Since its 2019 premiere, Showtime’s addictive series Couples Therapy has focused on two of the world’s most necessary yet complex lifelines: love and communication. Each season, the show’s resident psychoanalyst, Dr. Orna Guralnik, and her blue-eyed husky Nico invite viewers into her spacious New York office to sit with a new quartet of couples for nine visits. Once Orna slides her doors shut and turns her hourglass upside down, the session begins, and so does the unraveling.
There’s this unwritten belief that your therapist is an endless well of wisdom and insight, but on Couples Therapy, Orna routinely consults with her own clinical advisor, Dr. Virginia Goldner, about her patients. To see Orna seek advice adds an unexpected layer of humanity to the collected and intuitive doctor. In Season 3, she still checks in with Dr. Goldner, but this time viewers are introduced to her peer advisory group — or, as I like to call it, the psychological group chat. This diverse crop of counselors of races and genders assist Orna, and it’s here that a light is shone, and Orna’s blindspots come into focus.
