When thinking about the image of the alpha male in therapy in American television, it is difficult not to begin by acknowledging The Sopranos (1999–2007). The relationship between the mobster and the therapist is at the heart of the show. As Martha P. Nochimson observes,

He sits uneasily and glances furtively around the room, before an intense shot of the eyes of the statue which emphasizes its significance. Later in the episode, an evasive Soprano attempts to change the subject, moving away from their professional relationship and speaking with Melfi not as a professional but flirtatiously, as he would with the other women in his life. All these aspects in staging and performance come together to suggest that this alpha male is in hostile territory. The therapist's office is feminized space, and even perhaps therapy itself is a feminizing discourse. After his failed attempt to subvert the nature of the relationship between himself and Melfi, less than a minute elapses before he starts reaching out to older manifestations of masculinity (asking, “whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type”) and also attempting to reassert himself and his world over both the therapist and her office. He remarks that “I understand therapy as a concept, but in my world, it does not go down.” Ostensibly, this is the world of organized crime, but given that numerous scholars have indicated that men who identify most strongly with typical masculine gender characteristics are more reticent to seek assistance, there is perhaps something transgressive just in the fact that Soprano seeks this kind of help.Footnote ²

For all the interest that there is in such a potentially transgressive gesture, though, we should not treat The Sopranos as if it is representative of therapy on American television more widely. In fact, much of the show's success and critical acclaim might stem from the fact that it is, in a variety of ways, actually rather atypical. Though Tony Soprano's anxieties stem from a range of sources and include his home life, in other cases – including each of those in this article, The West Wing (1999–2006), The Newsroom (2012–14), Numb3rs (2005–10), and Bones (2005–) – the tendency is for strong male figures to be shown in therapy relating to issues regarding their employment, suggesting that “concern in the early 1980s that males were more frequently portrayed in situations relating to their occupations than females” may well be less than completely allayed.Footnote ³ The centrality of employment in these scenes is intriguing in itself since approaches to the interrelation between therapy, masculinity and the workplace have changed over time. Laura Hirshbein writes about the early psychiatric interest in neurasthenia, a kind of nervous exhaustion resulting from fulfilling masculine expectations in high-pressure workplaces, but also notes that recognition of this condition effectively “disappeared not just because diagnostic patterns changed (although they did) but also because of changes in cultural definitions of masculinity.”Footnote ⁴

While I would not want to suggest that American television has reintroduced the idea of neurasthenia, it is clear that at some level the cultural definition of masculinity has shifted again in the 1990s, resulting in more space for programmes to explore the effect of such roles on the alpha male psyche. These programmes begin at the end of the 1990s, a significant time in terms of contests over constructions of masculinity. As Malin suggests, “the decade saw its share of sensitive, new male heroes in actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio, and even former tough-guy Arnold Schwarzenegger gave up killing for a time to become a kindergarten teacher. In the film Junior, he even gives birth.”Footnote ⁵ This also comes at a time in which counsellors and practitioners note that “the longer term adverse consequences of emotional restriction for men are becoming increasingly apparent.”Footnote ⁶ This article, then, explores the representation of therapy in this range of American television programmes in order to understand the way that shifts in ideology surrounding gender roles have affected the mediation of the alpha male in the twenty-first century. We focus on these shows specifically here, much like with Amanda D. Lotz in Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century, in part because of “the sense that ‘something is going on’ with men” in these shows, but also to demonstrate that these treatments of masculinity operate not only across varying genres but also across different distribution channels. Of the four shows mentioned here, two are crime dramas that were first aired on broadcast television; one, The Newsroom, was aired (like The Sopranos) on premium cable channel HBO; and the last, The West Wing, aired on a broadcast network but is still an example of prestige television. One final reason for limiting the discussion to primarily these four shows is the key concern of space available; many other programmes would also be relevant, with some – such as In Treatment (2008–10) – being intriguing avenues for further study. But one of the key considerations here will be how the portrayal of masculinity differs on premium cable, where “the fact that cable channels do not have to try to craft universally appealing male characters contributes significantly to enabling their deployment of emergent masculinities,” and broadcast television, where pulling in a broad audience share is still a primary concern.Footnote ⁷

Before continuing with the discussion of the texts, I think a word on what is meant here by the “alpha male” would be beneficial. Inevitably, each representation of masculinity under discussion here will have different priorities and values, and consequently one must be careful about assuming a static and inflexible idea of hegemonic masculinity that operates uniformly across the media landscape. With that said, there are shared character traits displayed by characters in this alpha male role, such as strength (both physical and mental), decisiveness and competitiveness. One of the most intriguing aspects of the increasing depiction of characters who display these traits in therapy is that there is an inherent vulnerability in their position. This article, then, seeks to explore how a range of American television programmes navigate questions of masculinity through this recurring trope of therapy as a defamiliarizing lens.

