“Shrinking” Season 2 Review: An Informal Hangout

The Apple TV+ dramedy “Shrinking” is – or at least was – about a therapist, Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), who throws his professional ethics overboard after the tragic death of his wife. Whatever one may think about how the series portrays therapy, and many were horrified by the idea that doctor-patient boundaries are more of an annoying inconvenience than an ironclad principle, Season 1 of “Shrinking” had at least one tricky premise to structure her broader investigation into grief. Season 2, which premieres this week after a 19-month hiatus due to last year's strikes, deviates from that basic foundation, leaving behind a story that is just as tonally convoluted but even less focused.

In the show's not-quite-defense, it has never been one to Jimmy's new approach, which followed a year of catatonia, debauchery, and the enlistment of his teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) as a surrogate parent to her neighbor Liz (Christa Miller). has taken a strong stance. When, in the season two premiere, Jimmy's boss and mentor Paul (a grumpy Harrison Ford) demands that his protégé stop treating Sean (Luke Tennie), the veteran with anger issues who collapses on Jimmy's couch, it's unclear why gives in so little Now and not at any earlier point in time. But in “Shrinking” – a team that includes Segel and “Ted Lasso” co-stars Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein – Jimmy's antics are neither a new twist in the widower's downward spiral nor a brilliant innovation that his colleagues could learn from She may be such an angle could be. They merely serve as backdrops for a handful of somewhat comical situations, such as Jimmy crashing a patient's appointment. “Shrinking” has initially shown minimal interest in the practice of therapy and is already distracted.

In Season 2, Jimmy gives his technique a name (“Jimmy-ing”) but seems to use it less than ever before. With Sean no longer on the program, a natural new focus would be Grace (Heidi Gardner of “SNL”), a woman who freaked out in the season one finale and pushed her abusive husband off a cliff, inspired by Jimmy's unfiltered advice. This result is a logical reason for Jimmy to do some serious introspection. That never materializes, exposing poor, imprisoned Grace to a wildly fluctuating array of stakes. Jimmy's other patients don't appear until halfway through the season; he doesn't record any new ones. Sean sticks around, but his relationship with Jimmy and Paul begins to bear less and less resemblance to any form of therapy, traditional or not. He's just another participant in a shaggy hangout, an over-the-top friend among many.

Jimmy's colleagues are also uninterested. Paul pushes his longtime protégé Raymond (Neil Flynn) out of the nest, leaving him to focus on his Parkinson's prognosis and budding romance with neurologist Julie (Wendie Malick). Gaby (Jessica Williams), Jimmy's colleague, close friend and sometimes sex buddy, has mostly focused her attention on teaching a college course, but also on some family disputes that suddenly arise. Along with Miller, Williams delivers one of the few performances that seems to understand that Shrinking is a sitcom at its core, but she remains trapped in a more entertaining show.

This pivot raises the question: If “Shrinking” isn’t about therapy, what is? Is it approximately? The long tail of grief continues to loom, with Goldstein portraying himself as a figure who plays an important role in helping Jimmy and Alice process their trauma. The specific role is seen as a killjoy, although the performance provides ample opportunity for Goldstein to look pained while on the verge of tears. Perhaps the author and actor wanted to showcase his dramatic range. The story arc is still an over-correction of “Ted Lasso’s” Roy Kent’s comic anger.

But on the whole, “shrinkage” without shrinkage is a shapeless, listless mess. The show is set in a version of Pasadena, the affluent Los Angeles suburb, that appears to be the size of a snow globe, or perhaps Stars Hollow with palm trees. The characters constantly collide at random, like when Sean's semi-estranged father stumbles upon the food truck he started with Liz. The Sean-Liz partnership is one of many seemingly random relationships within the ensemble, an undifferentiated mass in which everyone seems equal to and unconvincingly close to everyone else.

Jimmy's lack of boundaries may no longer be as relevant to his professional life, but it's still noticeable in the structure of the series, or lack thereof. The storylines seem increasingly atomized: Jimmy's friend Brian (Michael Urie) is considering having a baby; Gaby advises her students; Liz, now an empty nester, is looking for a purpose. The performances don't match either; Segel and Urie in particular are so big that they drown out more subtle deadpan scenes like Ford's or dramatic works like Maxwell's. Platonic chemistry alone cannot provide enough glue to bind these mismatched pieces together. “Shrinking” is actually about the work of healing wounds, but in Season 2 it has broken into more pieces than it did at the start.

The first two episodes of Shrinking are available to stream now on Apple TV+, with the remaining episodes airing weekly on Fridays.