The Apple TV+ dramedy “Shrinking” is — or at least, was — about a therapist, Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), throwing professional ethics out the window in the wake of his wife’s tragic death. Whatever one thought of how the show portrayed therapy, and plenty were appalled by the idea that doctor-patient boundaries are more annoying inconvenience than ironclad principle, Season 1 of “Shrinking” at least had a hook-y premise to structure its broader study of grief. Season 2, which premieres this week after a 19-month hiatus due to last year’s strikes, backs away from this basic foundation, leaving a story that’s just as tonally muddled but even less focused.
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To the show’s not-really-defense, it’s never taken a strong stance on Jimmy’s new approach, which followed a year of catatonia, debauchery and pawning his teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) off on their neighbor Liz (Christa Miller) to surrogate parent. When the Season 2 premiere sees Jimmy’s boss and mentor Paul (a curmudgeonly Harrison Ford) demand his protegé stop treating Sean (Luke Tennie), the veteran with anger issues crashing on Jimmy’s couch, it’s unclear why he’s putting his foot down now rather than at any earlier juncture. But on “Shrinking” — a team-up of Segel and “Ted Lasso” collaborators Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein — Jimmy’s antics are neither a new turn in the widower’s downward spiral nor a brilliant innovation his peers could stand to learn from, however problematic such an angle might be. They’re just a setup for a handful of vaguely comic situations, like Jimmy crashing a patient’s date. Having taken a minimal interest in the practice of therapy to begin with, “Shrinking” already finds itself distracted.
In Season 2, Jimmy gives his technique a name (“Jimmy-ing”), but seems to do less of it than ever. With Sean off his docket, a natural new focus would be Grace (Heidi Gardner of “SNL”), a woman who snapped in the Season 1 finale and pushed her abusive husband off a cliff, inspired by Jimmy’s unfiltered advice. This outcome is a logical prompt for Jimmy to do some serious introspection. That never arrives, subjecting poor, jailbound Grace to a wildly oscillating spectrum of stakes. Jimmy’s other patients don’t appear until past the season’s halfway mark; he takes on no new ones. Sean sticks around, but his relationship with Jimmy and Paul bears increasingly little resemblance to any kind of therapy, traditional or not. He’s just another participant in a shaggy hangout, one oversharing friend among many.
Jimmy’s colleagues are similarly disengaged. Paul pushes his longtime charge 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 coworker, close friend and sometime fuck buddy, has largely turned her attention to teaching a college class, as well as some family strife that’s abruptly introduced. Along with Miller, Williams gives one of the few performances that seems to understand “Shrinking” is a sitcom at its core, but she remains marooned on a more enjoyable show.
This pivot begs the question: If “Shrinking” isn’t about therapy, what is it about? The long tail of mourning continues to loom large, with Goldstein casting himself as a character with an important part to play in Jimmy and Alice processing their trauma. The specific role is considered a spoiler, though the performance contains ample opportunities for Goldstein to look pained while on the verge of tears. Perhaps the writer and performer wanted to show off his dramatic range. The arc is nonetheless an overcorrection from the comic ire of “Ted Lasso’s” Roy Kent.
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But for the most part, “Shrinking” sans shrink-ing is a shapeless, listless mess. The show takes place in a version of Pasadena, the affluent Los Angeles suburb, that seems to be the size of a snow globe, or maybe Stars Hollow with palm trees. Characters constantly collide at random, like when Sean’s semi-estranged father stumbles on the food truck he’s started with Liz. The Sean-Liz partnership is one of many random-seeming relationships among the ensemble, an undifferentiated mass where everyone seems equally, unconvincingly close to everyone else.
Jimmy’s lack of boundaries may no longer be as relevant to his professional life, but it’s still felt in the series’ structure, or lack thereof. Storylines feel increasingly atomized: Jimmy’s friend Brian (Michael Urie) considers having a baby; Gaby counsels her students; Liz, now an empty nester, casts about for a purpose. Performances, too, are discordant; Segel and Urie in particular go so big they drown out more subtle deadpans, like Ford’s, or dramatic work, like Maxwell’s. Platonic chemistry alone can’t provide enough glue to cobble these mismatched parts together. “Shrinking” is supposed to be about the work of healing wounds, but in Season 2, it’s broken into more pieces than when it began.
The first two episodes of “Shrinking” are now available to stream on Apple TV+, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Wednesdays.
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