Get ready for 'In Treatment' season two

In today's paper, I review season two of HBO's "In Treatment," which I found even more engrossing than last year:

"You should know that the kind of therapy I practice, it's not a quick fix," Dr. Paul Weston tells a new patient during the first week of "In Treatment" season two. "It's a process, and eventually change happens, but it does take time."

This would be useful advice for any therapy patient -- and, for that matter, for any potential viewer of "In Treatment." It is slow, and it requires work and careful observation, but when it achieves its breakthroughs, the effects can be as extraordinary and dynamic as any other drama on television.

In addition, I talked at length with showrunner Warren Leight and director Paris Barclay about what goes on behind-the-scenes in making "In Treatment."

After the jump, some thoughts on how I'm going to cover the show in the blog this season...

As mentioned in both pieces, HBO changed the air schedule, from one episode Monday through Friday two two episodes on Sunday (9-10) and three on Monday (9-10:30). Even though last season aired during the writers' strike and I therefore had more free time to write about it, I struggled with how best to cover it for a few reasons: 1)So many episodes per week, each with different guest characters, 2)I was often many episodes ahead of the audience and therefore knew which hints were leading somewhere and which were therapeutic dead ends, and 3)So much of what happens is so self-explanatory that doing a major analytical blog piece seems almost besides the point.

In the end, I decided the best way to approach this is to do one blog entry a week, posted Mondays at 10:30 after the end of the Gina episode, giving my brief initial impressions on each episode (while trying to avoid hinting at what might be coming) and then opening it up for you all to discuss it. Hopefully, this works out to everyone's satisfaction. So if you're watching this Sunday's episodes, please wait until the post on Monday night to discuss them.

Sound good?