After a few fits and starts, according to Michelle Orange of the New York Times, HBO’s series “In Treatment” begins its second season tonight.  We are back in the life of Paul Weston, a psychoanalyst played by Gabriel Byrne, and his patients, whose individual sessions occupy each 30-minute episode.

You might never have heard of it (since HBO didn’t roll it out with the fanfare of its other big dramas), you might have balked at the unique scheduling of its first season (30-minute episodes every weekday night for nine weeks), or you might have gave it a shot but gave up rather quickly because you didn’t find many of the patients very appealing.

Well, I just wanted to write a quick note to tell you all that you missed some amazing TV — and it’s well worth catching up or at least giving the short, more palatably-scheduled second season a try.  With many of the same writers introducing us to new, but equally complicated characters, the second season doesn’t appear to be headed for a sophomore slump.

The ultimate compliment I can give the show is that, as my partner and I watched it, we felt that we were going through therapy ourselves — or at least we were very involved flies-on-the-wall.

That’s a mixed bag, of course.   Very few shows, no matter how thought-provoking, have asked its audience to explore such personal emotional depths on a nightly basis.  At the same time, of course, I’m of the mind that we can all use some therapy.  Especially at these rates.

The unique weeknight scheduling of season one was an artistic risk — but a big success, in my mind.  It allowed the audience to get into the rhythm of Paul’s life and by extension, the day-to-day struggles to confront his and his patients’ demons.

And, in the end, however personal I make those struggles, there is a distance between audience and characters.  In some ways, the characters represent extremes — with each case by the end revealing a fairly clear neurosis.

But at its best, the characters were also devastatingly ordinary. And I get the sense that realism turned many people off.  Some characters were arrogant, some were blowhards, some were self-pitying, etc.

Of course, in the nakedness of therapy, I’d venture to say we’d all be pretty difficult to watch.