TL;DR – Shrinking is the kind of show that has cornered the market in laugh-crying your way through an episode, and this first outing back is no different as Harrison Ford hits both of those emotions in the first five minutes.

Disclosure – I paid for the AppleTV service that viewed this series.

Shrinking Review introduction –

Well, it is time to check back in with everyone’s favourite ‘probably dysfunctional friend group, but since most of the characters are therapists, we probably won’t bring that up’ television family. This is such an odd show because on paper it does not really work, but then you sit down, turn it on and find yourself laughing/crying your way through it. That was at least the case for Season One and Season Two, but can Season Three land those same feels? Well, let’s look at the opening double-parter to see how they will go.   

So, to set the scene, things are looking up for the group of friends working their way around life, love, and finding themselves. However, while everyone is growing and changing, life finds its way to throw curveballs everywhere. Jimmy (Jason Segel) wants Alice (Lukita Maxwell) to get into Wesleyan, but he is very not ready for his daughter to move across the country for college in Connecticut. Paul’s (Harrison Ford) Parkinson’s is progressing, and he can’t hold a pencil anymore. But nothing prepares you for the reason someone says, “My bad”. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.  

Cast

I may say this a lot, but there is no way this series works without a cast as committed to the show as these members are. This is, at its core, a comedy, but it is also a comedy that can throw the ‘dead mum’/’dead spouse’ card out there with a sheer commitment that I would not expect would be possible, but here we are. Shrinking is a show that only works because actors like Harrison Ford are playing with a level of vulnerability that I have not seen in his work before. He’s still all “Get off my plane!” but here those layers are stripped away. It creates a complex tapestry of a character, and that makes it profoundly more interesting to watch, because you care.

That care is spread throughout the cast because everyone knows where their character needs to be, and that makes all the banter, and the little asides, all the quiet signals during a wedding work as well as they do. Jessica Williams is electric every moment she is on screen, Ted McGinley delivers some of the best one-liners in the business, and Damon Wayans Jr. makes one recurring gag work each and every time. It is an ensemble that feeds off each other’s energy, making every combination of characters a delight to watch.

Plot

In this first two-parter, two main throughline stories tie the gang together, and one hidden story, which I will talk about soon. The first is people contemplating the need to move on as Alice faces the reality of moving away from her entire support network, the only thing that got her through the death of her mother. This, of course, has flow-on effects for the whole cast, as they all grapple with holding on or moving on. It is the kind of narrative arc that you could see in just about any modern sitcom, but it’s not just ordinary. It is not just quirky misunderstandings; it is deep-rooted fears manifesting and being worked through, in slightly comical ways.

The second main plotline in the opening episode is a mirror to the first, because while some people are working through moving on, Paul and Julie (Wendie Malick) realise, or are forced to admit, that things would be so much easier for them if they were married. Well, that opens a Pandora’s box of emotions as Gaby (Jessica Williams) goes to throw a big party, when they want something simple. Once again, this is the kind of story that you could see in any sitcom, even if it is turned up to 11 here. However, the heart at the core of the narrative is Paul discovering that he needs to hold on to these moments of joy while he still can.

This leads us to the final surprise narrative, which bookended the show, that Paul’s condition has reached the point where he has begun to hallucinate. The surprise ‘the person you thought was real was a hallucination/ghost/spirit/etc’ has been done a lot, but works from Bill Lawrence have a habit of deploying it in a way that cuts you to the core … looking at you, Scrubs, don’t think I have forgiven you yet, because I haven’t. Could it have been tacky, yes, but Michael J. Fox elevates it, because even when you were thinking ‘wait, this wedding is too happy’ and ‘something bad is about to happen’, you are not really prepared for the show to reveal that it already told you what was happening. It told you what was coming, it told you about the hallucinations, and it prepared you for the grief, even when you didn’t realise you were grieving.      

In the end, do we recommend Shrinking My Bad? Yes, yes, we do. Sure, it had to do a lot of heavy lifting, like all first episodes back in modern television. But this is a cast that makes an aggressive semi-colon joke land, a show that can make a Pussy Riot reference and have it land, and a show that can move you to tears, even when you are laughing.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Shrinking
Directed by – Randall Keenan Winston
Written by – Brian Gallivan
Created by – Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel & Brett Goldstein
Production/Distribution Companies – 3 Chance Productions, Corporate Mandate, Doozer Productions, Warner Bros. Television & AppleTV
Starring – Jason Segel, Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, Lukita Maxwell, Ted McGinley, Christa Miller, & Harrison Ford
With – Michael J. Fox, Brett Goldstein, Damon Wayans Jr., Lily Rabe, Rachel Stubington, Devin Kawaoka, Neil Flynn, Claudia Sulewski, Miriam Flynn, & Wendie Malick
And – Brian Gallivan, Markus Silbiger, Mo Welch, Trey Santiago-Hudson, Amy Rosoff, Kenajuan Bentley, Matthew Rocheleau, Erin Matthews, & Terry Lee Fradet