HBO’s ‘In Treatment’ is steeped in Baltimore references

Executive producer Anya Epstein explains why the city crops up in the series so often

by David Zurawik, The Baltimore Sun, 11/19/2010

For a TV series neither set nor filmed in Baltimore, the city sure plays a prominent role in the Peabody Award-winning HBO drama “In Treatment.” And the off-camera roots of the program about the work and life of a brooding, emotionally wounded psychoanalyst run even deeper into Charm City soil, according to executive producer Anya Epstein.

Paul Weston, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based therapist played by Gabriel Byrne who is at the heart of the series, is constantly referring to Baltimore.

He lived and worked in the city in the first season. His ex-wife (Michelle Forbes) and one of his children remain there — as does his mentor and former therapist, Gina Toll (Dianne Wiest). He and Gina met at the fictional Baltimore-Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, where she was on the faculty. And last season after moving to New York, he traveled to Baltimore from Brooklyn once a week for his sessions with Gina.

Last week, in his session with his new therapist, Adele (Amy Ryan), he talked about how wrenching it was for him as a teen to be pulled out of boarding school in England and plopped down in a Baltimore public school when his father, a cardiac surgeon, took a prestigious and all-consuming job at Union Memorial Hospital. The week before, one of Paul’s patients, an actress named Frances (Debra Winger), spoke at length with great emotion about a harsh lie she told her sister when the young woman was a student at the Johns Hopkins University.

And the week before that, Weston’s 13-year-old son, Max, showed up on the doorstep of his Brooklyn home-office explaining that he climbed aboard a train in Baltimore and came to New York hoping to live with his dad. The troubled teen has since moved in, though last week there was considerable talk about a weekend spent back in Baltimore with his mom and her new boyfriend.

And sometimes Baltimore fact and fiction get all mashed up. In one episode, Weston took Max to hear the teenager’s favorite band, which was playing a date in New York City. The band, Animal Collective, is a real indie group that started in Baltimore and has since moved to New York. The music on the show was the group’s actual music, and it was suggested by writer’s assistant Kyle Kinsella, who — you guessed it — grew up in Baltimore.

Are you getting a sense of how Baltimore-centric this American adaptation of an award-winning Israeli series can be?

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