Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Shrinking’ Season 2 On Apple TV+, Where Jimmy Deals With The Results Of His Unconventional Therapy Methods

The first season of Shrinking ended with a shove: A patient of Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel) took his joking advice to heart and pushed her abusive husband off a cliff. Will Jimmy’s guilt over this take over for his grief over his wife’s death at the hands of a drunk driver? The first episode of the second season tells us that Segel, Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein know what they have in this “found family” and will continue to spread the storytelling around.

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Opening Shot: A woman in an orange jumpsuit is led to a visiting room in handcuffs.

The Gist: The woman is Grace (Heidi Gardner), a patient of psychologist Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel); Jimmy jokingly her to hurt her abusive husband during one of his unconventional therapy sessions, and she actually complied, pushing him off a cliff. While he recovers, though, Jimmy tries to get through to Grace while she’s in jail. Only she’s understandably not talking.

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Because of his guilt over what happened to Grace, Jimmy is waking up screaming from nightmares, the latest of which has him pushing his mentor, Paul Rhoades (Harrison Ford) off the same cliff. Jimmy’s daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) is so concerned for him that she sleeps on a couch in Jimmy’s bedroom. They’re both weirded out when they realize they watch each other sleeping.

Jimmy asks Paul whether he “fucked up” with any of his patients using his unconventional methods, and Paul says no, but later admits he lied. But Jimmy didn’t mess up with Grace; he messed up with Sean (Luke Tennie) by blurring the lines between patient and friend.

In the meantime, Gabby Evans (Jessica Williams), the third therapist in the practice Paul runs, is still sleeping with Jimmy, is busy with work, and can’t even seem to get it together to unpack after a move. Jimmy’s neighbor Liz (Christa Miller) has vowed to keep her on track, especially because she knows that Jimmy’s not ready for anything more than something casual. But as everyone, including Liz’s husband Derek (Ted McGinley) knows, Liz’s attention can be a bit, well, invasive — in a good way! When Liz finds Gabby at her college teaching gig, Gabby draws a line.

Paul has been having such a good time with Julie (Wendie Malick), his neurologist and now girlfriend, he feels that things are going too fast and wants some space. In the meantime, Sean is doing mostly OK, but doesn’t want to meet an old army buddy because he doesn’t want to relive those days. Jimmy thinks he can handle it, but soon realizes Sean is doing exactly what Paul said he’s doing, which is saying stuff to keep Jimmy happy.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Given the involvement of Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, who co-created Shrinking with Segel, the show has a similar feel to Ted Lasso , though at this point it also has the “found family” feel of other Lawrence shows, like Scrubs and Cougar Town .

Our Take: In the second season of Shrinking , Lawrence’s patented “found family” vibe is in place, with different segments of the excellent cast mixing and matching easily in storylines that feel earned and unforced.

Yes, Jimmy is still dealing with the loss of his wife a couple of years prior, and that will manifest itself in an entirely different way this season. The challenge for him this season is how he manages that while still being there for his patients and for Alice. Will he go back to falling apart, like Alice fears he will, or will he manage to keep it together? Also, will it make him even more daring with his therapies? The way he deals with Sean’s issues in this episode, which involves losing some teeth when Jimmy challenges him to an MMA sparring match, makes us think it’ll be the latter.

Grace being in prison is a consequence of those methods that Jimmy is going to have to manage, but we get the feeling that Segel, Lawrence and Goldstein are going to send that in a more positive direction than negative.

We love seeing Ford and Malick doing things like Paul and Julie’s morning dancing ritual, mainly because it’s yet another sign that Ford is bringing so much lightness to Paul that’s just underneath the usual Ford gruffness. But what we’re also realizing is that Ford is the show’s glue, as he spent significant time sharing scenes with Segel, Williams and Maxwell both last season and in the first episode of Season 2. Even in the few scenes he’s in with Miller, there’s as warmth and chemistry that for some reason we’ve forgotten that Ford is capable of over the last couple of decades.

We also love to see Miller and Williams together, with Gabby and Liz becoming closer than ever. Tennie works great with Miller, Segel and Maxwell, and now he’s going to be interacting more with Ford as Paul takes over his therapy. And we’re ecstatic to see McGinley’s Derek as a series regular, with the promise of more interaction with everyone.

Sex and Skin: Any sex is implied, though as always there’s funny lines about Gabby and others feeling happy “down there.”

Parting Shot: Paul advises Sean that “If you don’t truly deal with your past, it’ll get back to you. When that happens… boom.” We see an example of that when someone comes to visit Jimmy at his office that Jimmy thought he’d never see again.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Goldstein, appearing in front of the camera as a guest star in Season 2. We won’t spoil what his role is, but it has the potential to be really different than Roy Kent.

Most Pilot-y Line: We mentioned all of the character combos above, because we still aren’t sure how well Michael Urie, as Jimmy’s best friend Brian, fits in. If any character feels forced into scenes, it’s Brian. This is no fault of Urie’s; he’s funny in every scene he’s in. It’s just that his more over-the-top tone doesn’t seem to match the tone of the rest of the cast.

Our Call: STREAM IT. As with most of Lawrence’s best shows, Shrinking promises to get deeper and funnier in Season 2 as we get comfortable with the characters and watch them interact with each other in different combinations. What we hope is that the factors that may blow up Jimmy’s current stability don’t overwhelm things during the rest of the season.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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