In Treatment Season 4 with Uzo Aduba as the central figure, therapist Brooke Taylor, is coming soon. The setting this time around is Los Angeles during COVID.

For info about the first three seasons (2008 to 2010), in which Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) was a therapist in therapy himself, see my previous post.

When In Treatment Season 4 is available on May 23rd (HBO Max), its 30-minute episodes will air back to back on Sunday and Monday nights.

In addition to Aduba, the cast of the new season of In Treatment includes the following:

• Adam (Joel Kinnaman), the guy in Brooke’s conflicted love life
• Eladio (Anthony Ramos), a home health aide for a wealthy family
• Rita (Liza Colón-Zayas), Brooke’s close friend
• Colin (John Benjamin Hickey), a white-collar criminal recently released from prison
• Laila (Quintessa Swindell), a teenager dealing with family expectations

Will Brooke, as In Treatment‘s prior therapist Paul Weston, seek her own therapy? Not sure, but viewers will definitely see that she has her own issues, at least in part via her conversations with friend Rita. “The press release says the therapist is dealing with ‘a life-altering loss,’ and her on-again, off-again boyfriend has resurfaced to complicate her life. As a Black woman, she also faces challenges in the field that Weston certainly never had to contend with” (Looper).

Kelly Lawler, USA Today, reports that Aduba and the series producers recently spoke at a conference about “the importance of bringing the series back with a Black woman at its center, which allowed them to explore new topics.” As therapy stigma is prevalent in communities of color, this is a welcomed approach. Related to this,  Aduba herself has been publicly relating her personal experience with therapy.

More from Lucy Feldman, Time, about what you can expect to see:

In the space of a few episodes, Brooke has to coax out the nuances of a young caretaker’s feelings of abandonment, help embrace a teenage girl’s Black and queer identity, and navigate a privileged man’s dishonesty. The show doesn’t shy away from contemporary tensions, pushing into violent racial fantasies and toxic masculinity. Watching Aduba’s performance in these scenes, it’s easy to feel Brooke’s frustration, unease, even danger. ‘This is a Black, female psychologist treating people through the lens of the world as she sees it,’ Aduba says. ‘There are a lot of unknowns of how that day is going to go, and why people have arrived there.’

Watch the trailer below: