Shrinking

The Messy Business of Getting Better

There's a moment early in the pilot of *Shrinking* that tells you exactly what kind of ride you're in for, and whether you have the stomach for it. It's 3 a.m. in Pasadena, and Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel) is high, drunk, and hosting a pool party with sex workers while his teenage daughter sleeps inside. We've seen the "grieving widower on a bender" trope before. But watch the way Segel moves in this sequence. His large, usually comforting frame seems uncoordinated, stumbling around the patio like a marionette with tangled strings. It'sn't funny, and it'sn't supposed to be. Then the sun comes up, he puts on a cardigan, and goes to work as a cognitive behavioral therapist.



Created by Segel, Bill Lawrence, and Brett Goldstein, the Apple TV+ series lives entirely in that jarring whiplash between rock-bottom despair and workplace sitcom banter. Lawrence and Goldstein previously spun gold out of earnestness with *Ted Lasso*, and you can feel a similar DNA here. Everyone in Jimmy's orbit—his nosy neighbor Liz, his estranged best friend Brian, his colleagues—eventually folds into a makeshift family that talks about their feelings incessantly. Sometimes, I find myself wanting them to just sit in silence for five minutes. The sheer volume of emotional processing can feel like being cornered by an overly enthusiastic life coach. But whether that's a flaw or a feature really depends on your patience for televised therapy.

What pulls the show back from the edge of pure schmaltz is the central gimmick: Jimmy, exhausted by his patients' lack of progress and his own stagnant grief, snaps. He starts telling them exactly what to do. In one pivotal early scene, he stares down a woman trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage and gives her an ultimatum—leave him, or find a new doctor. The camera stays tight on Jimmy's face, catching the twitch in his jaw. He isn't dispensing tough love; he's projecting his own desperate need for control. *IndieWire*'s Ben Travers pointed out that the series eventually does something fascinating by refuting its own premise, noting that the show realizes "ignoring your ethics when trying to help people in crisis is a bad idea." And that's the trick. The show knows Jimmy is a walking malpractice suit.



The undeniable anchor of the whole chaotic enterprise, however, is Harrison Ford. Playing Paul Rhoades, the gruff senior therapist at Jimmy's practice who is quietly battling Parkinson's disease, Ford gives what might be the warmest performance of his late career. After decades of playing stoic, unshakeable icons, watching his body betray him here is startling. He still has the famously dry, sarcastic delivery—he can destroy a room with a single sigh—but look at his hands when he tries to hold a coffee cup. There's a sudden, quiet fragility to him. When Paul sits in his office, adjusting his posture to hide a tremor, you realize you're watching an actor completely strip away his own armor. I'm not totally sure the show would work without him. He acts as the necessary ballast for Segel's manic energy.

Then there is Jessica Williams as their colleague, Gaby. If Ford is the ballast, Williams is the engine. Gaby is messy, brilliant, and grieving the same woman Jimmy is—his late wife was her best friend. Williams brings a loose, improvisational physical comedy to the role. She doesn't just walk into a room; she invades it, sprawling across sofas and demanding attention. Yet she's also capable of sudden, devastating stillness. (There's a moment where she finally admits how much space her own sorrow is taking up, and her entire posture just deflates).



Now deep into its third season, *Shrinking* has morphed from a high-concept premise into a lived-in character study about how people actually survive the worst things that happen to them. They don't have cinematic epiphanies. They make terrible choices, drag their friends into the mud, and slowly, clumsily, try to clean up the mess. It's a show about the limits of trying to fix other people, and the terrifying vulnerability of letting them fix you. It doesn't always go down smooth. But in its best moments, it feels uncomfortably close to life.