Therapist REACTS to Georgia Dow Gail and Evil Therapist Video
Added 2025-05-06 10:18:58 +0000 UTCLet's set some context this:
1) My intention with this video is to take a curious, thought provoking, exploratory stance. It's not a 'versus' video, its about me understanding another perspective. Anything that I say that might be contrary to what Georgia is saying is more to do with expanding the conversation.
2) I went into this blind. I hadn't watched it first and then collated my thoughts. I wanted you to see my thinking process and what is coming up for me in the moment, rather than a well rehearsed response.
3) If you like these sort of videos where you get to see my raw thought process (opposed to the sort of style that Georgia has done here, where its watched, scripted, filmed, edited) then let me know and I can do the same with others. i.e. her Arcane videos.
4) If there are any other therapists / professional reactors you want me to react to. Or maybe not from a therapist but videos that tackle a therapeutic / mental health concept but is written by someone who isn't an expert then let me know.
5) Big respect to Georgia Dow for producing such excellent content and spreading much needed and accessible information.
Comments
That’s a really interesting point you made at the end and one I hadn’t considered. That Joel wouldn’t go back. No because of bad therapy, but because he came close to revealing something.
Lenny
2025-05-09 06:50:15 +0000 UTCGail was having a bad day. I don’t believe she knew she was going to confront him. Gail said I know you’re leaving something out. My thought was yes with Ellie but also with her husband. I think she’s desperate to know why Joel killed him the way he did. Because of her drinking, she slipped and said what she said. To me, Joel seem to look guilty. She tapped into that when he was vulnerable almost got him to consider telling her the truth. I saw Georgia’s video I started watching it and quickly turned it off. I didn’t like her anger and judging bad therapy in the last of us world by today’s standards. Watching this, I agree there should be at least one video for all those people who’s never been to therapy. So they can know that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. as someone who has been to therapy, we didn’t get anywhere until I got push back from my therapist. Had Joel lived I don’t think he would go back to Gail because of how close he came to put Ellie’s life in danger.
Kath
2025-05-09 01:40:47 +0000 UTCMy first reaction is that it seems to me that Georgia was looking at this scene in bad faith. I've seen other reactors do something like this whenever they review a TV show that depicts their own professional expertise. Granted, some TV shows and movies are better at portraying certain professions than others (e.g., The Pitt comes to mind as a very realistic yet fictional ER type show). But we have to recognize that Gail's interaction with Joel was meant to serve a narrative purpose, not necessarily reflect an actual therapy session. Is Gail a good therapist? According to today's standards, definitely not! Georgia definitely pointed out all of the legitimate problems with this therapy session. At the same time, what does good therapy even look like in the world that Joel and Gail live in? I'm not saying this to give Gail an excuse to be a bad therapist, or to excuse her alcoholism and excessive drug use. But am I surprised that she's this way? No, not necessarily. Despite her flaws, she seems fairly stable and is definitely well respected within the community. Given their standards of not letting "bad people" into Jackson, if Gail was really this kind of awful human being, I don't think she would last very long in this town anyway.
Enterprise24
2025-05-07 23:46:49 +0000 UTCIt's mentioned in the next episode that there are no other therapists in town, so I guess Gail was the only therapist available for Joel, even given what he did. But I still agree that Joel working through it with Tommy or someone close and safe for him may have been better than a qualified therapist with a conflict of interest. Still, it's just a fictional apocalypse setting, so it makes for good TV, as you say 😊 Gail may not be the most professional therapist, but she sure makes for an interesting character!
JoJo
2025-05-07 18:58:59 +0000 UTCThanks for sharing, and I agree!
Lenny
2025-05-07 10:15:07 +0000 UTCI think the thing that most rubs me the wrong way about Georgia's reaction to this is just the sheer number of assumptions she makes. None of us know anything about Gail and Joel's relationship, but there's things we can infer from what they do say. They seem cordial at the beginning of the session. Even before the session, Joel seems to be quoting something Gail said to him to Dina, who seems surprised a bit about him being in therapy. There are indications that he is learning and willing to try things that Gail has suggested in earlier sessions. During the session, Gail mentions that this is around their fifth session. And before that, it's been years of them both being in this community, so there may have been some kind of prior relationship before therapy initiated. Georgia seems to assume the worst at every turn, even when referring to Gail being blunt about things. In my personal experience, it does help to have a therapist who is as willing to be blunt if they think you're lying or not being completely truthful when talking about something that is clearly a deep issue. This does not have to be something that HAS to be hurtful to the client, or break their trust. If I was able to get away with lying in therapy I don't think I'd really be able to gain anything from it or address some of the real issues. We can't really assume to know the previous relationship that these two have, or the foundation that they built in previous sessions, but we do know Joel is a pretty blunt, straightforward, "no bullshit" type of guy. Some level of mirroring in Gail may have been what appealed to him in the first place. I think that, like you said in the video a couple times, there is another factor to take into account which is the setting in which this takes place. Gail seems to be the only therapist in the whole town. To some extent, she may see someone hurting and feel an obligation to help even if she hasn't completely reconciled her own feelings with the party. They are in a setting where sometimes they might have to do things they don't like for the good of each other (i.e., Joel killing Eugene). I don't think a lot of the things she said were intentionally evil or intended to irreparably harm Joel. And at the end, Georgia assuming that Gail doesn't want to heal? That she wasn't ashamed of the feelings? I just don't really understand I guess why you'd make those jumps when she DOES look ashamed and hurt. Overall, I definitely agree that it was unprofessional and in a lot of ways went too far. And it does help to serve an overall narrative of calling out therapists who do abuse their power or intentionally hurt their clients. That is good, to bring awareness to those things, but I definitely feel like it's a big stretch to label Gail as intentionally evil over this.
