Shrinking Review

Created by Brett Goldstein, Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel

Season 1

Number of Episodes 10

Runtime: 33 minutes

Starring Jason Segel, Jessica Williams, Harrison Ford

Streaming on Apple TV

Jason Segel plays Jimmy, (How I Met Your Mother) a grieving therapist who lost his wife due to a terminal illness. He is coping with her death but gives little care to their teenage daughter, Grace played by Lukita Maxwell.

He works at a practice with his mentor Paul, played by Harrison Ford, and Gaby played by Jessica Williams. Jimmy’s work is less than inspiring because he has seen several patients over the years with no real breakthroughs. Finally, he is assigned a new patient who his co-worker couldn’t take on. This particular patient was court-ordered to see a therapist to avoid certain jail time. Sean, played by Luke Tennie, is an honored war vet with severe anger issues and has been arrested several times for starting fights in bars. Jimmy also has some frustrations at home as his next-door neighbor Liz, played by Christa Miller, has taken over as Alice’s parent. Without his wife and daughter, Jimmy is a mess and just drinks himself into a deep depression. His friends have become estranged and worst of all, his daughter has no respect for him.

During one session, Sean is reluctant to give Jimmy a chance as he was just pathetic in his eyes. Jimmy forgoes traditional therapy practices and goes for something a little extra. He takes Sean to a boxing club and has him work out his frustrations with a sparring partner. Sean and Jimmy have a breakthrough and then things start turning around for Jimmy/ The only problem is that Paul doesn’t approve of these new practices and warns him that this will lead to trouble.

Jimmy tries these new practices with his other patients and slowly makes breakthroughs but still seeks the constant praise and mentorship of Paul. Jimmy starts to try new things at home to reclaim parenthood over his daughter. Unknowingly Paul has been secretly counseling Jimmy’s daughter to help her with her issues with her father as well as being a father figure that he never was.

Things start going upside down when one of his patients tries to kiss him, another patient is lying about leaving her husband, and even worse, Sean sees Jimmy as a friend and not a therapist.  The final straw is when Liz and Gaby find out that their daughter has fallen in love with Sean.

The show starts off slow at first, establishing the characters and giving the audience an inside view of the main protagonist’s world not unlike Lawrences’ other shows like Ted Lasso and Scrubs. This really allows the audience to get attached to their favorite characters and builds a world that we would all love to live in.  The real problems addressed in this show are not sugar-coated and always highlight human qualities we would soon forget sometimes. It’s a real gem after Ted Lasso and you’ll just need to be a little patient in the beginning, but the payoff is well worth it in the end.