As mentioned above, The Sopranos’ treatment of the therapeutic process is far from typical. Even other acclaimed shows have a tendency to figure the space of the therapist's office in a fashion quite different from that of The Sopranos. Though it is often as celebrated, the work of Aaron Sorkin is suggestive in this regard. If we take The West Wing as an example, a psychiatrist is present in the form of the recurring character of Dr. Stanley Keyworth (Adam Arkin). With over sixty credits to his name before taking this role, it is difficult to accurately predict links made by the audience, but it is sensible to imagine that his major role on Chicago Hope (1994–2000), as the neurosurgeon Dr. Aaron Shutt, would certainly have been a prominent connotation, not only because of the lengthy span but also because of its relative recentness. If we accept this premise, then those with preexisting expectations of Arkin would have associated him with competence and with impressive credentials (and considering Chicago Hope, may well have particularly connected this with the medical world), while as the best friend of the central character it is equally plausible that those associations might also include male comradeship, confidence and discretion. Keyworth's first appearance comes in the tenth episode of the second season, entitled “Noël.” The episode is largely framed by the therapy session for the White House deputy chief of staff, Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), who had been shot in the assassination attempt on President Bartlet that ended the first season. This framework is intercut with flashbacks, some of which include, as Jason Mittell has observed,

This underlying violence is one of the ways in which Lyman makes for a surprisingly intriguing comparison with a character like Tony Soprano. On the surface, the two are rather distinct. Not only are they separated by the simple fact that one is a lawbreaker while the other is both a lawyer and an aide to the man whose signature finalizes American legislation, but also while Soprano is a cynical character, Lyman, like most characters in The West Wing, is ultimately an idealist. Not only does he abandon the front-runner in the Democratic primaries to join the Bartlet campaign, but he also later leaves the Bartlet administration early to convince the obscure but idealistic Congressman Matt Santos to run for the presidency against more established (but less appealing) candidates. Despite this, Lyman is definitely an alpha male and, regardless of their different spheres, one can make comparisons between his character and Tony Soprano. As Mackinnon says, “socially privileged, upper-middle-class men may experience and embody aggression in the boardroom and in career terms, but competition is not normally settled by physical fights,” or indeed by murder.Footnote ⁹ When each show begins, both Soprano and Lyman have reasonable seniority, but each has a role that can be summarized as “problem solver.” In Soprano's case, this includes any number of gangster genre clichés. Lyman, however, is portrayed as the fixer of the Bartlet administration, the senior aide who browbeats Congressmen in an attempt to pass legislation. This side of Lyman's character is introduced to viewers early, notably in the first-season episode “Five Votes Down.” Significantly, Sorkin returns to this dynamic between therapist and strong male character in another show. The Newsroom is his latest (and potentially last) television venture, set in the newsroom of a cable network called Atlantic Cable News.Footnote ¹⁰ The star anchor for the network is Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels). McAvoy is a high-earning, popular anchor before the start of the series, but spurred on by a new executive producer he decides to report the news on merit rather than chasing ratings or following trends, with McAvoy drawing on his legal background in order to “cross-examine” guests on his show. McAvoy not only bears the alpha male traits of being in the public eye, wealthy and powerful in his speech and argument, but also is exceptionally ambitious and makes grandiose statements like “I'm going to single-handedly fix the Internet.”

Sorkin's programmes are not alone in this interest in the alpha male. Numb3rs stars David Krumholtz as Charlie Eppes, a professor of mathematics at a fictional university modelled on the California Institute of Technology, and Rob Morrow as his brother Don, a special agent with the FBI. The show is different in this respect, as the relationship between these two alpha males – one an internationally renowned leader in his field, the other very much in the mould of “action hero” – lies at its centre. Though most academic criticism tends to focus on the mathematical conceit that lies at the show's heart our interest lies elsewhere since it is the latter figure, the special agent, who is required to see an FBI psychologist following a shooting incident.Footnote ¹¹ The therapist in question is William Bradford, played by Wendell Pierce.

The particular composition of these shows, and in particular Numb3rs, allows for a suggestive comparison with the FOX show Bones. The show is much more lighthearted in tone, but, like Numb3rs, the show prominently features an FBI agent who works in tandem with a scientist, in this case the more natural fit of a forensic anthropologist at the Jeffersonian Institute. Emily Deschanel stars as Temperance Brennan, the ultra-methodical scientist opposite the more instinctive former sniper Seeley Booth, played by David Boreanaz. Probably most familiar to viewers as the strong and silent Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), the love interest for the title character, and subsequently on the spin-off, Angel (1999–2004), Boreanaz brings associations of hegemonic masculinity to an inversion of the typical gender associations of the rational/emotional dynamic. As Yvonne Tasker observes, “the show's baseline scenario is that Brennan's hyper-intelligent scientist is too far removed from the everyday realities of politics and human relationships to comprehend such questions, the pattern being that Booth and others coach her in humanity as they work through cases.”Footnote ¹² But while Booth is emotionally literate in comparison with his partner, he is far removed from “New Man” sensitive masculinity, having little in common with the characteristics of “nurturer” as identified by John Beynon.Footnote ¹³ Though positioned in opposition to the cold, rational utilitarianism of his partner, Booth is a conservative at heart and the three key characteristics of the “New Man” – a failure to identify with the traditional father figure, a rejection of macho behaviour, and the influence of feminism – do not apply to him in any meaningful way.Footnote ¹⁴

