As we continue to wait for the third (and reportedly final) season of AppleTV+’s hit comedy series Ted Lasso, the streaming service has provided us with something to tide us over: Shrinking, a new comedy series from the team behind Ted Lasso (that would be Bill “Scrubs” Lawrence and Brett “Roy Kent” Goldstein), along with star Jason Segel. And while Shrinking doesn’t manage to reach the heights of its football-playing cousin (at least not in the initial six episodes provided for critics), there’s enough shared DNA between the series to give me hope that this one will get on the right path sooner rather than later and turn into something special.
Like Lasso, Shrinking starts with a fairly simple premise: A therapist (Segel, who shines in the more dramatic moments but tends to push a bit too far over the top on the comedic ones) has checked out of every facet of his life following the tragic death of his wife roughly a year earlier. As he begins to emerge from his cocoon of numbness, he decides that he is going to “cure” all his patients by simply telling them the realization that they should be making in therapy. Sounds like the makings for a funny – if patently unethical, from a therapist perspective – series, no? Well, perhaps, but unlike Lasso, which continues to ride its basic premise – fish out of water football coach slowly inspires those around him to strive for excellence while coming to terms with his own fears of inadequacy – Shrinking seems to abandon its premise after an episode and a half and try to settle into a character driven sitcom to only partial success.
The biggest issue with Shrinking is that it’s trying to do too much too quickly – which can result in the writing skipping over key steps in character development or simply pushing the story too far too fast. The clearest instance of this is with the character of Jimmy (Segel). When we meet him he’s deep in the throws of numbing himself via drugs, alcohol, and hookers (although we find out later he’s not sleeping with them – simply playing card games in his grief). He’s sleepwalking through his work – only rarely clocking his patient’s fears and worries, choosing instead to nod along and let them keep churning through their various cycles with little direction. He hasn’t spoken to his best friend Brian (Michael Urie, who is too often dialed up to a ten, but who is incredibly effective when he’s allowed to relax) in a year, and perhaps most damning, he has checked out of his role as parent to his smart and self-sufficient daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell, who holds her own with everyone in this stacked cast and turns Alice into one of the show’s strongest characters).* While we – and Jimmy – know it’s going to take time and energy for him to rebuild his bridges, the writers don’t seem to care nearly as much about doing that work (which is a surprise, considering how well-plotted so much of Ted Lasso’s character work tends to be with a few minor exceptions). We see Jimmy slowly gain trust only to make a boneheaded choice and backslide (totally normal), but the series doesn’t want to make him work to gain back that trust. Instead, we are expected to assume it will end up alright and there are next to no consequences for anything he does in the initial six episodes.
*Thankfully, the series makes clear that while Jimmy was drinking and snorting cocaine – a “joke” later in the season includes Alice mentioning that she cleaned the remnants of the drug from a picture, which is incredibly disturbing and something the show should take the time to reckon with rather than use as a laugh line – the Johns family’s recent empty-nester neighbor Liz (a very good Christa Miller) took Alice under her wing, making sure she got to school, sports, and ate.
And that’s the real issue I have with the series thus far: For all the setting up that Jimmy is a mess and needs help, no one ever makes him atone for his actions. His boss Phil (a sensational Harrison Ford, who nails the comedy and the drama with precision) repeatedly says he should cut Jimmy loose – after all, his decision to breakdown all professional boundaries with his patients could lose Phil his license along with Jimmy – but he doesn’t. His co-worker and friend Gaby (a fun Jessica Williams) tries to pull Jimmy back to the land of the living – and the realm of being good professional therapist – and occasionally succeeds, but still doesn’t really delve into the devastation he left in his wake over the past year. The only people who routinely take him to task – albeit with a light hand – are Liz and Alice, arguably the two people whose lives he most threw into disarray over the past year. But rarely does the series approach the third rail of Jimmy expressing his guilt, shame, or disappointment in his actions. Instead, he repeatedly gets confronted with bad and/or unethical things he has done and then . . . the show keeps on trucking? It’s a strange choice, and one that doesn’t work all that well, especially as we are meant to recognize that Jimmy might think he’s on the road to recovery and grief but that he’s really still trying to keep his feelings from getting too close to the surface. There’s a better – and less frustrating – way to explore this (again, see Ted Lasso) and I wish the series had opted to slowly chip away at this massive character piece rather than hack at it and then throw more stone back into place.
But the series does have a lot going for it, mostly in the arcs for its supporting characters. As mentioned above, Harrison Ford turns out to be the series’ MVP. Sarcastic, gruff, but with a heart of gold under his tough exterior (think Rebecca from Ted Lasso), Ford carries his scenes with aplomb, whether it’s trying to get Jimmy to see past his self-flagellation and start moving on through the stages of grief or struggling through Phil’s own fears about his recent Parkinson’s diagnosis. And, where some of his co-stars tend to go a bit too far and start mugging for the camera, Ford keeps Phil grounded in even the most extreme circumstances (and still manages to be hilarious in the process). Similarly, Christa Miller is great as Liz, a character who turns out to be deeper – and more crucial to the overall story – than one might initially think. Miller, a veteran of sitcoms, gives Liz just enough acerbic bite when it comes to Jimmy but still has the deep undercurrent of understanding and love that is necessary when dealing with someone who can’t seem to begin the grieving process in a safe manner. It’s also really great that the series provides Liz as a safe sounding board for Alice (who also gets much needed support from a couple of the show’s other supporting characters) – a mother figure for a teen who still needs that influence in her life, even if she doesn’t think she does.
Shrinking is the odd series where the main structure of the show doesn’t seem to work nearly as well as the moving parts contained within it. The characters are, on the whole, likeable (when they aren’t pushing the comedy a touch too far). The relationships are well-drawn and feel lived in (there’s one choice later in the season I wasn’t thrilled with, but I’m willing to see how it plays out before writing it off as a major misstep). And, aside from Jimmy’s repeated boneheaded actions which would have gotten him fired and with a CPS investigation if they happened in the real world, the writing mostly works. There’s a good show here – really, there is – and it just needs to sort out what it wants Jimmy’s story to truly be. Is this the story of a man who makes a choice that backfires spectacularly on him but forces him to finally tackle the mountain of pain and grief he has been ignoring? Or is it the story of a shrink who makes an unethical choices, faces minimal repercussions, and still manages to keep his life and career stumbling forward? I’m guessing it will end up somewhere between these two extremes, but the writing needs to start solving the existing issues it has presented before repeatedly introducing more and more potential mines for the characters to navigate. Only then will we see if Shrinking has the strength to become the next great comedy hit.
Shrinking premieres on Friday, January 27 on AppleTV+. Six of the show’s ten episodes were initially provided for review.
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