What if Hannibal Lecter had a therapist he didn’t eat?
That’s the premise of The Patient, a chilling new series from Hulu, which has become the most creative streamer in Hollywood. The network also produces Reboot, a terrific sendup of Hollywood’s branding frenzy. That gives them the two best shows on TV this fall.
And while Reboot is a little too derivative of 30 Rock, The Patient feels wholly original — outside the offshoot premise. Consider: When was the last time you saw a different serial killer? Why do they all look and act like Jeff Dahmer or Ted Bundy?
Patient Sam Fortner (Domnhall Gleeson) resembles neither. Sam is twitchy, dorky, and a Kenny Chesney nut, literally. He’s skinny and adolescent-looking, but tall and old enough to be menacing. He looks like he could be an angry incel. He looks like he could be a school shooter.
Scarier still, Sam knows he’s broken. He’s done his internet research. He knows he needs help — which makes it double the challenge. That, too, feels troublingly familiar.
Steve Carrell, who plays the hapless therapist, proved himself the best serious actor to emerge from the Daily Show troupe with the movie Little Miss Sunshine. Here, he’s Alan Stauss, a psychotherapist trying not to lose his mind after being abducted and chained in Sam’s basement.
Sam’s lone hostage demand: Cure me before I kill again, or it will be you. Oh, and his mom lives upstairs.
The show takes a skewering look at co-dependence, a unique take on serial killing. The good doctor has an imaginary therapist, a wayward son and gobs of uncertainty over his own professionalism, fathering and Jewishness, of all things. The show suggests co-dependence needs two active participants: One to play with the blade-edge of the knife; and one to say ’Don’t cut yourself.’
Also unique is its format. The show is darkly funny, but it is no comedy. Yet its runtime is sitcom-short, a half-hour with commercials. I don’t know of another half-hour crime drama. But that sounds about right.
The series sometimes challenges its own powers of disbelief suspension. The show lost some critics with a grown male protagonist so seemingly passive with his captor and captivity. The upstairs mom, afraid to turn in her own son, turned off others.
But unique crime fare is tough. And real-story abductions get a lot weirder than this one.
If you think you may be suffering from Procedural Fatigue and Zombie Viewing Syndrome, see your doctor immediately. Or don’t, if you’re thinking of abducting your physician.
Either way, The Patient is worth a session.