Booth will, like our other alpha males, need therapy across the course of Bones. However, a major difference here is that there is no real effort to place an equivalent to Booth in the therapist's role, which forces us to question what it is about Booth's character, or their interactions, that makes such a move unnecessary. Dr. Gordon Wyatt is an Englishman, played by Stephen Fry. While it is unclear exactly how familiar the average American viewer of crime drama will be with Fry's British image – that curious mixture of the atheist, metropolitan gay star combined with a quintessential “Englishness,” the self-described “sentimentalist” – this is of less significance because the far more discernible traits of nationality become clear markers of division from the start.Footnote ¹⁵ Wyatt's first appearance comes in the episode “The Girl in the Gator,” at the start of which a PTSD-afflicted Booth responds to the chime of an ice cream van with gunfire.

The incident has clear parallels with Josh Lyman's earlier reaction to music in “Noël,” though with Bones’ generally lighter tone the incident is initially played for laughs. The resulting psychological assessment suggestively does not take place in an office, but outside. Wyatt, the Brit who tries to fit in with American culture, is significantly seen initially in his garden building a barbecue pit. Wyatt looks to sign the release immediately, but on hearing the details of the incident he defers. This introduces an element of tension between the two, although in keeping with the rest of the show this is generally dealt with lightly and revolves around the Briton's use of words like “cogitate,” which annoys Booth, almost as much as the prospect of being served tea rather than coffee. Booth himself puts this quite succinctly when he says to Wyatt, “you are REALLY English.”

The location of the therapeutic encounter is intriguingly nonstandard across these shows. Despite the title of this article, the traditional “couch” is eschewed in each instance, and the alpha male never reclines before a more powerful authority. In fact, they are often shown in more of a “natural habitat.” Lyman walks into a room in the White House, rather than a therapist's office. In “Noël,” Lyman sits across the table from Keyworth. This positioning, with the therapist and subject sitting opposite one another, mirrors not only The Sopranos, but also The Newsroom, Numb3rs and, when they are inside, Bones. In this last show, the therapy sessions never take place in Gordon Wyatt's office, and as often as not take place outside, or in social locations such as diners, ensuring that if Booth is to be analysed it will happen in line with at least one norm “of hegemonic masculinity – i.e., the public sphere as masculine space.”Footnote ¹⁶ There is added significance in holding their first meeting outside, not to mention the proximity of the typically masculine domain of barbecue, drawing upon “the twentieth-century association of men with outdoor meat cookery.”Footnote ¹⁷ The narrative importance of these factors becomes clear when Wyatt avoids his client's insistent requests that he release him by going for mortar for the pit. Most important of all, he asks Booth to make a start and, when he is greeted with surprise, quells it by asking if the agent is fit for physical labour. Though in each subsequent instance the role is smaller, like several of the other therapists we have explored Wyatt is a recurring character and appears again in the following episode, “The Man in the Mansion.” His primary role in the episode is to help Booth to forgive a coworker who lies about a case, but a number of tropes recur here, such as therapy sessions generally taking place outside. Significantly, though one is in an office here, it is not the therapists’ office, but Booth's, with the alpha male quite literally on his own turf.

Away from crime drama on broadcast networks, the therapeutic space is not entirely male. In parallel with The Sopranos, Josh Lyman's session does not take place in an exclusively male space; a woman called Kaytha Trask is also present. Even here, however, this dynamic is soon disrupted, as Trask admits that she is not a psychiatrist and, following the pre-credit sequence, does not speak again until approximately thirty-three minutes into the episode. This in itself draws attention to one way in which many broadcast television dramas are different from The Sopranos, in that rather than having female characters psychoanalyse the alpha male, the tendency is to draw the character of the therapist in strongly masculine terms too. Here, our focus is on the several examples of this in drama, but this also occurs in other genres. Consider the American sitcom Scrubs (2001–10) as an example: in the episode “His Story,” Dr. Perry Cox, an outspoken alpha male character famous for lengthy rants and portrayed by John C. McGinley, best known for connections with Oliver Stone, including Platoon (1986), is analysed (and ranted at) by a character played by Eric Bogosian (best known as the outspoken alpha male in the Stone's film of his play Talk Radio (1987)).

