The Patient Episode 3 is out now! Created by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg for FX on Hulu, the executive producers for the series are Joel Fields, Joe Weisberg, Steve Carell, Caroline Moore, Victor Hsu and Chris Long. The production companies for the series include Joel Fields Productions, Flim Flam and FXP.
The main cast features Steve Carell as Alan Strauss, a therapist and Domhnall Gleeson as Sam Fortner, a serial killer and the new patient of our therapist in question. Actors Linda Emond plays Candace Fortner along with Laura Niemi as Beth Strauss, Andrew Leeds as Ezra Strauss and David Alan Grier as Charlie Addison. Alex Rich is also part of the cast. The third episode of The Patient has a runtime of 23 minutes.
– FX’s The Patient Episode 3 Review Does Not Contain Any Spoilers –
The Patient Episode 3: Issues
In the third episode of The Patient, we get an insight into Sam’s issues deeply. The episode begins right where the second episode left off. We get to see the figure that visits Alan at the end of episode 2 is actually Sam’s mother, Candace, played by Laura Niemi. She interacts with Alan and we find out that although she is aware of Sam’s urges and dangerous impulses, she decides not to intervene to ‘protect’ her son.
Later in the episode when Sam finds out about Candace’s interaction with Alan, he is a bit taken aback if not wholly shocked and, we see Alan pick up on it and suggest a family therapy environment. He asks Sam to have sessions alongside his mother so as to make some substantial progress.
In The Patient Episode 3, we see Alan continuing to persist Sam to unchain him and lie back in his wife, Beth’s thoughts. However, as the episode progresses and we get to know how Sam’s childhood has been painful, it is shocking when we come across a climatic ending that keeps us truly scared for what happens next.
The Patient is proving to be an interesting study, not only to understand the client but, also the therapist here. Although Alan is desperate to break free, we somewhere see him finding comfort in this new setting that is a different kind of mundane from his old life. As for Sam, his closed-up personality is not giving us much but, whatever we witness from him in the span of 23 minutes is enough for us to gauge the uncomfortable feeling that keeps crawling on his skin.
As performers, both Carell and Gleeson are putting their best foot forward by offering us performances that make the 23 minutes so interesting that you wish the show was longer. However, the pacing of this particular episode left a little discontinued somewhere in the middle. Especially, with the involvement of Sam’s mother, Candace, we could have at least gotten a few flashbacks as a visual aid to understand her perspective of Sam’s father but, the interaction with Candace seems to not make a whole lot of difference as we assumed it would.
The Patient Episode 3: Final Thoughts
Overall, The Patient Episode 3 is on the right track for the audience to guess and hit their stones as to what will happen next and also sink in their claws in the present episode. The cliffhanger-like endings that the show is offering are a good way to hold the viewers’ attention until the next revelation. Truth be told, it is working well in the favour of the show.
You can watch The Patient Episode 3 now on Hulu.
To read our review for the rest of the episodes, click here.
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You wrote “Sam’s mother, Candace, played by Laura Niemi.” That is incorrect. Sam’s mother Candace is played by Linda Emond. Beth Strauss, who is Alan’s wife, is played by Laura Niemi.