc.
With a concept so basic, why didn't HBO simply tape a real therapist with his real patients?
Perhaps because it couldn't find five people who actually go to psychotherapy anymore. These days, it seems, we rely on daytime talkshows, Dr. Phil, and reality TV for virtually all of our mental health needs.
The latest show to hang up a shingle? Fox's The Moment of Truth, wherein contestants attempt to win $500,000 simply by asking a series of 21 invasive and potentially damning questions. In the show's first episode, host Mark Walberg asks a married man who works as a personal trainer if he's ever touched a female client more than necessary. In the second episode, a contestant who has already admitted he's addicted to gambling is asked by his son if he gambled away the son's college fund.
Naturally, the contestants aren't in it just for the money. They want a chance to come clean about their various moral transgressions and personal weaknesses. As psychotherapy goes, The Moment of Truth is much better than the traditional kind, and even better than Dr. Phil. Instead of paying some stranger $100 an hour to listen to their sad stories, they get to seek closure, forgiveness, and redemption on national TV, and they could earn half a million bucks to boot! Just try to compete with that, Dr. Freud.
The show's creators show a Larry David-like genius in devising questions that bring the secret thoughts and actions of seemingly decent people to light. And it puts the viewing audience in a completely original place. Are we supposed to root for these inveterate gamblers and extramarital client-fondlers simply because they're successfully progressing toward the $500,000 question? "Is there an honest person left in America," the show's narrator asks at the beginning of the show, and it's a Zen koan of sorts. In order to prove their honesty, the show's contestants must accurately answer questions that inevitably end up positioning them as devious, hypocritical, opportunistic, immoral jerks.
Unfortunately, The Moment of Truth completely lives up to its name. There are moments here, about five or six, that are pretty entertaining. The show, however, is an hour long. Even in the realm of reality TV, where every 10 seconds of drama is stretched into at least 10 minutes of content, The Moment of Truth unfolds at an excruciatingly slow pace. The contestants appear to have been told to delay their responses as long as possible. The lie detector machine has received the same instructions. Commercial breaks happen every few questions, and after, oh, 10 minutes, it actually becomes tedious to watch. More tedious, in fact, than watching the mopes of In Treatment spew their fictional neuroses in real-time. And when you reach that level of tedium there's only one cure: The "next channel" button on your remote.
A frequent contributor to Las Vegas Weekly, Greg Beato has also written for SPIN, Blender, Reason, Time.com, and many other publications. Email Greg at [email protected]