With so many shows on so many streaming platforms, anything can get cancelled after a single season. To avoid that, surely you have to have a great idea, know exactly why it’s good, and communicate that to viewers from the start? Not always: when Shrinking debuted on Apple TV+ last year, it did none of the above and looked ripe for axing. Yet here it still is, and it is very welcome back.
The first season had a lot of work to do to get past the show’s terrible premise. Jimmy (Jason Segel) is a Los Angeles therapist blindsided by the death of his wife, a catastrophe that causes him to lose patience with his patients. Shrinks are meant to sit impassively, doling out dry observations and probing questions before announcing that the hour is up, at which point you assume they forget you exist until the same time next week. Instead, Jimmy intervenes in his clients’ lives, speaking frankly and offering off-the-cuff advice. Season one started with Jimmy letting Sean (Luke Tennie), a veteran with PTSD, move in with him; season two opens with him visiting Grace (Heidi Gardner) in jail because she has taken his suggestion to push her abusive husband off a cliff literally.
As played by Segel, Jimmy is a galumphing man-child whose colleagues, neighbours and teen daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) forgive his constant blunders because he is well-meaning, open-hearted and in need of their help as he lives with loss. As season one progressed, the show’s writers realised that this on its own would make a better show than the “therapist goes rogue” idea. Jimmy’s unreliable emotional intelligence makes him an acceptable protagonist in a witty dramedy about a friend group coping with one of them dying, but he is not at all believable as a therapist, in crisis or not. It’s hard to imagine him ever passing the training, and whenever his questionable methods have serious consequences, it jars.
Happily, this has happened less and less, because Shrinking has expanded to become something we all need in our roster of streaming shows: an ensemble piece stuffed with people who are just like us, but a shade smarter, funnier and more outspoken. It’s essential to have an inessential hangout show you can call upon when you can’t face anything more taxing.
So we get to spend more quality time with Paul (Harrison Ford), Jimmy’s professional mentor whose grumpiness hides a soft centre, and Gaby (Jessica Williams), his newly divorced co-worker. We see more of his older neighbours, Liz (Christa Miller) and Derek (Ted McGinley), because the showrunners have responded to positive fan reaction and given them more to do. Liz is a fearsome but brittle plain speaker held aloft by her laid-back joker of a husband, and their relationship is a thing of beauty.
The main new storylines are that Gaby, who was best friends with Jimmy’s deceased wife, is now sleeping with Jimmy, and has realised that her initial assessment of him as “safe dick” – a source of good, casual sex unencumbered by attachment – is wrong because she’s falling for him. Meanwhile, the drunk driver who was responsible for the death of Jimmy’s wife has shown up, wanting to speak to the family and atone. That guy is played by the show’s co-creator Brett Goldstein, AKA Roy Kent from Ted Lasso – the two series share the same trick of compensating for what should be fatal structural problems with lovable characters and an overwhelming array of funny lines.
A few such zingers: Derek responds to Liz receiving good news with “She hasn’t been this stoked since she got us separate blankets!”; Jimmy’s effervescent lawyer friend Brian (Michael Urie) overreaches as he tries to boost Grace’s self-esteem during a prison visit (“There she is! Gorgeous! There’s something about your skin tone and a harsh fluorescent light that creates magic … orange is the new snack!”); and Liz deduces that Gaby is once again sneaking round to Jimmy’s for sex, having promised not to, because “You said you were going to stay home and air-fry some tilapia,” an excuse too specific to be true.
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Gaby and Liz’s friendship, bridging its generation gap thanks to lacerating honesty and gleeful oversharing – their exchange about the erotic power of pine scents will make you spit out your tea in shocked delight – is Shrinking in its essence. Here is a gang of pals who are comfortable enough to say whatever they’re thinking, even if it’s telling each other when they’re being a fool, which usually means saying that to Jimmy. First his wife died and now he is the least interesting character in his own show, but that’s OK – he’s got his friends to help him through it.
