McAvoy: Web Therapy Sounds The Death Knell For Human Connection In Our Time

As a resolute man of deeply-held principles, I often find myself on one-man crusades. It's not that I wouldn't welcome the company when I'm railing against ever-falling standards in journalism or why Post-Its never should have been produced in colors other than yellow: I certainly would. But if mine happens to be the sole voice crying out in the wilderness against a grave ill in contemporary society, so be it. That said, I feel that the season premiere of Web Therapy will convince some that when it comes to the intrinsic atrocity of the Internet, I am right, and I have been right all along.

The show revolves around Fiona (Lisa Kudrow), who formerly worked in the financial field in some capacity, but who now offers clients therapy, in increments of a few minutes at a time, via webcam.

Has Fiona gone back to school to earn legitimate credentials that would qualify her to perform such work? She has not. She is a charlatan of the worst stripe, exploiting troubled people for her own personal gain. And in our benighted times, a person like that can be the celebrated heroine of a television show, just because she knows how to use the new-fangled, glamorous Internet.

It may be hard to remember now -- or impossible, even, for the youngest among you -- but there was a time in this country when you couldn't send instantaneous messages or bid on vintage lunchboxes using the Internet. If you wanted to communicate with someone, you had to pick up a telephone receiver the approximate size and weight of a turkey leg, dial his number (or hers, if you wanted to go on a date), and hope he was home, because if he wasn't, well, the two of you were not going to be able to talk. If you wanted to buy a vintage lunchbox, you had to take yourself to a flea market and interact with the person who wanted to sell it.

My friends, let me anticipate your counter-argument and refute it out of hand: yes, a webcam conversation is not functionally that different from a telephone call, and, given its visual component, offers more in the way of human connection. The difference is that a landline telephone (remember when that phrase had no reason to exist?) was a fixture of all our lives from our very births, whereas I still don't understand how online communications work and I have no plans to learn.

And anyway, that's beside my point, which is that Web Therapy gives us all an early look at the dystopian future we will face if we continue to embrace the Internet. The tactile pleasure of handwriting dozens of invitations to your birthday party has been obviated by E-Vite. No more will we turn to our trusted friends for restaurant recommendations -- there's no need, if we have Yalp. And if you feel supported and refreshed by your in-person visits to a flesh-and-blood therapist who took actual classes at an institution you've heard of (and I don't intend to say either way whether I do, but if I did I certainly wouldn't employ anyone who didn't at least attend Harvard Medical School), you can forget it: if your problems can't be encapsulated in 150 characters, they're not worth solving. That's the tragic message of Web Therapy.

Not for nothing, by the way, but the saddest thing about Web Therapy is its abuse of Lisa Kudrow. The beautiful and talented Kudrow was such an adorable, Gracie Allen-esque throwback of a ditz on Friends, so sunny and sweet and appealingly feminine, offering the men she dated and those who were just her close male friends so many opportunities to explain to her how, for example, evolution works and that Santa Claus -- look away, kids! -- is not actually real. I don't know who created this abomination of a show, but it's most assuredly not someone with her best interests at heart.