Brandon Van Dzura
2025-05-06 21:23:39 +0000 UTCI think you actually touched on a good point: what purpose does Gail's behavior further the narrative? These aren't real people working through real problems. Joel appears to be in therapy to help with his relationship with Ellie. Ellie is everything to Joel & her pulling away seems to be the motivation for his pursuit of therapy. Based just on what we see, Joel isn't trying to process Sarah's death or the violence he participated in after the end of the world: it's his father-daughter dynamic he's working on. Gail's behavior and comments in a later episode are also fairly calculated to hurt - so Georgia has correctly identified some real issues there, but Gail is also a broken person living in a broken world, with a life punctuated by violence and fear - she copes with alcohol and weed, which may not be great, but what else does she have? "Physician heal thyself" is pretty tough when you are the only therapist around. She ends up being like a scapegoat: tethered in the wilderness carrying all the weight of what her clients put on her. While not good therapy (although I'd argue that Joel's "backing off" does represent some success) - the very fact Joel is IN therapy shows how important that relationship with Ellie is to him. The other thing is that Joel CANNOT share his big secret(s) with Gail: the murders of the Fireflies in Salt Lake (and Gail's husband had been a firefly), and of course Ellie's immunity that he can trust nobody with. Joel is doing what he does: protecting Ellie. I am curious if Joel has been in therapy with Gail for a while and only recently killed her husband: so we're seeing the Elephant in the room; Gail unable to contain her anger - unable to pretend that horrible event didn't happen or didn't affect her. Pedro's acting here was phenomenal when she asks if he hurt Ellie - you can watch him struggle with keeping her secret and his face changes as he goes from vulnerability and sadness...to his go-to, anger.
Michael M
2025-05-06 18:48:11 +0000 UTCdr. mick is a therapist who makes video gaming + mental health content, he has a lot of tiktoks where he analyzes the last of us (the video games) and it'd be cool to see you react to some of those if you're interested. there's a compilation of them on youtube
miroh
2025-05-06 17:51:20 +0000 UTCYeah, they mentioned me on stream once. Nick particularly wasn't very complimentary about me. But I'm not going to play that game with them. I respect their channel and their content and what they are sharing.
Lenny
2025-05-06 14:26:12 +0000 UTCI almost forgot!!!!…. when you said about reaction therapy (Tom & Nick). That was the first channel I subscribed to on Patreon. It’s YOU and TOM I am glad you mentioned him, his bloopers are hilarious (they’re not on YouTube) but on Patreon he is really funny, i don’t drink water or anything when i see his reactions in case i don’t choke on my drink, he almost choked me once🤣😂❤️
eleana UwU ShadowWolf
2025-05-06 13:45:55 +0000 UTCWe have to be careful with assumptions. I say in the video we don't know the timeline regarding Eugenes death or when therapy started (I point that out as you start your comment with 'Actually' which seems to suggest that I say we do know the timeline). My point is more that we don't know the timeline, we don't know what was in the other sessions, we don't know how Gail was in those sessions, we don't know Gails private internal experiences, we don't know the function of her disclosure, or whether it was planned or opportunistic. What we do know is that Gail is a character written into a TV show with a purpose. What that purpose is we don't know just yet, but we need to view this through that lens - because that is the context that it is situated in.
Lenny
2025-05-06 12:32:00 +0000 UTCYeah its nuts isnt it. I didnt notice whilst recording but i certainly did watching it back!. Its because I turn on an led light when I record and its the brightest light in the room so I guess it gets attracted to that!