While this kind of deliberate casting choice can be rare, characters often still mirror one another. In The West Wing, once Trask is marginalized what follows is a contest between the two male characters. Lyman makes a statement of his own power by listing his full title and impressive connections, before forcing an admission that Trask's purpose is to follow him if he leaves the room. Keyworth accepts the charge but responds by asking again how Lyman cut his hand. When Josh hesitates, Keyworth echoes the phrase he had used seconds earlier, telling him, “You're not talking to the paper boy either, Josh.” This exchange begins a back-and-forth between the two that runs for much of the rest of the episode. When Keyworth plays down his mispronunciation of “Rosslyn,” the site of the shooting, Lyman responds by mangling the name of his hometown, rendering the far more famous San Francisco as “San Franchisco.” This passive-aggressive approach fails, and when Lyman tries to gain an advantage by displaying impatience, asking how long he will be kept, Keyworth reasserts control with the comment, “As long as I want.”

Lyman certainly has the attributes of an alpha male, but it should be clear that he is not the alpha male of the Bartlet administration. The office of President is sacrosanct, and while Jed Bartlet is often portrayed with flaws, the fact that he is an idealized leader positions him deservedly at the top of this particular hierarchy. It is telling, then, that in the later episodes, “Night Five,” “Posse Comitatus” and “Holy Night,” Keyworth's interactions come not with Josh Lyman, but with President Bartlet himself.Footnote ¹⁸ The first of these episodes also attempts something of a feint, as the first character that Keyworth interacts with is Lyman, but while Keyworth is already established in an office and waiting for Josh in “Noël,” he begins the later episode sitting on a bench. His significance is immediately reduced as he is seen waiting for someone from the White House. In the following scenes, Keyworth is normalized, transformed from specialist and “alpha” to the man in the street. The final shot of the pre-credit sequence reveals that Bartlet is the client in this instance, which leads into a remarkably different relationship. Lyman's admitted verbal talents do not match those of the President, who jousts far more evenly with Keyworth. Though the questioning style is reminiscent of the session with Lyman, Bartlet is able to parry more effectively, demonstrated by his repeatedly finishing the therapist's sentences. Eventually, Bartlet realizes that Keyworth is holding back, out of respect for the office, and instructs him to “say what you would say to any other patient.” Thus unrestrained, the doctor speaks far more candidly and the balance of power shifts. By the end of the episode, he has unsettled the usually composed Bartlet, echoing his previous encounter with Lyman. He manages this by turning the subject towards both the high expectations people have of the President, and also the difficult relationship Bartlet has with his father (a recurring Sorkin trope – perhaps appropriately enough, given the traditional interest that psychoanalysis has had in fathers and paternal authority), before signalling that the session is at an end. At this point, the President attempts to pull rank and insist that the session ends when he says it will end, but, having ceded ground in allowing Keyworth to treat him as any other patient, the previous relationship cannot simply be reestablished. With the final comment that, if he is going to treat Bartlet, he will be “the only person in the world … who doesn't care that you are the President,” Keyworth again leaves on his own terms.

The importance of the representation of the therapist can be seen elsewhere, too. Wendell Pierce, who appears as a therapist in Numb3rs, had a similar role in My Wife and Kids (2001–5). However, this relatively minor item on Pierce's CV would likely not have registered with many viewers, both because of the brief nature of his appearance and because of the different target demographics of the two shows. It is far more likely that Pierce's starring role as Detective William “Bunk” Moreland in HBO's The Wire (2002–8), both prior to and alongside his guest spots on Numb3rs, would have had much more influence on how viewers received his appearance. Moreland is written as a quick-witted, hard-living but very competent police officer. This preexisting association with police work has an immediate bearing on Pierce's first appearance as Bradford in Numb3rs. As elsewhere, Don Eppes is reluctant to attend the session. In this, characters reflect a tendency observed in reality:

Prior to the first scene in Bradford's office, Eppes tells a colleague that it is a waste of time. When questioned, he argues that the therapist cannot understand the decisions he takes on a daily basis because “it's not a textbook,” stressing a distinction between the “real world” of application and that of therapy and academia. It transpires, however, that Eppes has seriously misjudged his man. The mirroring of therapist and the alpha male patient is more pronounced than ever in this instance, as Bradford responds confrontationally, reeling off a list of “on-duty” credentials, including working as a narcotics officer in Los Angeles and a spell on the controversial CRASH (Community Resources against Street Hoodlums) Unit in Compton, California. A backtracking Eppes attempts an apology, but Bradford makes it clear that his overly defensive and, indeed, aggressive attitude suggests that this therapy is more necessary than even he thought it would be. Both here and in Wyatt's response to Booth's similar behaviour on Bones, the shows perhaps offer some kind of nascent critique (albeit a highly limited one) of the traditionally strong and silent masculinity as “potentially pathological” and “innately violent.”Footnote ²⁰

Bradford is not a regular character but returns to the show three episodes later. The form of the episode shifts slightly to emphasize the significance of the therapeutic process. Usually, Numb3rs begins with a crime in progress, which the FBI team must solve over the course of the episode or arc. In the episode “One Hour,” however, much of the pre-credit sequence focusses on an exchange in Bradford's office between the therapist and Eppes. The mood in this exchange is far less confrontational and, following on from his return to the office at the end of “Take Out,” it is clear that the alpha male now has some respect both for the psychiatrist and for the therapeutic process. The title, “One Hour,” refers to the amount of time Bradford is able to get Eppes to turn off his work cell phone. Though his attitude is more amenable, Eppes cannot shake the feeling that his time would be better spent back at the office. Bradford insists that he turn off his phone, and when Eppes protests he carries the field by insisting “My room, my rules.” The agent complies, but is rather sullen, and is forced to admit that he does not like being told what to do.

