Shrinking: Season 2 – TV Review

TL;DR – It is rare when a series can both genuinely make me laugh down to my core yet also deliver one of the most potent emotional slaps to the face that I have ever gotten.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

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

Warning – Contains scenes that may cause distress.

Shrinking. Image Credit: AppleTV+.

In today’s binge-streaming culture, it is almost expected that you will sit down and plough through a series in one or two sessions. Television that is almost just on in the background while you are doing other things. Well, today, we look at a series that respects you as a viewer in a way that you can’t watch all of it in one sitting because you need to savour every moment of it.

So, to set the scene, throughout Season One, Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel) was trying to find his place in the world as he was still reeling from the tragic death of his wife Tia (Lilan Bowden) in a car crash years earlier. It was in this space that he decided to try a more hands-on type of therapy with his clients called ‘Jimmying’. There were success stories and failures, but it was working right up until one of Jimmy’s patients, Grace (Heidi Gardner), decided to take some advice a touch too literally and pushed her abusive boyfriend off a cliff. Meanwhile, Gaby (Jessica Williams) is dealing with always having to be the support mechanism for her family while starting a new role as professor, Sean (Luke Tennie) is working through having his dad back in his life, Alice (Lukita Maxwell) is still processing her own grief, and Paul’s (Harrison Ford) Parkinson’s is getting worse. Now, from here, we will be looking at the series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.  

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Joy Ride – Movie Review

TL;DR – A film that is both crass, hilarious, and heartfelt, all in equal measure.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this film.

The gang on a motorbike.

Joy Ride Review

In the last run, before we do our best of 2023 lists, I wanted to try films that I knew I would enjoy and just missed, but also those that don’t fit into his category. There was a point in the year when it looked like everyone was putting out mature comedies again. Some were great, others not so much. So, I didn’t give much thought to Joy Ride during its short theatrical ride in Australia, and I think that might have been a mistake.

So to set the scene, it is 1998, and the Chen family has just moved into a new and very white neighbourhood called White Hills. But when Lolo Chen (Ashley Park) found Audrey Sullivan (Sherry Cola), there was an instant connection, a best friend connection that stayed with them all their lives, well up to this point. Audrey is going back to China for the first time, and she is taking Lolo with her as a translator. Lolo wants to see if they can find Audrey’s birth mother while they are there, but Audrey is just focused on her job because if she nails it, she will be moving out of White Hills. But throw in the complications of Lolo’s cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), Audrey’s college roommate Kat Huang (Stephanie Hsu), and her business meeting with Chao (Ronny Chieng) happening in a club, and things soon start falling apart.  

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