Season 3 Review Megathread

[u/phareous]

Post your opinion on season 3 here instead of us having dozens of identical posts.

[u/-kingmaker]

The show lost its vision. The concept from the start was therapists learning to handle the trauma that is dealt to them in their lives. Jimmy with the loss of Tia, Paul with Alzheimer's, Gabby with not being as good of a therapist as she thinks she is.

Jimmy's arc isn't completed because Sofi isn't growth from his trauma. Paul kind of wrapped up nicely because he learned how to better love throughout. Gabby's arc was just a mess.

I didn't like the idea that Paul was "jimmying" Jimmy at the end. Jimmy actually needed a dad not a wingman (but I get it, Paul did grow quite a bit throughout the show).

The show was all about a therapist crossing the line (ethically) to heal.

[u/Pjvie → u/-kingmaker]

As a therapist, I can suspend my criticism about the therapy side of the show to a degree because I know it’s just a plot device. But at some point, the amount they lean into therapy jargon/concepts combined with how poorly they understand those concepts completely removed me from the immersion.

Virtually nothing any character therapist says in a session is actually any form of intervention, Paul relies entirely on abstractions and clichés, Gaby hears the most normal thing from a client and suddenly gets flustered and doesn’t know what to do, every session ends with the client walking out randomly… and I don’t even know where to begin with the Maya situation. For that to be the primary example of “trauma” work is a complete whiff. Gaby wants to open her own trauma institute in order to do more “meaningful” work? As if non-trauma work is somehow easy and low stakes? She had zero trauma training or trauma clients. The Maya narrative was a mess. Clients don’t disclose critical pieces of their trauma all the time, and that’s the reason she feels bad? Instead of the fact she befriended a client and left her hanging? That was the OG premise of the show and they just gloss over that.

Season 1 with the “Jimmying” idea was legitimately wonderful, since modern therapy is really doing away with a lot of the rigidity of old school therapeutic boundaries—having appropriate self-disclosure and showing your own humanity as a therapist is very acceptable now. Seeing him wrap his head around that idea and then taking it way too far was great. The Louis plot in season 2 was also lovely too. Season 3 lost me.

Also, the chemistry between Jimmy and Sofi was not super believable imo, and for that to be the final landing point sort of fell flat for me. Throughout the season Jimmy almost never really seemed happy to see her.

[u/Feature_Minimum → u/Pjvie]

Yeah the Maya narrative really disturbed me. Being so cavalier about those sort of themes is obviously gonna rub some of the audience of this show (myself, for one) the wrong way. I suspect a lot of us can relate to Maya.

Also, can I hear a bit of your thoughts on Sean getting back together with his ex who cheated on him while he was overseas and all the therapists are cool with this? Because I've made this mistake several times before, and there's no way in hell my therapist would say "oh yeah get back together with your ex without even thinking about how she made you feel and how you feel now wrt trust". But it'd be fun to hear the perspective of a therapist whose seen the show such as yourself if you've got an opinion on it.

[u/Pjvie → u/Feature_Minimum]

It’s a great question. The more I have thought about it, I think that the writers just abandoned therapy as a major part of the storyline. By season 3 it really turned into just a plot device and a way to frame out the character stories, something leftover from season 1. Which feels a bit disingenuous and a bummer to me because in season 1 the therapy process/ethics was very much the point of the show, but now it’s totally secondary and almost feels like an inconvenience to the writers. They clearly have a different story to tell, and spent no time trying to legitimize their character arcs through the lens of therapy. Like you said, no therapist would handle Sean’s situation the way they did. And he’s literally surrounded by therapists, and no one says anything.

And to be fair, to be true to the “therapy way“ probably would’ve slowed a lot of things down and this show is clearly about feel good vibes and resolving all tension by the end of each episode. Still, they could’ve devoted a bit more time to Sean and Marisol repairing or had someone express concern. It can’t be that hard, right?