Lenny
2025-05-06 12:26:26 +0000 UTCAlso Stuu!! There was a huge fly in your room doing some crazy acrobatics in the air.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
eleana UwU ShadowWolf
2025-05-06 12:17:19 +0000 UTCActually, we don’t know when the therapy sessions between Joel and Gail started happening. Personally I believe they started when Joel and Ellie went to Jackson city and that was four years ago so we don’t know exactly if it was years or one year or some months but Gail said “this is my first birthday without my husband”, so Joel killed Eugene one year ago. Now, I might be wrong, but I do believe that Joel had gone into therapy from the start that’s why you see him in season 2 more relaxed, more safe and different than he used to be… so I’m guessing Gail helped him at some point. And that’s why Joel continues the therapy sessions with Gail, because he felt safe enough to go to her (before he killed Eugene). And He even said to Gail “I did what you told me. I don’t put pressure on Ellie” so that means they had sessions before! And they might’ve had a good therapeutic relationship going on. However, when the incident with her husband happened, that’s when Gail started to want revenge. And because Joel had a balanced therapeutic relationship with Gail before he killed Eugene, he continued to visit her with Joel unaware that Gail wanted revenge, (I think) but we also see in that scene that she said to him “I hate you for it and I can’t forgive you” so yeah, this is Gail getting her revenge and it’s the only revenge she can have if you think about it…. she can’t fight him to kill him or she can’t have someone else to have him killed, so believe in her mind the safest option and best revenge is emotional damage! Her knowledge is her weapon. Maybe Gail started drinking and smoking weed after her husband died because of the grief or she was alcoholic from the start I don’t know. Maybe I’m totally wrong about this, but these are my thoughts.
eleana UwU ShadowWolf
2025-05-06 12:17:11 +0000 UTCNice points. I think that we are on the same page there. And I think from my video, and when I was doing it in real time I was aware that I was agreeing with Georgia on most points, but I felt overall that she was skimming the surface on what are very complex topics. I hope you liked this sort of video that I made because I enjoyed making it, and I enjoy my perspective being tested as that can only open me up to different ways of thinking. Edit: I also hope that it came across as respectful toward Georgia, my intention is never to disrespect someone else's perspective whether they are in the same profession as me or not.
Lenny
2025-05-06 12:12:41 +0000 UTCEven though I don't like Gail's approach on most occasions, I will say that the dynamic between her and Joel is intriguing because it seems intentionally messy. Gail isn’t a safe therapist. Joel isn’t a safe patient. And they’re both limping toward connection while dragging unresolved grief, guilt, and rage behind them. Gail is deeply compromised by her own trauma and substance use, and her sessions with Joel reflect that. There’s an emotional undercurrent in everything she says that suggests pain she hasn’t processed, and her passive-aggressive tone in their final session does seem to stem from unresolved resentment over Joel killing her husband. From a therapeutic standpoint, she’s crossing lines she shouldn't cross, and in an ideal world, she shouldn’t have taken Joel on as a client in the first place. But the show’s world is far from ideal. Post-apocalyptic life has blurred those boundaries, and we’re seeing the raw outcome of two broken people trying to hold up a structure that neither is equipped for. Conversely, Joel’s not a casualty of bad therapy. He actively avoids emotional honesty; he lies to Gail, skirts around the truth of what happened with Ellie, and shows little interest in acknowledging the pain he’s caused others (like lying to Ellie or killing someone Gail loved in a supposedly cruel manner). It feels like he wants to be understood without doing the proper work to be fully known. Maybe he’s trying to protect Ellie’s secret about her immunity, which is fair, but even then, that kind of emotional avoidance can be just as damaging and frustrating as Gail’s instability, because it starts to feel less like therapy and more like emotional self-soothing through avoidance. That’s where the process breaks down. It kind of ties back to when Gail says, “How long are you gonna keep sulking like this?”, or something along those lines. Harsh, but it points to a real issue that Joel seems stuck in. I hear the argument that Gail holds more power in the therapist-client relationship, and I agree that power dynamics matter. But in this specific case, that dynamic is complicated by Joel killing her husband. Gail should have recused herself but I think everyone is forgetting that Joel also chose to seek comfort and help from someone he knows he’s personally devastated. That’s not a neutral move either; honestly, it shocks me that Joel can just casually go up to her after what he's done, but I guess we need to see the full story with Eugene before judging. What really stood out to me was what Gail says in episode 3: “Some people just can’t be saved.” It seemed like an incredibly harsh line to me, especially coming from a therapist, but in the context of Joel, it says a lot. I interpreted Gail's advice to Tommy as meaning that some people can’t be saved unless they WANT to be saved. It’s not that they’re broken beyond repair, it’s that they’re unwilling to face what they’ve done (or will do), or who they’ve become (or are becoming). If Joel truly wanted to be saved, he’d confess his demons to Gail and let himself be vulnerable. He’d confront the lack of accountability that keeps pushing people like Ellie—and even Gail—away. So yeah, I think neither party is in a truly healthy place to support or repair the other, and both contribute to the ongoing dysfunction.
Isaac
2025-05-06 11:13:26 +0000 UTC
