The word of the day is therapy. This week’s episode of The Neighborhood is interesting in that it seems both pro-therapy but anti-therapist; it promotes the value of emotional openness and honesty and pushes the idea that couples therapy shouldn’t just be reserved for those who’re struggling, but it also makes a point of highlighting how a lot of therapists are grifters whose livelihood depends on you not healing.

It’s Dave and Gemma, predictably, who introduce Calvin and Tina to the idea. Dave and Gemma attend couples therapy regularly for “tune-ups” and it seems to work for them — it even makes them friskier than usual. Tina thinks it might be a good idea, even if Calvin has an old-fashioned view of therapy, in much the same way as he has an old-fashioned view of basically everything.

But as we quickly see, things aren’t so clear-cut for either couple in The Neighborhood season 3, episode 3. Dave and Gemma enjoy a supposedly celebratory date night during which all they do is bicker, and those issues lead to a return to therapy, this time to actually patch up some problems.

A guest-starring Suzy Nakamura plays their therapist, Dr. Chen, whose only solution to a lack of emotional honesty seems to be a period of abstinence. When Dave and Gemma both confess that neither of them actually likes going to therapy and they just endure it because they believe the other person sees value in it, both are able to work through their resentments entirely on their own. This, of course, is not ideal for Dr. Chen.

But she has willing clients in Calvin and Tina — one willing client, anyway, Tina thinks that a month-long period of abstinence might be good for her and Calvin, and most of the gags in “Welcome to Couples Therapy” revolve around him trying to seduce her. It’s only after the men give each other (terrible) advice that Calvin and Tina are able to work through their issues, again without Dr. Chen’s direct involvement.

In the end, therapy helps both couples, but the therapist doesn’t — even Marty and Malcolm reach something of a turning point in their sibling relationship thanks not to Dr. Chen’s book, which Tina takes home, but the parts of it that Marty pretends were in there.

This recap of The Neighborhood season 3, episode 3 mp4, “Welcome to Couples Therapy”, contains spoilers. We recapped every episode — check out the episodes tag.