The premiere wastes no time setting up Alan and Sam’s precarious circumstances, giving The Patient 10 episodes to peel back the curtain on Sam’s unpredictable psyche, why he kills, and whether Alan can ever figure it out and escape—or meet the same fate as Sam’s victims. The escalating tension from his captivity, and any subsequent attempts for freedom, are clearly the nail-biting portions of the series. But the slow-burn tension feels riveting and not dragged out, thanks to installments that are less than 30 minutes long. And that’s a real treat, alright. It’s rare for serious dramas to be a half hour apiece with tightly structured storytelling to boot. (A recent exception might be Barry, which evolved from being just a dramedy in season three). The Patient is a successful thriller because it is consciously bite-sized.The Patient Season 1 Download.
But those short episodes are just a bonus. The meat and overarching theme of The Patient is summarized in a quote from Alan: “People need meaning in their lives, probably more than anything else.” That line also recalls series co-creators and writers Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg’s former FX project, the award-winning spy thriller The Americans, which was an often heartbreaking dissection of Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings’ (Keri Russell) marriage against a Cold War backdrop.
While The Patient doesn’t have similar scope, emotional heft, or time on its hands as that series, it’s still a worthwhile dissection of Alan and Sam’s personal issues and larger conflicts. One is an unhinged psychopath craving magical redemption, while the other has suddenly got all the time in the world to contend with his sorrowful past. And the show explores how (as Alan says), despite their totally dissimilar worldviews, they both draw meaning to their lives from their respective complicated father-son relationships.