“Shrinking” season premiere recap: Pattern break

shrinkage

Jimmying

Season 2

Episode 1

Editor's Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: Apple TV+

At the beginning of the first season of shrinkageI wasn't quite sure what to think of the premise of the show. It's one thing to follow a therapist with unconventional methods, but Jimmy's way of doing things was clearly unethical, and the show knew it. How sustainable could that be as a plot driver for a comedy like this? By the halfway point of the season, however, the show had moved a little away from this central theme and (like so many of Bill Lawrence's other shows) had morphed into a rather unremarkable hangout sitcom about a group of characters. Then we got the literal cliffhanger of a final scene: Grace, one of Jimmy's biggest success stories, pushed her husband off a cliff.

It was a reminder that therapists often have great power when it comes to their patients, and that using that power irresponsibly can have serious consequences. But it was also a return to a plot that the series had mostly bypassed. As much as I enjoyed the end of the season, I wondered what the next season would be like.

This premiere suggests that it might be difficult for Jimmy to abandon his usual outlandish techniques; Berating his patients has become something of an addiction, filling the void left by all the alcohol and drugs he once used to cope with the death of his wife Tia. The first season also expressed this idea early on, as we saw Jimmy come back to life after a year of grief, reinvesting his energy into his work life while working hard to make up for lost time with his daughter. But I'm hoping that if the season sticks with this conflict (rather than abandoning the quirky therapy and returning to a more generic, therapist-led hangout sitcom), we'll learn more about why exactly Jimmy relies on it so much.

Still, I like that this episode continues to acknowledge the harmful effects of this type of therapy. Grace is the most obvious example: because of Jimmy's overly explicit advice, she is in prison and facing a life sentence for the attempted murder of her husband. (He survived, but may never walk again.) Jimmy tries to justify this to Paul as a “pattern interruption,” a familiar term in regular therapy that means exactly what it sounds like. But there's really no way to consider this a victory; Grace even points out that she would rather have a shitty husband than spend her life in prison.

Maybe the bigger problem is that Jimmy just cares too much about his patients, whom he lets live rent-free in his head while he's off work. The dream version of Paul draws a telling contrast between their respective relationships with their patients: Jimmy would perish if one of his patients were unwell, while Paul can separate.

During Jimmy's real-life conversation with Paul about the subject, his mentor reassures him that he hasn't necessarily screwed up, although he should probably stick with conventional therapy for a while. But his efforts are short-lived, especially when Alice inadvertently tricks him into promising to continue making therapist mistakes. She's worried about the possibility of him regressing, especially because his assurances that he's “good” sound no different than the lies he told her when he made up his mind wasn't Good. Still, I have to wonder why jimmying is so, well, therapeutic for him. There must have been years before Tia's death when he felt more comfortable with traditional therapy. Why can't he find his way back there now?

Regardless, it's clear that Jimmy is just as fragile as Alice and Paul say, judging by his explosive reaction to the (aptly timed) appearance of the drunk driver responsible for Tia's death in the final scene. (That is Ted Lasso co-star and shrinkage (Co-creator Brett Goldstein, strikingly clean-shaven.) This fragility affects his relationships with his family and friends, including Paul, who has been forced to assuage Jimmy's previous fears of messing up with his patients. But it also affects his patients themselves, including Sean, who is too afraid of disappointing Jimmy to speak openly about his personal failures.

Overall, Sean is doing pretty well, especially now that his and Liz's food trucks are up and running. But memories of his past still make him uncomfortable. When an old Army buddy comes to town, he's tempted to deviate, even when Jimmy climbs into the ring to challenge him to a fight in his latest Jimmy relapse. (It goes about as well as you'd expect.) Sean is more inspired by Jimmy's faith in him than his silly antics, so he decides to go through with it at first – but in the end he ends up backing out Secondly: straight up walk past the door of the spot.

Sean's constant lack of friends outside of his therapist's circle is perfect evidence of Paul's point about their confusing dual relationship, especially with his lie about how things went with the army buddy. So Sean goes to Paul instead of Jimmy for his next appointment. Your little hello feels a little bittersweet, but it's for the best. Plus, they literally live together, so it's not like the two have disappeared from each other's lives. From now on he will probably only see Jimmy for at most 50 minutes less per week.

Since Jimmy is struggling with a lot of things at the moment, converting his casual sexual arrangement with Gaby into a real relationship is out of the question for him. Maybe one day Jimmy will be ready to take it seriously, but today is not that day and Gaby is aware of it. It's an “uneven dynamic,” she points out to Liz, and the longer she sleeps with him anyway, the more likely it is that her feelings will be hurt. And yet like Jimmy, Gaby needs Posting this now as she is stressed from moving, teaching a class, mediating an ongoing argument between her mother and sister, and dealing with her regular patients. She tries to leave Jimmy, but she just can't – as a “pathological caretaker”, she still holds out hope that he will eventually give her a real chance.

Liz takes it upon herself to interfere as usual, leading to classic Gaby and Liz fights. However, this won't be too intense. Liz asks her husband and Brian to unpack Gaby's things while she's away, and all is forgiven. (Gaby will probably rearrange everything after they leave, right?)

The episode's light C-plot belongs to Paul, who reluctantly comes to terms with the fact that he is in love with his girlfriend Julie, a doctor. They’re not just “roommates with Bennies”; They regularly hold morning dance sessions in their living room and even watch sports together. Paul is a stubborn guy who often has a hard time being open about his feelings, so he initially takes the opposite approach and says they see too much of each other. But one night without Julie is enough to remind him how much he loves spending time with her, so he marches up to her and does the most adult thing by telling her he loves her. (She says it back, of course.)

So much of it shrinkage it's about the need for communication and connection, about having an open and honest heart. When Jimmy repeats his old, recurring lie at the end of the episode and tells Alice that his day was great, there is real cause for concern. Sometimes you think everything is fine until the past comes roaring back.

• Liz and Derek's son, Connor, is still into Alice, and for some reason he doesn't seem to be able to talk to her despite their history (they lost their virginity to each other).

• Gotta love Harrison Ford's grin when Jimmy says Paul pushed him off a cliff in his dream.

• There's not much for Brian to do yet, but he's volunteering on Grace's case, so that should help him stick around.

• Gaby's student Keisha seems like a fun new character.

• Since I'm not a big fan of dental humor, Jimmy's initial attempt to hide what happened (the blood coming out was pretty good) amused me more than the actual depiction of his broken teeth.

• “I don’t need to drug myself by snorting Molly from a stripper named Ecstasy…I might have snorted Ecstasy from a stripper named Molly.”

• “After Mom died, one day you were my father and the next I was being driven to school by a sex worker.” “She was also a Lyft driver. She did both.”

• “Woof.” “That’s my thing.”