“Shrinking” returns with a safer and quite therapeutic second season

Therapy rarely starts smoothly. The first few sessions are usually characterized by crying, hesitation and half-truths as the doctor and client develop a feeling for each other. The same could be said of many TV shows, but since we're talking about “Shrinking,” you can certainly see parallels. Season 1 was a far from embarrassing introduction: Jason Segel's Jimmy Laird held out his hand in welcome, and his “Hello My Name Is” tag featured a typical TV wound healer. Jimmy, our psychologist, can barely get through talk therapy sessions because he can't quite keep it together.

We delve into Jimmy's life shortly after his wife dies, leaving him and their teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) to understand the unthinkable. At work, his mentor Paul (Harrison Ford) acts more like a father figure towards Jimmy, and his colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams), who was also Tia's best friend, ends up sleeping with him.

It all revolves around Jimmy's wild prescriptions for his most unstable patients, including Sean (Luke Tennie), a veteran whose tour in Afghanistan left him with explosive anger and PTSD. But just as Jimmy begins to get his life back together, his… Patient Grace (Heidi Gardner) pushes her abusive ex off a cliff.

Listing these catch-up details shows that the introductory episodes overemphasize the situation instead of engaging in the comedy of it all. The cast's performances and undeniable chemistry cemented the many cracks that threatened to destroy the integrity of the premise – at least enough to get us through.

About 18 months after this ends, healing can officially begin.

Shrinking's sole obligation is to make us laugh, and to the credit of creators Segel, Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, that quickly became its focus midway through its ten-episode first season. It wouldn't be particularly noteworthy to simply keep the joke, regardless of Ford's admirable comic timing as the group's unofficial patriarch/wise man/curmudgeon.

Luckily, these new episodes up the ante and hit us in the feels the way Lawrence and Goldstein's other great Apple TV+ Plus show got to know us four years ago.

These days, invoking “Ted Lasso” elicits mixed reactions, but we got our first taste of that sugar in 2020, when resentment and bitterness dominated our lives. Its magic was to remind us of a fundamental truth, that people can be, and usually are, good to each other.

“Shrinking,” a series about therapy and grief, asks us to think about something brave — especially before an election that has many hyperventilating in paper bags. It suggests that we practice empathy and consider giving absolution to the people who have seriously hurt us.

Lukita Maxwell and Michael Urie in “Shrinking” (Apple TV+)

Remember, Tia didn't just fall over. She was killed by a drunk driver. Alice is not another grumpy teenager. Abandoned by her father when she needed him most, she sought emotional refuge with her neighbor Liz (Christa Miller) and her good-natured husband Derek (Ted McGinley).

Lawrence, something of a master of the passionate, quirky sitcom, dialed back the original therapy themes for a while to recreate something closer to “Cougar Town” in its best seasons.

That said, “Shrinking” has taken on the comforting atmosphere of a hangout comedy, as Jimmy’s workplace and the families of his choice in the neighborhood conveniently overlap without sacrificing the therapeutic spaces that define him. It reminds us that every person is in pain in some way and therefore deserves leniency.

Overall, this is an easy task, as no one around Jimmy is unsympathetic. Even when Damon Wayans Jr. shows up as a romantic possibility for Gaby, no one can say anything bad about him. Not even Jimmy.

“Shrinking” makes a strong case for increasing the number of episodes for stories worth the extra time, with 12 episodes instead of 10. Individual lives and personalities deserve a fuller examination. (This also applies to Goldstein's character, the counterpart to Roy Kent, whom Apple TV+ critics should keep secret until he is introduced.)

Miller's Liz probably gets the shortest stick of any regular player, but a subplot that fleshes out her character's relationship dynamic with McGinley's Derek transforms his character from a perpetually smiling goofball into something more beautiful and fragile than the background character who was barely introduced last year.

The writers rightly assume that viewers won't care too much about the questionable ethics of the main character's methods: as much as Paul wags his finger at Jimmy's professional failings, we wouldn't get a moment of Paul's romance with his former neurologist Julie (Wendie Malick). Boundaries between doctor and patient? Whatever. Malick and Ford are a great match.

Against all odds and ethics, Sean is now Jimmy's biggest success story, in part because he moved into his pool house and channeled his anger into full-contact mixed martial arts classes.

Luke Tennie in “Shrinking” (Apple TV+)

He and Liz run a food truck together, giving her and Jimmy's wealthy household a reason to bank together and rail against one of their racist neighbors – something the writers occasionally bring to the surface as a running gag.

But the most recent chapters (11 of which were available for review) contain enough of this treatment to give the comedy strength and heart, providing those moments when a person's repressed fear or self-doubt takes over.

In her own way, Grace becomes the thematic mascot of a new season that expands its panorama beyond Jimmy's themes. In the premiere, Segel's character takes up the casual description of his meddling as “Jimmying” and tries to make it his “thing,” although Grace takes his advice a little too literally and broadly.

Now she's in prison and has no interest in being released. She believes her inner flaws are too great to heal, just as Paul's Parkinson's symptoms force him to confront his ego and the way it hinders his connections with others.

Behind Gaby's humor and blatant success lies a hint of self-loathing and an underlying fear of having to take on some of her mother's caring responsibilities, most of which have been left to her by her sister (Courtney Taylor), a recovering addict who refuses to do so Having to take on responsibility.

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The second season's best subplots follow Tennie's Sean and Michael Urie's Brian, who come into their own with a performance that combines over-the-top physical humor with surprising depth, as he and his husband Charlie (Devin Kawaoka) consider leaving their family enlarge.

Meanwhile, Sean's progress comes to a halt when the father he's been avoiding (Kenajuan Bentley) re-emerges. This also applies to others who threaten the peace and balance of the group.

In each person's story there are reasons for their missteps and a way out, especially if that path seems closed or impassable.

“Sometimes the thought of forgiving someone seems impossible,” Jimmy tells someone. “Then you realize that the villain in your story is just a person who made a big mistake.”

Admittedly, this recipe will not close the intellectual divide in our culture. But if we can limit our efforts to millions of individual interactions, it could be the start of something.

“Shrinking” returns with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, October 16. New episodes premiere weekly on Wednesdays.