The emphasis on matching, or at the very least checking, the alpha male's masculinity recurs repeatedly. Even Gordon Wyatt, whose difference from Booth is obviously exaggerated by significant national indicators, must equal his patient's masculinity in his own, unique way. Their first session ends without resolution, but an unsatisfied Booth tries to force things by arriving at Wyatt's house at night, but the surprise tactic is unsuccessful and Booth has to come back again the following morning. It is during this meeting that Booth asks why Wyatt walks away whenever he answers the phone, a question which the therapist answers by asking, “Why do you answer the phone, knowing it will make me walk away?” It is clear at this moment that Wyatt, without trying to intimidate or buffalo an FBI agent and former military sniper, is the lord of this domain, and will only engage in the discussion on his own terms. The parallel with the significant telephone exchange in Numb3rs is clear, as once again the agent must put the case aside and commit entirely to therapy before the therapist will engage. Once this commitment is evident, Wyatt gets to the root of Booth's underlying issue – whether or not he deliberately allowed a serial killer to fall to his death – through bonding in the masculine environment that he has fostered. Away from the therapist's office, in the outdoors, with Booth, the self-professed barbecue master, in control at the grill, he provides the kind of insight that breaks through the defensive shell and, having made this progress, signs the release with the proviso that the agent return for treatment regularly.

One trait that links all of the alpha males that we have encountered so far is that, at various times, they all exhibit scepticism or hostility towards certain aspects of therapy that exist in the popular imagination. It is this sense of self-stigma, the idea of not living up to an ideal, which often serves to create the internal barriers that prevent more men from seeking psychiatric help.Footnote ²¹ This can, in turn, lead to intransigence on the part of male patients who actively resist the help on offer:

Likewise, in these programmes each character struggles with the idea that they cannot rely on themselves to solve their problems, either by veering towards hostility or, in cases where therapy has been mandated by an outside agent, by questioning the need for therapy in the first place. Tony Soprano, for example, insists that “though he ‘understands’ Freud (‘I had a semester and a half at Seton Hall’), he himself never wanted to fuck his mother.” While this quite understandable scepticism of academic Freudianism is unsurprising, other characters mirror this feeling with comments about therapy more generally. In The Newsroom, despite describing Habib's father as “his guy,” Will McAvoy has not seen a therapist in four years, and when his request for a prescription is initially rebuffed he responds with smart lines or overly terse answers. On hearing that Keyworth charges $375 an hour, Bartlet responds sardonically on hearing that Keyworth cannot easily tell him what is wrong with him, saying, “That would be $385 an hour.” A suggestive development in Sorkin's characters is that the therapists themselves seem to be quite dismissive of some of therapy's more emotional clichés. Unlike Jennifer Melfi, who tends to listen far more than debate, the therapists in The Newsroom and The West Wing tend to confront not just the client (and perhaps also the viewer) but also their expectations that this will be a feminized experience. This may work, in part, because of a popular association between therapy and the feminine because “of all TV programming, the four major daytime talk shows are the most directly linked to the therapeutic discourse,” and the expected audience for these shows is generally female.Footnote ²³ The alpha male has so much of his identity bound up in “the gender system [which] forbids the sameness of male and female” that the therapist must bypass the reflexive resistance to the feminine.Footnote ²⁴ In Jack Habib's case, this is manifest in the rather subtle line near the end of “Bullies” that he “knows what [McAvoy] thinks of all this, but I would really urge you to spend an hour a week faking it.”

Keyworth is written as a character with a far more brazen streak and consequently is far more explicit. When Lyman realizes the seriousness of his diagnosis, he attempts to bargain with Keyworth in an effort to keep his job, and, drawing on a popular stereotype, says that he knows that the therapist wants him to talk about his feelings. Keyworth replies,

Keyworth makes it explicit in this exchange that this session is not grounded in the traditionally feminine sphere of emotions. It is instead rational, logical and conventionally male; there is a problem to be addressed and they move towards a solution as quickly and empirically as the situation allows. In this, Sorkin scripts a therapist who is able to cut through masculine objections to therapy, as observed by Mahalik, Good and Englar-Carlson:

