Better Late Than Never: Shrinking Season 2

 

One of the few benefits of the Hollywood labor stoppage of 2023 was that it allowed me enough time to start watching shows that I very well would have fallen under the radar during the usually busy fall of that year. With almost no television to watch on weekdays I ended up watching a series that had all the trademarks of something I would love but wouldn’t normally have the time for. Arguably the best of those shows was the first season of Shrinking.

It had all the hallmarks of what can make a classic series but can fall short in the wrong hands. Bill Lawrence, the creator of such underrated masterpieces as Scrubs and Cougar Town before creating the landmark Ted Lasso, is never the wrong hands. With the best group of actors he’s ever worked with for any show – including as always his own wife Christa Miller – he took the world of a traumatized therapist, played by that legend Jason Segel, trying to recover from the death of his wife a year earlier and centered on him rebuilding everything that he had broken during that period. And then, at the end of that extraordinary season, the chickens came home to roost when the patient he considered his breakthrough Grace (Heidi Gardener) pushed her abusive husband off a cliff.

The first three episodes deal with Jimmy, as always overextending himself. He hires his best friend and attorney Brian (Michael Urie, winner of the Supporting Actor prize from the Critics Choice) to represent her as her defense attorney. Grace spends the first two episodes in prison, still punishing herself for what she did far more than the state of California ever could. Then in the middle of friends with benefits relationship with his colleague Gaby (2023 Emmy nominee Jessica Williams) he ends the benefits part and has now done a considerable amount of damage to the friends part. Finally in the midst of the season premiere he realized he had gone to far in his relationship with his patient Sean (Luke Tennie) and handed him over to Paul. To his credit Paul’s methods are far better than Jimmy as a therapist.

But the biggest bomb went off at the end of the season premiere: when he met the worst possible person. That would be the driver of the car who killed his wife in a hit and run. Those of us who only know Brett Goldstein (a co-creator of this show along with Lawrence) through his incredible work as Roy Kent will be stunned by the subdued, fundamentally broken man we see here. Jimmy spent the next episode trying to figure out how to break the news to his teenage daughter Alice (Lupita Maxwell). Naturally he did it at the worst possible time and Alice, who was a pillar of strength throughout the first season, has been doing her own form of spiraling. In the second episode she wrote a long, angry letter at the behest of her best friend Summer which she never intended to send. Then she took out the car for the first time driving to go by the house of that man and stood there. Later on, she told Paul that she was thinking about confronting him and she promised she wouldn’t. Paul said: “I’m getting a sense of déjà vu” and he was right to feel that way: in that same episode she confronted him at his job, told him who she was and completely broke down. Her actions at the end of the episode are by far the most unforgivable – yet completely understandable – thing she’s done so far in the series.

So much of Shrinking is like therapy itself for every character: two steps forward, one step back. Jimmy, paradoxically, is making more progress this season while many of the people in his orbit are struggling. His daughter is by far the most obvious example, but Liz (Miller) demonstrates to. Essentially Miller is playing the same type of character she does is every one of the series her husband has created: someone who is domineering, self-centered and hysterically funny with a heart deep down. Liz’s heart is harder to find than some of her other characters and every time she does so, she can blunder badly. Such is the case with the food truck she and Sean are partners in. In the last episode he had a conversation with his father and based on it, it made her think that the right thing to do would be to sell the truck to her father so they could work together. But in keeping with her character, she did so without thinking or telling  Sean first and when he learned what happened, he erupted at her. For the first time in a while, it’s clear Liz’s feelings and her sense of self-worth are damaged.

Sean, it’s worth noting, isn’t innocent: he has spent much of the series going out of his way to deny much of his own problems. He has refused to connect with most of his old life before coming back to the country and Paul has gently been pressing him to go forward, though not in the dynamic, ordering sense Jimmy did. It’s clear in a way the first season wasn’t how much more effective Paul’s kind of therapy can be in a way Jimmy’s wasn’t at times: his approach is more effective in one session that so much of what Jimmy was trying before.

The show continues to keep what was working before and build on other things. In a superb move Derek (Ted McGinley) who lurked so much in the background has been promoted to series regular and we are starting to get a sense of his own depths. He had a conversation with Paul about his relationship with his girlfriend (Wendie Malick, when do you have time) who he’s starting to wonder if the conditions of his health will end up hurting their relationship. Paul initially rejects Derek’s advice, but at the end of the episode we see he has found a way to learn from it.

And as always the heart of this exceptional show is from that ‘young up and comer’ (Michael Urie’s words at the Critics Choice Awards) Harrison Ford as Paul. Lawrence has always had a gift for writing curmudgeonly characters with a deep soul and Ford is the most recent beneficiary of that ability. Every scene Ford is in he steals without even trying, even line out of his mouth is hysterical, everything he says or does has a layer of depth even when he pretends there is none. Every time you see Paul on screen, you see a clear genius and a brilliant therapist, and a man who cares very deeply about the people in his life though you know he would rather punch you then admit that point. Paul has been dealing with the reality of his Parkinson’s rather well so far in Season 2 but I am aware of enough to know that eventually things will take a turn, if only because we know how these diseases work. Not long after taking on this role received a lifetime achievement award from the Critics Choice Awards in which he was referred to as a ‘supergiant’ and every time I see him, you know why he is one. Ford has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and a SAG award so far this cycle, and it is likely an Emmy nomination is not that far down the road.

So many showrunners have been bemoaned the rise of streaming as hurting their creativity. Bill Lawrence, by contrast, has gone out of his way to embrace it whole-heartedly. It’s hard to blame him for thinking that way: Ted Lasso managed to earn him the recognition he’d more than deserved for the past twenty years, including two Emmys for Best Comedy. This past year his adaptation of Bad Monkey earned high praise and may be on the short list for awards down the road. It may not be too early to say that Lawrence’s work with Apple TV may rival so many of the more successful collaborations between showrunners and cable networks – David Simon with HBO,  Vince Gilligan with AMC, Jenji Kohan with Netflix. Shrinking is the second consecutive master class he's been responsible for and it has already been granted a second season. The series has also received Golden Globe and SAG nominations for Best Comedy series, Jason Segel and Jessica Williams have been nominated for Emmys already and it is all but certain the show and many of the cast members will be nominated for this upcoming season.

And like Ted Lasso and indeed so many of the masterpieces of comedy that have graced every platform this decade, Shrinking embraces kindness and warmth rather than so much of the nastiness and unpleasantness that were far of comedy during the 2010s. Shows like Abbott Elementary, the recently departed Somebody Somewhere and such current classics as Only Murders in the Building and Hacks have been able to produce hysterical laughter  by seeing the humanity behinds its characters rather than watching them treat each other horribly and fail. That may be one of the reasons The Franchise – an attempt to recharge the kind of humor of Veep and Silicon Valley – was a critical disaster and was cancelled after one season. Considering everything we are going through in the world today; we want to laugh with our comedies and see them grow. Shrinking is ye another example of the kind of comedy that we really want to spend more then 30 minutes with and hate when we’re told our time is up.

My score: 5 stars.