The German mini-series Die Therapie was a huge success for Amazon in 2023. However, what starts out entertaining ends up being a total disaster and trivializes abuse.
I watched 46 new series and series seasons this year and nothing upset me as much as the end of Die Therapie. The fact that the Amazon adaptation of Sebastian Fitzek’s bestseller was such a huge success for the streamer makes me cringe. It trivializes a father’s crime against his daughter. Worst of all, no one seems to care.
Spoilers for the entire first season of The Therapy follow
I wish I had stopped The Therapy after episode 1
The entire story of The Therapy is completely gaga – which makes the miniseries an insane but entertaining psychological thriller until shortly before the end. I wish I’d switched off again straight away and not allowed myself to be captivated in the first place, to save myself the subsequent outburst of rage at the ending.
At the beginning, we think a psychiatrist (Stephan Kampwirth) has lost his daughter (Helena Zengel) at the pediatrician’s office. The 13-year-old disappears without a trace during the doctor’s visit. On the anniversary of the disappearance, the father retreats to a vacation home on an island. A woman visits him there. She wants to be treated, but also seems to know something about the missing girl. A struggle for information ensues. In flashbacks, we learn about family life before the daughter’s disappearance, until a big twist at the end fills in dozens of narrative gaps. Hold on tight!
(Josy and Viktor Larenz)
The father is actually in a coma, mentally ill and has made up the whole island thing to cope with reality. In reality, he has been keeping his daughter ill for years with small microdoses of rat poison to prevent her from fledging. When he finally kills her in his madness, the mother is able to revive her and keeps her hidden from him from then on. Sounds wild, but at this point the series could actually have turned the corner.
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I yelled at my TV during the last scene of the Amazon series
The perpetrator could have faced consequences for his crime at the end, but the finale clearly decides against it, both narratively and stylistically. As he gets closer to the truth in his island fantasy, the father wakes up from his coma. But instead of being handed over to the police or sent to a closed institution, he is dropped off on the doorstep of his wife and daughter by his doctor himself – and the mother, who has hidden her child from his murderer for years, lets him in. What follows seems like a tearful reconciliation after a trivial argument.
The father leaves with the satisfaction that his daughter is now happier than before and a sentimental pop song begins, as if ending a bittersweet teen drama. That in itself is worth a big tantrum. But it gets even worse.
In the final scene, the makers of the Amazon series pass up their last chance to give the daughter her own voice and demonstrate a modicum of reflection. In the epilogue, a few years after the events, the now 16-year-old decides to pay her father a visit. Instead of sitting in a closed institution or a cell, he is treated as a nursing case in a beautiful house. Open balcony door, sunshine, gentle breeze, all that.
He has completely withdrawn into himself and dreams of being back on the imaginary island from the beginning of the series. Instead of simply watching his daughter telling him off, breaking up with him, allowing her wounds to heal, leaving him for good, self-determined, she puts her hand on his and gently whispers: “Hello, Dad!”
The series ends in the psychiatrist’s imagination. He, in his imaginary vacation home on the island, with his daughter. Sentimental music plays, the wind rustles through the trees, tears flow and he is happy. The end. I could puke. What the hell?