This aversion to emotional expression recalls Susan Jeffords's suggestion of the “emotionless” nature of a previous generation of American alpha male heroes, such as Rambo, implying that, some fifteen years after Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (1985), the real, hard-bodied American male still does not reveal this side of himself.Footnote ²⁶ Predictably, given that the law enforcement officers bear the closest resemblance to the action heroes of Jeffords's study, this tendency can also be seen in the two detective shows included in this sample. In Numb3rs, Don Eppes's first response to Bradford's overtures is to ask if there is a problem, demanding to know why the FBI expects him to attend these sessions. He attempts to invalidate the exercise, returning to clichés of psychotherapy in his insistent shouts of “I don't hate my dad, I like women and respect them as people, I don't get off on pulling my gun.” This in itself reflects a trend in police shows noted by Erica Scharrer: “The inquiry regarding whether ‘good guys’ have gotten less hypermasculine over time, on the other hand, was supported in the affirmative by analysis of variance for the toughness as self-control over emotions and drawn to danger for thrill dimensions.”Footnote ²⁷ Eppes moves from this into another defensive tactic, admitting that he had shot a suspect but detailing the reasons why he had done so: “I shot Crystal Hoyle, a spree killer who kidnapped one of my agents and was driving straight at a roadblock with a car full of grenades.” As Eppes derisively quips that this was a subconscious cry for help, Bradford responds by dismissing the subconscious label entirely, saying, “Let's make a deal. If you don't use any fancy psychological mumbo jumbo, neither will I.” This is an explicit example of the alpha male therapist rejecting an academic or theoretical model of therapy, and again this practical, no-nonsense approach strengthens the relationship between patient and therapist. Later, when Temperance Brennan shows her scepticism in front of Wyatt, he too expresses a dislike of psychology in a manner reminiscent of other characters we have encountered. His contempt is for the “patina of science over … roiling unknowables.” Here, the traditional masculine dismissal of therapy “in the usual way as a form of self-indulgence” can only be countered by an acknowledgement, a recognition of the flaws in that disparaged model and a move to something more amenable with a “hard” masculinity.Footnote ²⁸

The fact that Eppes begins his defence with a statement that he has no antipathy towards his father is significant in itself. Sorkin's shows demonstrate a tendency that Lotz has noted in other cable shows, namely that “in moments when frustration and anger with their circumstances become explicit, they most commonly blame their fathers – those who embody patriarchy.”Footnote ²⁹ Numb3rs resists this, however, and similar shows appear to treat the issue in a comparable manner. In Bones, Wyatt asks whether it was his father who had taught him to read plans (and thus given him the ability to build things like barbecue pits so well), a question which is answered by Booth's defensive “wrong tree, Doc, Dad and I were tight.” This is a point blank rejection of the Oedipus complex and is reminiscent of both Soprano and Eppes. In each case this might be because it is “the moment of the resolution of the Oedipal complex allowed the boy to identify with the father (gender identity),” suggesting a content relationship with conservative gender positions.Footnote ³⁰ Alternatively, it could imply a still more forceful rejection of the more controversial aspects of Freudian theory, not least because it posits that through the implied proximity to the mother, “psychoanalysis appears to teach us that even the outwardly most masculine of men have a hidden, guarded, soft emotional element within their psychology.”Footnote ³¹ The situation in Bones becomes still more significant when we recall that Booth is also “a descendant of John Wilkes Booth, perhaps the worst criminal in American history as he was the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. On [Bones] and others with similar parental storylines, the lead characters’ lives are defined by doing penance for the sins of their fathers.”Footnote ³² When Wyatt steers the conversation towards gender roles, Booth again reacts defensively, this time to the suggestion that he could be dating a man, exhibiting “the fear of homosexuality that seems intrinsic to normative masculinity.”Footnote ³³ Indeed, these shows, much like the ones that Lotz examines, “illustrate an uncommon paucity and nearly utter absence of gay characters so that gay identity functions as a structuring absence in several of the series.”Footnote ³⁴ In fact, the only show under discussion here which features a gay character prominently is The Sopranos.

