The Patient

One of the most insane, unpredictable, and brilliantly executed pieces of television of the year.

A tension-filled, character-driven psychological thriller that's a worthy successor to their early 1980s Soviet spies drama [Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg's "The Americans"].

[Steve Carell's] career-best performance in The Patient. OK, career-best dramatic performance. ... It’s the best thriller that’s been on TV this year... and it’s about therapy. ... The series, refreshingly, abandons the trope where the serial killer is brooding, charismatic, and sexually mystifying.

It is, pardon the pun, all killer, no filler. ... There are moments of genuine discovery and shock. ... It may not be the most uplifting series you’ll watch this year, but it’s certainly one of the most thought-provoking and absorbing.

Between the taut plotting and the dark laughs, The Patient is expertly calibrated to lure viewers in. Episode 1 takes just over 19 minutes, and the run times grow slowly from there, along with the need to keep seeing how things will turn out.

I was riveted throughout the limited series’ mash-up of In Treatment and Mindhunter.

Carell gives his best performance yet in "The Patient," a compelling drama that's worth sticking with through all 10 episodes.

While The Patient won’t make up for The Americans’ absence (nothing can fill that void, people), it’s nevertheless an astute and compelling follow-up from Fields and Weisberg, with a knockout performance we didn’t see coming.

No matter how you watch it, The Patient is high-level drama told with admirable efficiency — all killer, no filler.

The Patient's sustained intensity over 10 half-hours has the sick kick of a haunting novella. [12 - 25 Sep 2022, p.11]

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.

"The Patient" finds a path, along with a pair of actors (three, actually) who deliver emotional, believable and psychologically layered performances. Where Alan's journey takes him, however, is going to create a love-hate relationship between "Patient" and viewer.

The odd part is that many people tuning in for the serial killer stuff will be disappointed, and the armchair psychiatry stuff doesn’t always work. But, driven in large part by what is possibly Carell’s finest dramatic performance to date, there’s a nuanced series here beyond the juicy pitch — it’s In Treatment meets Hannibal meets Black Snack Moan — that has caused it to linger in my mind long after completing it.

Thanks to the crisp writing and the stellar work from Carell and Domhnall Gleeson as the patient from hell, we’re willing to overlook a few credulity-stretching plot developments as we find ourselves immersed in the tense standoff and hooked by the episode-concluding cliffhangers.

Powerfully, carefully acted by Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson, laden with themes of guilt, remorse and redemption, the new FX limited series streaming exclusively on Hulu deepens as it moves through its 10 episodes (at approximately 30 minutes each, they’re easily digestible). The nuances of the script come into focus along with the subtext. Even if it doesn’t quite stick the landing, it remains rewarding to the end.

While it’s occasionally hobbled by hokey presentationalism and no small amount of contrivance, there’s something riveting about the moment-to-moment suspense of The Patient. Both Carell and Gleeson are turning in handsome work, threading that delicate needle between psychothriller danger and pitch-black comedy; as a two-hander actor’s showcase, it succeeds mightily.

With its morbidly intriguing premise and two powerhouse actors at its center, The Patient would have been a blast even if it was just another grisly thriller about a high-functioning psychopath. But it chooses to delve deeper than that, asking some poignant questions about empathy that even those of us who don’t shackle people to our bedroom floors can learn from.

Carell’s turn isn’t loud or attention-seeking; it’s thoughtful and lived-in. By the end, your satisfaction with the resolution may vary, but your investment in another father-son story — steered by a man who’s been through a few — is rewarded with an illuminating portrait of (at least) two lives.

At its core a two-hander, and at its best in those moments, "The Patient" begins quite well before losing momentum in the middle, regaining it amid twists and unexpected turns that carry through to the end. Not quite hefty enough to support even its relatively short episodes, the 10-part limited series finally works as a serious showcase for Steve Carell and a nicely creepy Domhnall Gleeson.

It's often highly entertaining in its modulated, cagey way. Fields and Weisberg, who wrote the entire series, don’t find an entirely satisfying way to resolve their comically stylized meditation on the possibilities and limitations of therapy — six hours may have been three or four more than the story needed — but they’re still expert craftsmen, and the short episodes fly by.

The Patient takes you somewhere complicated, and it is not an easy watch. It doesn’t always work, it’s underdeveloped, and it’s often a profound bummer. But it’s been weeks since I first watched the series and I still think about Dr. Strauss trying to recite the Kaddish but not knowing the words. Not a lot of shows come around with a moment like that.

The Patient, like its central killer, is as fascinating as it is frustrating, the unusual format turning a dramatically juicy thriller into something a little repetitive and improperly paced. It’s a ten-part show about therapy that could have benefitted from being told in one long session.

It’s an uneven narrative, with a few tonal mistakes and excesses along the way — but there’s a lot more to the story line than you might expect from the basic plot description.

The metaphor of Alan’s faith reverberates through each episode of this ambitious, flawed, masterfully acted show in ways both ham-fisted and profound. ... It’s a fascinating relationship, expertly developed through short, suspenseful episodes, thoughtful dialogue, and a pair of note-perfect performances. But the rest, as the Strausses might say, is mishegas.

Across 10 episodes, The Patient gestures at a lot of big ideas but never manages to mold them into something meaningful or entertaining. The Patient is ultimately a scattered and unfulfilling exploration of evil, trauma, and whether human beings really have the capacity for change, and it only occasionally shows flashes of something more compelling.

“The Patient” ends up feeling too much like a concept in search of a show, a program that never quite figures out how seriously to take the danger inherent in its set-up, content to always make viewers think instead of taking the risks that would be required to thrill them.

Its heart is in the right place, especially as a text that believes in therapy and empathy. But its mind wanders in circles when making one get what it’s trying to say.

A languorous 10 episodes (granted, only half an hour apiece) are spent telling a story that might have, in another era, made for a tidy 90-minute movie. ... We’re left with little to contemplate but a figure whose story doesn’t come together, in ways that are more frustrating than complicating. ... Fields and Weisberg owe viewers something compelling if they’re going to play out a relationship entirely in retrospect, with little apparent possibility for development.