Rocky Relationships Go Through The Analytical Wringer in Season 2 of SHOWTIME’s COUPLES THERAPY

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede Sometimes viewers and patients don’t quite understand what COUPLES THERAPY – both the TV show, and the actual counselling – is all about. Dr. Orna Guralnik is at the centre of the acclaimed SHOWTIME docuseries, which returns for Season 2 on Sunday, April 18, with all nine episodes dropping on Crave. Midway through the first episode of the new season, Dr. Guralnik puts it this way: “People come in convinced that the problem lives in their partner, and what they’re going to ask me to do is help them change their partner, so that life gets better. But that’s not the work of couples therapy.” Dr. Guralnik speaks those words to her own clinical advisor, Dr. Virginia Goldner, who responds, “I think that’s right – it’s not just that they want to fix the other person, they may want to accuse the other person, they may want justice. But we have a much bigger agenda.” That so-called bigger agenda plays out in Season 2 of COUPLES THERAPY with three new couples unburdening themselves to Dr. Guralnik, as she guides them through honest discussions and confrontations, hopefully leading to substantial breakthroughs. The new season also sheds an intimate light on at-home confinement during the pandemic, which has forced every couple – and even Dr. Guralnik herself – to examine the profound changes that have occurred within their daily lives. “In certain ways there’s no difference, because the work is the work, and people are people, and what they come to therapy for is to deal with what’s bothering them, and to deal with their relationships,” said Dr. Guranik, during a virtual panel interview with TV reporters. “On the other hand, everything changed because the boundary between the privacy of one’s home and the big world completely evaporated, and the big world was in the room. It was in couples’ lives, in their bedroom, and it was in our production. So it’s both very the same, and very different, and all of that is captured.” As for the couples in Season 2: There’s a high-strung woman who is frustrated that her laissez-faire husband isn’t providing the life she dreamed of, both financially and in terms of the number of kids they have. There’s a man who pushed to move in with his girlfriend after she became pregnant, but they still sleep in separate rooms, and she still isn’t sure she wants to spend the rest of her life with him; and there’s the man whose alcoholism almost killed him, and even though he has now emerged from rehab, and he and his partner clearly love each other, they still can’t talk about certain things, and seem to be stuck in the past. “If there is a treatment where I’m not surprised, then I’m not doing my job,” says Dr. Guralnik at the end of the first episode, stressing that every case is unique, no matter how many she has seen. Dr. Guralnik admitted to TV reporters that the ability to watch these filmed sessions afterward has had an impact on her perspective. “I think I’m a better therapist having done this, seeing myself, seeing what works and what doesn’t, kind of revisiting these sessions, but maybe even more so by talking about it so much with the directors,” she said. “We have very deep conversations about the process, which I think have really changed my work, and made me much more accountable to myself. In most treatments, you do a treatment, and then a treatment comes to an end, and the people go, and it’s over. In this case, I have treatments, and then I see the treatments, I talk about them, and then I see the people later coming back, so there’s so much opportunity to reflect, and then think again, and tie it to theory, and then I tie it to my teaching. So I think it has deepened my work a lot, and I feel very grateful for that.” billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv