What I’m Watching: The Patient

The Patient: Season 1, Episode 8 “Ezra” (B)

We know that Charlie is just a manifestation of Alan’s subconscious, and therefore he’s well aware of how the compliment about the best kosher steak he had ever had would have landed with his daughter-in-law. There’s still so much he’s trying to process about Ezra not feeling that he was embracing his new lifestyle, starting with the apparently insulting donation he made to the yeshiva when he had paid $40,000 for Shoshana to go to medical school. It was affirming, therefore, to see what Alan couldn’t, which is that Ezra was going to pray each morning and then spending all his time putting up missing posters for the parent who he has definitely noticed isn’t around anymore. His absence hasn’t helped his home life either, and I do feel that’s somewhat more interesting to explore than, say, Alan worrying about whether he’s going to come out of this alive and in the mood to tell jokes rather than choose how he’d want to be killed if it came to that. Killing someone else so soon shows that Sam isn’t making any effort, not that Alan isn’t doing the job he’s been abducted to do, and the fact that it’s someone so closely connected to him is only likely to get him into trouble. I do also think that it’s possible that the events we’re seeing play out in the outside world with Ezra and Shoshana are not happening at the same time, though a rescue like the one Alan has been repeatedly imagining doesn’t feel like it’s likely to happen.