User Reviews

A therapist (Naomi Watts) struggles with competing temptations and impulses that potentially threaten her controlled life of career and family.

The psychotherapist's couch is a fruitful setting for multiple kinds of drama, if only for the acting showcase it potentially gives to character actors embodying someone confronting their issues in treatment. Based on the viewed first episode at least, Gypsy nominally falls into a relatively recent variant more devoted to subverting the older image of therapists as saintly helpers and mentors, and instead mining the therapists' own abundant maladjustments and conflicts.

This series also adds a wider set of contexts, following Jean the therapist into her interactions with colleagues, friends, family, her daughter's school, and others. That licenses the creators to deploy some creative cinematography to frame her moving through multiple urban and suburban environments, and recurrently frame her in some interesting symbolic ways. For example, showing her alcohol-fuzzed glow by shooting her through a semi-translucent pane in a rail carriage. So we know this will be potentially more than a theatrical-mode performance piece.

Occasionally such symbolic elements are opaque to the point of being irritating, but they presumably will become more interpretable as the series progresses. The repeated holds on ticking clocks presumably is meant to evoke some sense of anxiety for Jean, but anxiety by itself with no object is too diffuse to be much more than irritating.

Similarly, there is a brief sex scene that is framed as if through a door crack implying a covert viewpoint that is not further explained, and may make you feel uncomfortably voyeuristic.

Such complicity may end up being the meat of the show. The idea of compulsion is introduced in the opening voiceover then again by one of Jean's substance abusing patients, who stares longingly and soulfully into the camera lens and thus at the viewers. Jean progressively begins acting out in impulsive ways, from white lies to professional misconduct, substance abuse, theft and emotional infidelity.

This is mostly presented in empathetic ways that make it seem like an authentic rebellion or a necessary compulsion rather than as immediate red flags with looming consequences. Many viewers probably want to feel things strongly like Jean apparently does, and will want her to seize the day rather than put up with her life of upper-middle-class compromises.

The episode was generally well written and performed. However, the supporting characters were largely overshadowed in favour of showcasing Naomi Watts' lead, and so the full company is hard to evaluate after this one episode. Bourgeois people gossiping at a dinner party does not immediately make for engaging characters. There probably are novel storylines pending around the daughter character, and some progressive themes around gender and sexuality, but there is not enough in this one episode to see how well that is going to be deployed.

The apparent betrayal Jean experiences in the closing moments of the episode will probably serve as a deciding threshold for most viewers. Do they register how Jean's own covert infidelity makes her potentially as much a target for judgement as the person who thwarted her? Or do they want to see Jean righteously confront them? That will probably decide your commitment to repeat viewing.

Maybe the title could've been different, but I think I will really like this cancelled Netflix series with Naomi Watts, called Gypsy, released June of this year. Because of all their programming, this show will eventually fade into obscurity but I think Watts and some stellar cinematography left me quite impressed. I do plan to fit the ten episodes in this month. Watts is a therapist with what appears to be a picture perfect life of affluence and domestic bliss. Dinner conversations with her successful lawyer husband, Michael (Billy Crudup), and active child, Dolly, appear quite cordial and hospitable. Even we see them as relaxed and okay, with laughter and shared complimentary dialogue seeming to express a model idyllic family life. Michael appears to respect and love his wife although he does have good chemistry with his secretary, Alexis (Melanie Liburd). I guess that is a seed planted for us as Jean (Watts) doesn't like her at all, and Alexis shares a warm, friendly camaraderie with Michael. There's a scene where Alexis is putting together a personal profile for a dating site when her boss passes by needing her assistance. She alternates back into her job right quick-like, too. Alexis sees to Michael's calls and modulates his busy schedule, often a filtration system for him in terms of important messages that should or shouldn't interfere with his work day. When Alexis tries to persuade Jean that Michael is on busy calls with important clients, it just annoys her and causes her to raise her voice. Jean just doesn't like her. Alexis handles his complicated schedule like a boss, totally reliable and dependable. Only Jean undermines her efforts to allow Michael to continue to go about his day without reminders of a trip to Belize or their daughter trying to be affectionate towards another girl at school. Nothing from what we see in the first episode would indicate any funny stuff between lawyer and secretary. Just a good working relationship. Will it remain that way? The remaining season should reveal anything else. What Jean decides to do, when not in therapy sessions with clients, certainly might cause as much suspicion...

So, as a therapist, Jean Holloway (Watts) tries to tend to her patients by allowing them to talk out their troubles and perhaps work them out with her. What is the solution to Sam Duffy's (Karl Glusman) obsession with Sidney (Sophie Cookson), a coffee bar café barista who sings on the side? Jean tells him maybe to pack up her stuff in a box and give it to her. Jean, however, goes against perhaps the ethics of her profession by meeting Sidney at the café stop, seeing just who is so impactful towards Sam's life.



Sophie Cookson does have that enigmatic, charismatic quality where eyes just draw towards her on a stage when performing. As a barista, it is a job and during an initial scene in the café you can hear fellow employees balking about customers (leaving tips and general attitudes towards them) as Jean awaits her order (which is often an Americano). So it is when Sidney gets away from the café where she captures the most attention. Jean arrives at the café, noticing Sam as he seems still quite unable to let her go despite bringing Sidney's box of stuff to her (as told to by Jean as a way of "letting go"). Jean flees before Sam can see her, which indicates to us that she knows that what she is doing is perhaps questionable.



Sam speaks to Jean of how it seems Sidney has this ability to sing on stage directly to you specifically. Jean understands this as she goes to a performance of Sidney and her band after an uneventful night with the gossiping wives of her and her husband's friends. Jean felt almost compelled to go, after introductions at the café seem to go cordially. And the presentation of the episode cleverly made sure to establish that when Jean's eyes and Sidney's (as she goes into the song completely in command of her audience with a voice that seems to work as a lure of the fly into her web) do meet it is as if the therapist (posing as a childless freelance writer named Diane) is being directly courted. When the two later meet around a street corner as Sidney takes up a smoke with a band mate, Jean does agree to go for a drink. A slight touching of finger as Sidney seems to initiate contact for something more "affectionate", Jean realizes attraction, backing away. Again, a tease for the remainder of season between these two? I think most definitely.



Sidney tells both Sam and Jean different past stories involving her father. Whether he died or was a lying criminal, the past is Sidney's so Jean soon realizes from Sam that both were told something right the opposite of the other. What is the truth? Does it even matter? Will Jean-who lied to Sidney about who she is and what she does-take too much offense to being lied to by Sidney or just be drawn further into her orbit?