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One should not be too good at anything. This saying aptly defines Steve Carell's psychological thriller The Patient. Carell plays therapist Alan Strauss, who gets kidnapped by Sam Fortner (played by Domhnall Gleeson). Sam reasons out that he needs help with his homicidal urges, and Alan is the best among all the three therapists he has approached.
The first two episodes of The Patient dropped on Hulu on August 30 and set the context for the upcoming episodes. While at the outset, the show seems to revolve around serial killer Sam, The Patient could be deciphered as the human mind's constant struggles with itself.
The storyline of a therapist's kidnapping is brilliant because it highlights the importance of mental health and the current rising wave of awareness around it.
Read on to learn more about what The Patient has to offer.
How The Patient sets the premise around mental health
The first episode, titled Intake, opens with Carell's Alan waking up in a room that is certainly not his. He is chained to one of the bed's legs and is provided with essentials such as a bottle of unnamed pills, toothpaste, a toothbrush, a small commode, and a toilet paper roll.
However, the room is unlike the usual cinematic portrayals of confinement. Alan's bed faces a huge exit point with a transparent glass sliding door. It is evident that he will witness at least some gore.
The scene then jumps back to Alan's real house after the show's title card. He lives alone in a big house, and the viewers can almost sympathize with Alan. He does all the chores himself with no one to talk to. After he wakes up in the morning, his hands search for his wife on the side of the bed he rarely rolls over to. In the absence of physical touch, Alan takes his wife's designated pillow and hugs it tightly.
The void in Alan's life is, in a way, filled by a profession where he is required to talk to his patients regularly. One such patient is Gene Bollinger, who turns out to be the kidnapper, Sam Fortner.
Sam is introduced as a patient who has anger issues and refuses to take off his shades indoors. When Alan asks the reason behind it, Sam replies,
"I have eye problems. Light hurts them. They are oversensitive."
This sums up Sam's personality, who gets provoked to kill people when he is not treated correctly. Interestingly, however, Sam is a psychopath with a heavy moral conscience.
Sam kidnaps Alan because he wants private therapy. He is not comfortable disclosing his truths anywhere other than his place. He knows his approach is wrong and keeps apologizing to Alan for kidnapping him. He tries to be hospitable to Alan and gets him different cuisine daily. Further into the episode, we discover Sam is a food inspector.
The most interesting bits are when Sam says that he wishes Alan knew what it was like to live like him. He says at a point,
"I know I am not normal. But I don't feel crazy."
After a failed attempt at getting away, Alan gives in during the second episode, titled Alan Learns to Meditate, and starts to offer therapy sessions to Sam and himself too. A scene where Alan is trying to meditate is beautifully portrayed with a handheld camera wobbling as Alan tries to focus his thoughts.
What follows is a series of disclosures that, we know, keep trapping Alan into a killer's cage, but hardly an instance of fatality arises.
Performances in The Patient are to watch out for
A therapist panicking can sound like an oxymoron, as does the idea of a morally conscious killer. However, The Patient does not make them look like one. Carell's Alan exercises self-control and acts in a restrained manner – characteristic of a therapist.
He does not scream frantically, or express his frustration explicitly, probably because of his familiarity with his kidnapper. All he does is implore Sam to let him go while promising to help him sort things out. Additionally, when Sam is out of sight, he tries to get away – characteristic of a human.
It is amusing to see one of America's funniest/finest actors don a character that is diametrically opposite to his body of work so far. Alan is old and tired but comes with immense experience. The Patient proves that Carell is capable of gritty acting that does not require him to depend on his comic timing.
Gleeson's portrayal of Sam is not that of a non-eye-blinker, smirking serial killer. Sam has issues and is aware and apologetic about them, but he is also dismissive of others' discomfort. Gleeson plays Sam to perfection. In one scene, Sam's voice breaks after he discloses his biggest secret to Alan.
While Alan implores Sam to let him go, Sam hardly pays any heed to his words and instead keeps offering different cuisines for dinner. Scenes of Sam and Alan bargaining with each other seem like a banal conversation between a couple or a parent and their child. Interestingly, Sam even let Alan know when he would return from work.
Although nothing thriller-worthy has happened so far, it will be interesting to see how the show unfolds. The rest of the episodes of The Patient will be released on a weekly basis, with the third episode, titled Issues, next in line.
The 10-episode series also features actors Linda Emond, Laura Niemi, Andrew Leeds, David Alan Grier, and Alex Rich.
Catch the first two episodes of The Patient currently streaming on Hulu.