In spite of the contempt for therapy, in each case the therapist is victorious. In The West Wing, rather than engaging Lyman in this verbal repartee – a field in which the political operator is particularly dextrous – he makes an impressive display of his professional knowledge. In a telling contribution, he retorts, “Josh, I diagnosed you in five minutes,” which leaves Lyman stunned and finally breaks his resistance. Like an overmatched boxer, he attempts to cover up, but the “true” version of the narrative is finally revealed: Josh eventually admits to the more violent act, that he had punched through a window rather than breaking a glass. When the episode ends, Lyman is a complete convert, and Sorkin writes his other therapist similarly: Jack Habib is dogged until McAvoy responds openly and honestly, and eventually observes that McAvoy always had easier access to the pills that were his professed goal. Ignoring McAvoy's protestations, Habib insists, “You didn't go to your internist because he doesn't ask you the right questions.” His insistence that McAvoy did, in fact, come for a therapy session and not for a simple prescription is what finally breaks the wall between the two and, as with Lyman and Bartlet before them, leads McAvoy to implicitly trust the man opposite. From there, it is a simple matter to assess that McAvoy's aversion to scaring people is the cause of his anxiety. Habib notes that McAvoy is “hardwired to hate bullies,” but, following the confrontation with the Republican Sutton Wall, in which the guest condemns the anchor for reducing his politics to an easy equation with race and sexuality, Will is forced to admit that “I was the bully.” McAvoy ends by acknowledging Habib's competence and diagnoses himself, attributing the issue with Sutton Wall as the cause of his insomnia. Habib, though, has one last surprise; he tells McAvoy that the cause is diet, blaming the bacon muffins that had been mentioned in the first minutes of their encounter. Though physical rather than psychological causes might seem to undercut the therapist's authority, this is just another example of Habib's control of the situation. He is able not just to diagnose the condition that McAvoy asks him about quickly, but also to see that there are other issues brewing under the surface that need to be dealt with. McAvoy is ultimately outmatched, and the victory for Habib is total.

Like Keyworth and Habib, Bradford shocks Eppes at one point by referring to events that he is not expected to know about. At one point, Bradford refers to Eppes's decision to send in an agent specifically to assault a suspect in order to extract evidence. When Eppes looks surprised, the psychotherapist says, “You'd be amazed at what I know and how I know it.” This again impresses the patient, but in acknowledging what is admired and what is dismissed it becomes apparent that the traditional, medical understanding of therapy has been displaced by detective work – in gathering background information before trapping the patient in a big, final reveal, the alpha male therapist comes across less as Dr. Frasier Crane and more as Phillip Marlowe, MD. Unlike the other characters we have encountered, though, Bradford cannot make a disciple of Eppes unaided, as the FBI agent leaves the office and only returns once he has spoken with his father. While popular broadcast-television shows can attempt to negotiate questions of masculinity by critiquing violent reactions or a reticence to communicate emotional difficulties, it appears that their need to cultivate a wider audience across the political spectrum means that they will still resist overly probing investigations into the still-contentious role of patriarchy.

For both generic and practical reasons, then, it is perhaps unsurprising that the CBS crime drama Numb3rs is more conservative than the other shows discussed in this article, and though family tensions make up a significant part of the programme there is also little significant challenge to the stability of the family unit. Much of this stability is a result of the character of Alan Eppes (Judd Hirsch), the widower father of Don and Charlie. In a 2005 review during the first season, Robert Bianco suggested that Hirsch was “doing a subdued, funnier version of his meddling dad from Independence Day.”Footnote ³⁵ However, far from being the meddling father, Alan is far wiser than either of his children and provides them with a perspective to solve interpersonal problems on a number of occasions. Drawing not only on previous Hirsch roles (such as Alex Reiger in the sitcom Taxi (1978–83)), but also from a wider array of father–mentors on American television (including, but not limited to, Jim Anderson, John Walton, Ben Cartwright, “Big” John Cannon and Philip Banks), Numb3rs validates traditional familial power structures by placing Alan Eppes at the head of a rather benign patriarchy. Conservative figures like Robert Bly of the mythopoetic men's movement would likely approve since Alan Eppes breaks with conventions of other television fathers and is presented neither as “an object of ridicule …, or a fit field for suspicion …, or a bad-tempered fool.”Footnote ³⁶ It is unsurprising, then, not only that Don needs to be impressed by the practical credentials of William Bradford, but also that the entire therapy process needs parental approval before he can return to the office. When he does so, he is more open-minded, and the extent of the transition is emphasized by some symmetry with an earlier scene. At two different points in the episode, Eppes's phone rings and Bradford asks if he has to “take that.” In the first instance, Eppes dodges, turning the question into one about whether he needs to listen to Bradford's criticisms. In the latter there is no evasion, but a straight answer. In each case the question and answer are the same, but the tone of the exchange signifies a remarkable transformation in attitude towards the process. Similarly, on Bones, by the time he encourages Brennan to consult with Wyatt to attempt to solve difficulties in their working relationship, Booth is also a complete convert to Wyatt and his methods.

As has been mentioned, in each case the therapist is not a series regular, but a guest star, and consequently their position tends to wane in terms of narrative importance after their initial appearance. In his third appearance on The West Wing, in an episode called “Posse Comitatus,” the character of Keyworth features only briefly. In a short scene, he is unable to convince the President to reveal the nature of the plans that are troubling him. Given that these plans involve a clandestine execution ordered from the President's office, that Bartlet does not share this information is hardly surprising. Even so, the character does not play a full role in the episode, being used rather opportunistically to signal both the dilemma and the level of secrecy involved in the plot. The final appearance of the character, in the fourth-season episode “Holy Night,” is more of a return to the model of previous episodes. The character is reasonably well established by this point, and so is introduced in very low-key fashion. Immediately after the opening credits, he walks across the frame and out through the external doors of the Oval Office with no obvious explication, with the focus of the episode elsewhere. The committed West Wing viewer would pick up on the subtle clue, and the payoff comes later in the episode. The last time we see the two together, it is clear that Bartlet, too, is a convert. They converse about Bartlet's problems amicably, and there is no need for the cut and thrust of their first encounter. When Bartlet makes a Freudian slip and inserts the word “airplane” into the conversation, there is no effort to dodge it or retreat into a shell. Perhaps the most significant moment in the exchange comes in Bartlet's simple, open question, “What do airplanes signify?”

