The first episode of a thriller can really kick off the central premise of the story, putting its characters in immediate peril. Or it can give viewers pieces of its story that will come together at some point, but seem to be only vaguely related at first. A new thriller from Germany does the latter.
Opening Shot: A man is alone in an arctic landscape. Then he looks down and he’s actually in a crowded doctor’s office waiting room, a kid slamming a toy truck on his foot.
The Gist: The man, psychiatrist Viktor Larenz (Stephan Kampwirth) is waiting for his 13-year-old daughter Josy (Helena Zengel). When it seems to be taking too long, he barges into the examining area, only to notice that she’s not back there anymore. In fact, she’s gone missing. He calls his wife Isabell (Andrea Osvárt) with the horrific news.
We pick things up a few days later; Viktor and Isabell are holed up in their massive home; their lawyer, Wolfgang Riegger (Samir Fuchs) tells Viktor that the gathered crowd wants to hear from him, but he’s too distraught. Isabell comes out to face the crowd and press herself.
Cut to two years later. Viktor and his dog Sinbad are on a boat to an island called Parkum; his family has a beach house there, but it’s been shut down since Josy went missing. He’s there to clear his head, and try to answer questions e-mailed to him by a journalist on the second anniversary of Josy’s disappearance.
There, a mysterious woman named Anna Spiegel (Emma Bading) shows up at his doorstep, even though no one is supposed to know he’s there. She says that she needs his help and that Riegger told her where to seek him out. She’s a children’s book author who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. When Viktor turns her away, she passes out as she leaves his property; he brings her inside, and when she wakes up, she tells him about when she was diagnosed. It involved a family dog named Terry, whom she blamed for her father’s death. But she then shows that the stories she tells aren’t always true.
In the meantime, a leading psychiatric clinic in Berlin is being taken over by Dr. Roth (Trystan Pütter), who has decided to manage the clinic differently than his predecessor. One of the things he does is take over a number of cases from other doctors at the clinic, including Dr. Frieder Jeschke (Peter Miklusz), who was a rival for the position. Dr. Roth and his family also visit Viktor and his family, as we see in flashback, and their daughter Mila (Eva M. Hirschburger) becomes an influence on Josy, going so far as to pierce Josy’s ears with a safety pin after Viktor scared her off the notion by bringing her to a tattoo shop.
Back on the island, Viktor tries to find out more about Anna, who seems to know more about Josy’s disappearance than a member of the public would.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Therapy is based on Sebastian Fitzek’s 2008 novel, and the vibe is very reminiscent of recent Harlan Coben adaptations like The Woods.
Our Take: There’s a good thriller at the center of Therapy, and we see the elements of what’s going to be going into that central story in the first episode. What we hope is that, given how disparate those elements seem in that opening segment, that things come together quickly so the story takes some more solid shape.
The part of the story involving Anna is the solid part; in her schizophrenia, the characters she writes into her stories somehow become real in her mind. She mentions the family dog in one of her first stories, and then Viktor finds a stuffed animal with that dog’s name on it. She talks about seeing a character from another story committing suicide, and it corroborates with a news story from 15 or so years prior. But Anna is a mystery person; she doesn’t seem to have any digital footprint, especially given her profession, so just who is she, and why has she written a story about a teenage girl going missing from her doctor’s office?
Dr. Roth’s contribution to the story is more nebulous. He’s definitely a big part of it, as we see near the end of the first episode, as his association with the clinic that Josy disappeared from is stronger than we were led to believe. But we’re not quite sure of his relationship to Viktor and his family, just when he took over the major clinic in Berlin, and just how much his daughter’s influence affected Josy.
We do think that this will all come together, and we get the feeling that Dr. Roth is also connected to Anna, but we hope that those pieces will be put together relatively quickly, so we don’t spend the first three episodes showing Viktor chasing after the mysterious Anna without getting any answers.
Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: After another encounter with Anna, Viktor hears Josy’s favorite song playing on the piano; he chases after Anna as a storm starts to brew.
Sleeper Star: What role does Viktor’s wife Isabell, played by Andrea Osvárt, have to play in this story? She’s one of those characters who seems to be there to be more than just a grieving parent, but we’re not sure at this point.
Most Pilot-y Line: Mila’s a “bad influence” on Josy because she listens to BTS and has her ears pierced? Wow, what a juvenile delinquent!
Our Call: STREAM IT. We hope that the story at the center of Sebastian Fitzek’s Therapy comes together early in the series’ run, because some of its parts aren’t particularly well-defined in the first epiosde.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.