The Patient
Auschwitz Season 1 Episode 9 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next Episode
The Patient
Auschwitz Season 1 Episode 9 Editor’s Rating «Previous Next» « Previous Episode Next EpisodeAlan Strauss is a therapist, not a murderer. And despite all his clever efforts this week to orchestrate an avenue of escape in the form of therapeutic intervention, he’s unable to act when it matters most. Is it indecision that stops him? Fear of his own death? Fear of causing an innocent woman’s death? It’s unclear. But while Alan’s secret motive doesn’t pan out, his faux family brunch does end up helping Sam have an inspired — if twisted — breakthrough of his own.
After Sam’s impulsive murder of his boss, it would seem that he might be a prime suspect and that the police might be calling on him any minute now. I definitely found myself wishing for this outcome at the end of last week’s episode. However, what I’ve since realized is that The Patient isn’t a show about external motivations; it’s very much about therapy and what it takes to survive and thrive in one’s own internal world. If the police came busting down the door and took Sam into custody and freed Alan during this episode, then what? The internal journey that both men are on would be cut short, and the central focus of the series — how do we change and adapt in difficult circumstances? — would be rendered moot.
Now that Alan has had his own big breakthrough, his mind is wandering to darker places. At the top of the episode, Alan has a dreamlike encounter with Viktor Frankl, father of logotherapy and the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the most influential books in the therapeutic literary canon. As Alan later recounts to Sam, Frankl wrote the book based on his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. He found that even in the most hopeless of places, men were able to go on when they had sources of significant meaning in their lives, and that this search for meaning powers all of our lives to some extent.
So far in these recaps I’ve steered clear of analyzing the deeply Jewish undertones of this series, but given that this episode is titled “Auschwitz,” I’m finally going to dip a toe in. I’m not Jewish, but as a therapist who understands exploring the importance of faith in the therapeutic space, I think that the addition of the concept is an intriguing one, even if that part of the narrative is presented in a muddled way at times. If we consider Alan’s deep connection to his faith, coupled with his current situation, it makes sense that he might circle back to thoughts of the Holocaust, especially if his parents or close relatives were survivors. Intergenerational trauma is very real and can manifest in all sorts of ways, especially in times of acute stress.
The more immediate parallel here, though, is that Frankl and Alan both chose to call upon their therapeutic skills and powers of observation even in situations where death seems imminent. (Side note: Frankl survived and then he wrote a book. Does his inclusion in the narrative allude to Alan’s potential fate? Let’s hope so.) Also, even though Alan doesn’t experience any flashbacks including family, it’s heavily implied that he’s piggybacking off of his big breakthrough regarding his own family. Alan has found meaning, he just needs to get the fuck out of that basement. And so he tries to create some meaning for his captor.
Of course, Alan is simultaneously trying to plot his escape, but it does seem like he’s trying to call upon his skills as a therapist to potentially free himself. When he wakes Sam up and calls him into the basement, he’s taking back some of his power and agency as a therapist and illustrates that he’s not willing to give up on cracking this case with the tools he has. When he recommends a family brunch with Mary, Sam is reluctant for only a few moments before quickly texting his ex and setting up a meeting up for the very next morning.
Alan and Sam conspire to set up a baby monitor so that Alan can observe the brunch, and Sam unloads a lot of insecurities onto his therapist. He seems genuinely nervous to sit down and have a meal with this woman, and there are multiple funny-yet-heartbreaking exchanges where Alan works with Sam in order to loosen him up. The role-play scene is particularly cringeworthy as Sam stammers his way through asking even the most rudimentary of questions. Alan just puts on his empathetic face and encourages Sam to keep going. Oh, and he recommends that Sam serve something that Mary likes to eat. Empathy in action!
Sam takes that empathy a bit too far, though, as he also gets a special meal for Alan: bagels and lox. Sam is clearly stereotyping here, but he’s also making a good-faith — if misguided — effort to be empathetic about what Alan would like to eat as well. There are so many signs that Sam is trying to change and that his intentions are good, but he keeps failing to get it right. Change takes time, y’all.
