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October 15, 2024Psychoanalysis and all types of therapy have a long history of being featured on television, playing into game-changing series like The Sopranos and even anchoring HBO’s bold five-night half-hour series In Treatment. It can also be fodder for comedy, but no show balances the funny moments with the heart-wrenching ones quite as well as Shrinking. In its second season, the Apple TV+ series delves further into its characters’ psyches and the walls they build to protect themselves from harm, offering content that’s superbly entertaining and deeply affecting at the same time.
The ”jumping off” point of sorts for season two is the aftermath of Grace (Heidi Gardner) taking the advice Jimmy (Jason Segel) gave her a bit too literally and facing legal consequences for pushing her abusive husband off a cliff. Her stoic desire to be punished for her actions is the backdrop for a season that focuses on the complexities of romantic entanglements, including Jimmy and Gaby (Jessica Williams) trying to define their friends-with-benefits arrangement, Paul (Harrison Ford) getting more serious with Julie (Wendie Malick), Brian (Michael Urie) contemplating a new step in his marriage, and, on a platonic and professional level, Liz (Christa Miller) and Sean (Luke Tennie) going into business together.
Shrinking boasts an impossibly rich ensemble populated largely by longtime collaborators of Bill Lawrence, whose most prominent past credits include Scrubs and Ted Lasso. This season reenlists Neil Flynn as a patient of Paul’s and adds Josh Hopkins from Cougar Town as an old flame of Liz’s and series co-creator Brett Goldstein in a subdued and unexpected role best discovered organically by audiences. Another worthwhile addition to the already staggering list of actors involved is Damon Wayans Jr. as a good friend of Derek (Ted McGinley) that everyone is eager to pair up with Gaby even while Jimmy is in the room and part of the conversation.
The workplace dynamic of the three therapists is endlessly amusing, particularly as boundaries continue to be ignored, with Liz stopping by frequently to offer unsolicited commentary and Sean beginning to work with Paul as an attempt to separate him from Jimmy’s inappropriate involvement in his personal life. There’s still time for adequate subplots like Gaby working on her relationship with her sister and her mother while teaching at a college and mentoring an extremely eager student, and Paul working ever so slightly to curb his grumpiness so that the people he does allow to be close to him might actually want to spend time in his orbit.
Season two of Shrinking has the confidence of a show that knows it has supporters but isn’t taking them for granted. It’s never big or showy, and always manages to stop short of overdoing it when its comedic swings risk getting too big. The best instance of this is the relationship between Jimmy and Alice (Lukita Maxwell), which often finds Jimmy cowering in front of his daughter and desperately trying to find a way into her life but also includes tender moments of connection that show how strong their bond really is. Sean and Liz get similarly serious opportunities to confront their choices and mistakes, and Tennie and Miller take wondrous advantage of the chance to dig into the pain their characters continually mask.
The success of Ted Lasso and Apple TV+ in general should guarantee this show as long a life as Lawrence, Segel, and Goldstein want, which may well mean just one more season, but there is no shortage of inviting and worthwhile stories to be mined from this show’s superb writing and cast of characters. It’s consistently funny and knows how to shift back and forth between comedy and drama without missing a beat, and the roughly half-hour episodes pack in a great deal without feeling overstuffed. Shrinking is not only one of the best comedies currently on television but one of the best shows out there, well aware of its strengths and just how to use them for maximum impact.
Season Rating: 9/10
Awards Buzz: The Emmy haul for this show in season one was a disappointment, with only Segel and Williams recognized. Hopefully Ford and the show can also reap nominations in season two, and considering how warmly Ted Lasso was embraced in the acting categories, bids for any number of supporting players would also be quite welcome.