Shrinking's season-two premiere asks: Can comfort TV tackle the tough truths of therapy?

Sigh. Where to begin with Shrinking? 

That’s how I kicked off my recaps of season one of this funny and oft-heartwarming though clumsy AppleTV+ series. I almost wrote “sitcom.” Which feels like an apt description of this Jason Segel/Harrison Ford show about a shrink (get it?) going rogue in therapy with his patients. And yet the very themes of the show, dark and ethically murky as they are, make such a label feel like a misnomer. 

I bring all that up because while I’d hoped the final moments of the comedy’s freshman season would usher in a decidedly more biting tone, the first two episodes of Shrinking season two establish that very little has changed, at least tonally or narratively. 

Sure, Jimmy (Segel) is still reeling from the fact that his client Grace (Heidi Gardner) pushed her abusive husband off a cliff, landing her in prison as she awaits trial. (Thankfully, Michael Urie’s Brian will be there to help.) It’s an obvious sign that Jimmy’s therapy techniques (a.k.a. “Jimmying,” a.ka. crossing any and every ethical guardrail you can think of) are maybe not really as effective as he’d like to think they are. Will that force him to reckon with the damage he’s doing and how he’s clearly using his patients as stepping stones to his own recovery, making him a rather callous and self-serving therapist? The answer, judging by this two-episode premiere, is a tentative yes—but only to the extent that it makes for amiable comfort TV watching.

The first episode back leans heavily on the trauma Jimmy himself has been working on: We see scenes from the night his wife was killed by a drunk driver, one that still haunts him and forever changed his and his daughter’s world. That he discloses enough of those details to one of his patients is yet again a reminder that Shrinking should very much not be taken as anything remotely resembling what healthy sessions look and feel like in the real world.

Indeed, as Jimmy struggles to admit that he may need to go back to basics (and maybe set some boundaries with patients and friends alike), we see the very tension at the heart of Shrinking. This is a show that wants to advocate for the importance of therapy and one’s own mental health but wants to do so within the confines of a 21st century single-cam comedy. The former requires neatly drawn boundaries and a distinct separation between a therapist’s work and his life, while the latter insists on blurring them to create the messiness between its many characters that makes for good TV. And so, while Jimmy keeps trying to “Jimmy” the likes of Sean (Luke Tennie) and gets his teeth knocked out of him in the process (because boxing Sean felt like a good way of encouraging him to not run away from his past, apparently), the show’s voice of reason (that’d be Ford’s Paul) keeps nagging at him.

Maybe it’s time he stopped seeing Sean. “It’s not that kid’s job to heal you” may be the show at its most lucid and self-aware. But if he stops seeing Sean, that would mean that Paul would have to take him. Which would mean graduating one of his patients—perhaps even his favorite one (played by Scrubs’s own Neil Flynn). Of course, in true Shrinking fashion, Paul does the right thing and eventually gets swayed by Jimmy’s unethical leanings and ends up befriending his client of many years which feels like a fantasy for any of us who think we could be besties with our therapists if only they weren’t, you know, our therapists. It’s proof, I guess, that Shrinking wants to have its cake and eat it too.

Maybe this is why the show is most intriguing when it focuses solely on Jimmy’s own life. Watching him and Gabby (Jessica Williams) navigate their fucked-up fuck-buddy situation is both hilarious and endearing. It may all be tropey, sitcomy stuff, especially as Liz (Christa Miller) spends so much of her time trying to keep her new BFF away from Jimmy for her own good, even showing up at her new campus office (remember, Gabby’s a teacher now!) and confronting her in front of her new eager students. But that’s where the real comedy lies—and where some of the most affecting meditations on working through trauma lie.

Which brings us to the big reveal of the season: We knew Brett Goldstein would be joining the Shrinking crew (he’s a co-creator, after all) and boy is he playing a key player. It’s Goldstein who shows up unannounced at Jimmy’s office in hopes of talking to him—to apologize, in fact, for drunkenly crashing into his wife’s car. It’s a bombshell of a moment that will clearly ripple out throughout the season.

Jimmy screams at him to leave and later takes his time before sharing the visit with his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell). It rattles him, obviously. And there’s worry that he’ll revert to the self-destructive behavior that followed the tragic death of his wife. Then again, that could very much describe his sexploits with Gabby, which are getting increasingly thornier: The two end up in a fight when, after coming over to comfort Gabby over family stuff, it’s obvious he was hoping to have sex with her again—even after setting some ground rules (namely, that they wouldn’t). Can they be friends and fuck? Can they fuck and remain colleagues? Can they really untangle how they feel about each other all while remaining civil? 

As ever, the show brings us back to noting how important boundaries are—between therapists but also between friends and colleagues. We’ll see how that’ll work out, especially since each of these characters likes to play fast and loose with them.

That’s definitely the case with Paul, who ends up setting much stricter rules with Sean than Jimmy had. How novel! A therapist who doesn’t text you back all the time, answers only your most pressing calls, and doesn’t see you every day where you live!  

Here’s the moment Shrinking offers us what therapy can look like: Paul arms Sean with some tools of his own to deal with how anxious he is these days with the coming publicity for the food truck he and Liz are running. For someone who still hasn’t spoken to his dad and has no social circle outside his (former) therapist, that’s a fair concern. Liz is clearly excited about Sean and the truck; he doesn’t want to put that in jeopardy. But he values his privacy.

Enter: “Reversal Of Desire” tool. No, it’s not a Nic Cage erotic thriller. It’s a way to run toward what causes you fear and anxiety rather than away from it. As he imagines what Liz would say (in a worst-case scenario), Sean is able to face her (in real life) with honesty and gets rewarded by the kind person she doesn’t yet believe she’s becoming.

There’s growth all around in these two episodes. Paul and Julie are getting along all while recognizing how hard it can be to build a life around someone at their age; Jimmy is begrudgingly realizing the error of some of his ways; Gabby may finally be setting the boundaries she needs with Jimmy; and Liz is clearly taking a liking to being slightly more likable. Even Alice, who can now legally drive, is taking steps toward, perhaps, some much needed closure.

As these various characters take stock of where they’re at and where they’re headed, we finally see Alice taking the car and going to the one place she probably shouldn’t have driven to: the drunk driver’s house. That won’t end well.

Stray observations

• • You’d think that close to two decades since Grey’s Anatomy arguably perfected the maudlin needle drop for every kind of end-of-episode montage imaginable, other shows would work different angles to get our tears going. Yet here we have a show dropping AKA lisa’s “cope.”
• • How do we feel about “roomies with bennies”? How about “Double D”? Are either of them fetch?
• • “Fuck hiking! Fuck that headband! Actually I really like that headband.” This is proof that Michael Urie remains the secret MVP of the show even if we barely saw him in these two eps. He does show up to kvetch about Jimmy not telling him he was sleeping with Gabby (ergo his headband hissy fit) and later to help Gabby unpack and decorate her new place (a Liz ruse to help her friend out in time of need).
• • Speaking of her new place, did you clock Gabby’s Obama coffee table books?
• • Who had “Jason Segel showing off his pec talents” on their Shrinking bingo card?
• • It’s adorable how skillfully Shrinking is deploying Wendie Malick, showing off a softer side of Ford’s Paul while highlighting what a mature (not just older, but actually healthy, boundary-setting, communication-centered) relationship can look like.