Part of this comes from how Sam is portrayed—the series doesn’t lean enough into the absurdity of the concept, of this free-therapy-achieving captivity mixed with Sam’s extra bad behavior. Brief moments of terror are presented ho-hum, as with a murder in parking lot that’s staged with little flair, and continually stretches the convenience that this serial killer still has not been caught after all this. “The Patient” does not favor showing violence, but it also doesn’t know how to make a sudden cut to black, usually with a surprised character gasping, register as all that terrifying.
There is a sentimental undercurrent to “The Patient” that rises to the surface throughout, in large part thank to Carell’s contemplative performance. In his captivity, Alan spends time thinking about his own relationship with his son Ezra, who became Orthodox (an “extreme Jew,” Alan calls him) and estranged from the family. When Alan’s wife, a Jewish cantor named Beth (Laura Niemi) died of cancer, that created even more tension. The series returns to Alan’s reevaluations about Ezra almost as a respite from the basement, and it becomes repetitive. It’s a long-winded way for the series to get to these feelings and revelations that could be poignant in smaller dosage.
Carell helps fashion this as a survival story as well, in Alan collecting his sense of inner strength that comes from his faith—including a vision of the Man’s Search for Meaning author Viktor Frankl at the concentration camp that inspired said book. The weak tension in the plotting doesn’t feed a nervousness about Alan’s survival, but we can at least see the endurance at stake in Carell’s progressively weary gaze. All the while, he must have a calm voice while using different therapeutic methods on Sam, strategizing ways he might convince Sam to eventually let him go.
“The Patient” is the type of elongated series that prevails more with its sentimentality than its dramatic execution, in part because the former is more precious than the latter. 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.
Full series screened for review. “The Patient” premieres on FX on Hulu on August 30.
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