Such condensed returns are not atypical. Jack Habib appears in two more first-season episodes of The Newsroom (one of which, interestingly, sees Adam Arkin playing a reasonably senior strategist in the Republican National Committee), but, as with Keyworth in The West Wing, the focus is less on the process of therapy itself, but acts as explication and of furthering specific plot points. In Habib's case, his role is generally reduced to helping McAvoy understand the complexity of his relationship with Mackenzie McHale, playing a part in their eventual reconciliation and the expected conclusion of their storyline romance. On Numb3rs, the principal arc which sees Bradford analyse Eppes ends, but Bradford returns more than a year later in the fifth-season episode “Scan Man.” The focus of the episode is elsewhere, and Bradford is brought in mainly to observe and assist with the interrogation of a suspect on the autistic spectrum. There are, though, some scenes in which he speaks with Don about the previous encounters, but these are rather different, taking place not in the therapist's office but outdoors. Bradford also concedes that he does not believe that Eppes will be able to find the peace he needs on a couch, or even by looking “within himself.” Don responds to this by turning towards religion, and the episode ends with Don walking into a synagogue. Given that the therapist himself has admitted the limits of his discipline, the final message of this strand on Numb3rs is the superiority of Judaeo-Christianity over therapy, the ultimate unequivocal restoration of patriarchal authority. Though Numb3rs cannot be seen purely as a product of backlash politics, since it raises questions of these kinds rather than merely obscuring them, it does seem to be in line with a trend that Scharrer identifies in detective fiction: “The means show a move toward more emotional responsiveness from the 1950s through the 1980s and then back toward more stoicism in the 1990s.”Footnote ³⁷

In Bones, the character of Gordon Wyatt also comes back, appearing in two further episodes. The first of these, season four's “Mayhem on a Cross,” really serves only to pass the mantle of the show's therapist on to the new series regular, Dr. Lance Sweets (John Francis Daley). The dynamic between Sweets, a much younger character, and the two series leads is rather different to their relationship with the older Wyatt, and the endorsement by the more respected doctor as he retires serves to close the gap between Booth, Brennan and Sweets. This aside, Wyatt has moved into a supporting role for the primary characters rather than an analytical one, and, like Bradford on Numb3rs, plays a role in their investigation. This also occurs in his final appearance, although in season five's “The Dwarf in the Dirt” there is something of a return, as Booth seeks out Wyatt when his aim is awry following brain surgery. Given the number of references to food in the earlier episodes, it is perhaps significant that Wyatt has retired to become a chef when Booth tracks him down. Wyatt again consults with Sweets and helps repair the relationship between the younger doctor and Booth (it is narratively significant that Booth goes to Sweets before seeking out Wyatt), and also helps the team to solve the murder, but what is perhaps most telling is his final advice, which does lead to Booth getting his firearm certification. Leaving medical jargon completely behind, Wyatt tells Booth to “grow a set! Be a man! Step up!”, a prescription all the more telling because within the narrative confines of the show, it is completely successful.

In conclusion, American television reflects shifts in our understanding of masculinity and appropriate masculine behaviour. The Sopranos is one of the more explicit examples of this, dealing with a crisis of masculinity so clearly delineated that “academic commentary that attempts to interrogate it effectively only repeats what the show has stated from the outset.”Footnote ³⁸ Examination of the four shows here, however, suggests that the “‘something going on’ with men” identified by Lotz might be more widespread than first imagined. Across both broadcast and cable networks, television programmes have returned to therapy as a trope for exploring its alpha male characters and their performance of masculinity under stress. However, away from premium cable where more contentious questions about sexuality and patriarchal authority can be raised, there is less willingness to confront the alpha male, and it is as though there are key elements which must be in place to legitimize the process of therapy. The therapists themselves must be distanced both from overly emotive displays and from jargon incompatible with hegemonic masculine attitudes. Location is also important in determining how acceptable this experience is, and to what degree the therapist can deviate from the patient. The more conventional the therapy session, in the traditional office, the more parallels must exist between the alpha male and the therapist. If the therapy occurs outside or on other ground in which the alpha male can be seen as in his element, however, there is some room for manoeuvre in the doctor's characterization. In general, though, by positing a specific masculine domain for therapy these programmes often serve to reinforce traditional attitudes towards hegemonic masculinity, and indeed towards patriarchy more generally, even while they explore the effect of such roles on the psyche.