InTreatment, Season 4, Week 4

Week 4 — what to say? Brooke is deeper into her relapse, pursuing unconsciousness with a vengeance. It is painful to watch. Everyone that we see her with tries to connect with her and every time at the critical juncture, she flees either literally or figuratively.

Eladio confronts Brooke — “What am I to you?”. He feels her double messages, tells her she runs hot and cold. He wants her to be with him as he is with Jeremy, his charge, whom he loves and loves enough to be honest with. 

Colin, who like the good narcissist that he is, is at turns charming and maddening. He invents stories to tell her and when caught in the lie, makes another story. She does not really respond to the one naked thing he says which is “I want you to like me.” Underneath we know he feels that he can only get people to care by doing his charm offensive, that if he is real, he will be rejected. He succeeds in making Brooke angry and she tells him she had promised herself no more narcissists because they don’t change, shooting her own arrow into Colin. She would need to hold her therapeutic stance, to let him feel, and to work to get deeper inside his need, his desire to have her like him. One wonders how she might respond differently were she sober and not mired in her own lies and emptiness.

We see how really wounded Laila is this week. Brooke is better with her but seems not to get until the end of the session that Laila is likely suicidal. 

And then Adam, who isn’t especially appealing but who tries to connect in some way with Brooke. At the beginning of the week he offers to have a child with her if that would help. And he accurately identifies that her son, gone from her since birth, is more of an idea than a reality, hence his suggestion that they could have a child together.

Brooke has another bender and this time it is the last straw for Rita who tells her she can’t stay, that when Brooke is ready to stop drinking, she can call her. Brooke complains to Adam about Rita and sadly, he colludes with Brooke’s claim to victimhood. He again tries to connect with her. They have sex but she seems hardly there—to be fair, she was drunk so unable to be present. Then as they finish, she passes out, becoming literally unconscious finally.

Watching Brooke this week was depressing. And made me angry. I wanted to shout at her and at the writer’s who have created this mess. Many years ago, I and some friends attending a family therapy workshop volunteered to role play a family for the workshop leader to “work” with. The family we fell into being was rather like the characters in this season — types, exaggerated, unrelenting. We became caricatures of family. 

I don’t know where things can go with the rest of the season. A suddenly seeing of the light on any of their parts would feel phony. Yet sliding down even further a bleak prospect. 

I noticed today that HBO has released all of the remaining episodes.I plan to watch them this weekend and next week post about what I see and reflections on this season and tissues it raises. For now, color me less than pleased.