In the new FX for Hulu limited series "The Patient," Sam Fortner (Domhnall Gleeson) abducts and imprisons his therapist, Dr. Alan Strauss (Steve Carell) in the hope that Strauss can cure him of his homicidal compulsions. The story can be, and has been, described in many ways — a psychological thriller, a black comedy, part of the recent therapy-show trend but with the ever-popular serial killer twist.
As I watched, however, I couldn't help thinking that it was the first real sighting of that elusive trend we've all been wondering about for the last two years — the post-pandemic narrative.
In mid-2020, when even people who were not epidemiologists began realizing that COVID-19 would not vanish or even become manageable in a matter of weeks or months, there was a lot of talk about what sort of visual storylines would emerge from this time of catastrophic death rates, global fear and near-universal closures.