It’s no surprise that Sam completely fumbles brunch. And if I had questions about Mary and Sam’s relationship before, ooh boy do I have questions now. Was their time as man and wife just a series of silent, stilted exchanges? If Sam was the one to propose, how did he propose? What TV shows did they watch together? I want to know it all. However, in the end, it feels like both Sam and Mary were two people so desperate for some sort of connection that they just sort of floated along, doing the next expected thing, until they found themselves in an empty marriage. Sam probably would have just kept on keeping on, but Mary found the strength to break free.
Miraculously, Sam doesn’t blame Mary for rejecting him, and it seems like he wouldn’t mind getting back together with her. But he starts to short-circuit when he tries to shift his perspective from his typical egocentric mind-set to one where he considers her feelings. First, he tries to tell a joke, and he has no comedic or storytelling rhythm. Alan’s reaction to this — a grimace bordering on a guffaw — as he watches on the monitor is an absolutely hilarious visual. Sam comes down and consults with Alan, his tender neck flesh just inches away from Alan’s hands, but Alan can’t bring himself to deploy his makeshift shiv.
When Sam goes back up to brunch, he tries another tactic. He tells Mary about his history with his father. Mary’s shocked reaction tells us that she didn’t know this information, and Candace’s quietly indignant reaction tells us that she has encouraged her son to keep this information a secret from polite society for his entire life. Both women aren’t too sure what to do in the wake of this confession, so brunch breaks up. Honestly? Poor Sam! That’s what he gets when he tells his nearest and dearest about his deepest, darkest traumas? No wonder the guy kills people for emotional catharsis.
Bummed at himself for not utilizing the brunch opportunity to escape, Alan hides his shiv and prepares for Sam’s return. He encourages Sam that his feelings are valid and that feeling bad is part of therapy sometimes! You gotta kiss a lot of frogs to find your princess, my dude! And rejection is hard, but it’s necessary to find people you truly connect with. These are all valid insights, and Sam does seem to take them in, but Alan has one final bombshell he wants to drop on his patient: At the root of Sam’s insecurities and rejection fears is his relationship with his father. Maybe every time Sam feels hurt by someone else and lashes out with violence, he’s really just lashing out at his father.
Sam is intrigued. He grabs his laptop and shows Alan a video of Edmund Kemper, a very real serial killer who killed ten people in California between the ’60s and ’70s. Kemper came to the realization that his violent impulses stemmed from an abusive relationship with his mother. Once he killed her, his desire to kill vanished. The video is chilling, and the broad concept of addressing the root of the problem is spot on, but the whole point of Sam’s therapy is to get him to stop killing, right?
Alan tries to stop Sam. But Sam is sure of what he needs to do. He flies out the door, leaving Alan with another horrifying punch line: “I’m gonna kill my father, cut his head off, and fuck his skull … I’m just kidding, I’m not gonna fuck his skull.”
That’s our time for today. I’ll see you next week at our final (!) session.
Progress Notes
• Sam is kind of a mess at this point in time, illustrating that he is engaging with the emotional work of therapy more than he ever has. Alan does warn him that therapy is messy and painful, and Sam does seem to take these words to heart, but he’s still looking for quick fixes like murdering and decapitating his dad. (Simple!)
• When Sam asks Alan if a future child with Mary would be like him, I really felt for Sam. As a parent, you always worry if your worst traits will be passed down to your kids. Alan knows this as he just recently realized that Ezra inherited many undesirable traits from him. So Alan tells Sam what he knows, which is that we don’t know.
• The therapist in me loved it when Charlie said, “It’s perfectly normal to want to kill a patient leaving therapy prematurely.” Um, yes? Kinda? This is especially true when the patient is grappling with the messy work of change and they want to jump ship in the middle of a transition. PSA: If you’re in therapy and it’s hard, stick with it! The pain usually means you’re getting somewhere.
• The way that director Chris Long chooses to frame Alan throughout this episode is incredibly effective. Most shots of Alan focus intensely on him in the foreground, while the rest of the basement is completely out of focus. In the moments when Alan is working with Sam, he’s transcending his status as a captive; he’s a therapist trying to get through to his patient by any means necessary.
• WHY. HASN’T. ALAN. BROKEN. THE. PITCHER?!
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Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows! This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy NoticeThe Patient Recap: Man’s Search for MeaningncG1vNJzZmivp6x7t8HLrayrnV6YvK57wKuropucmny1tMRmp5qsmZq7tXnRnpqaqF2avaq%2Fzp2cZnFdlsK0r8ewoK2yXp3Brrg%3D