1-1-1: Shrinking Season 1

 2023, 10 Episodes - AppleTV+
created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein

The Plot 100:

Jimmy is a therapist who has been grieving the sudden loss of his wife for over a year. In that time he's become frustrated with his patience and lost any sense of connection with his daughter, Alice. With the help of new patient, Sean, a young war vet with PTSD, he suddenly snaps out of his depression by taking a different approach to therapy and maybe to life. But he will have to contend with neighbour Liz, who has been parenting Alice in his malaised absence, his boss/mentor Paul, and his coworker/late wife's BFF Gaby.

1-1-1
1 Great: The Pivot. I have enjoyed many of Bill Lawrence's co-creations, including Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Clone High, and especially Cougartown. Likewise, I've enjoyed much of Jason Segel's creative work, with Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Muppets being two of my favourite films from the past 20 years.  And well, Brett Goldstein is fast proving himself a creative force in Hollywood after being pretty busy in British TV and Cinema for over a decade. So like half a Voltron with the world in their palm, they collide to create what may unbelievably wind up being the next great "hang" comedy of the 21st century.  

Of course, Shrinking doesn't start out with that objective.  It very much seemed to have a defined idea of what it was to be, who Jimmy was, and what his relationships with these characters would be. Cougartown was the same way.  It was established as a comedic vehicle for Courtney Cox, meant to explore the newly single life of a mid-40's mother reentering the dating scene after divorcing her philandering husband and her son on the precipice of college. But by midway through the first season, the immensely talented cast and their personalities started to dominate the show, meaning the writers couldn't just force them into a form of over-arcing story, or weave a theme around them, and the interest in exploring Cox's character's love life in a sub-par Sex in the City way was non-existent. By the end of the first season, the show had abandoned almost entirely its premise, and instead become a show about hanging out and drinking wine and being deliriously silly.

Shrinking opens with Segel's Jimmy partying with two too-young-for-him women in his backyard pool at 3am, his neighbour Liz (Christa Miller) marching over and berating him, and his 17-year-old daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell) looking at him scornfully. Jimmy, in full breakdown mode, has hit rock bottom, and the show's intent, I believe, was to show how Jimmy picks himself back up again, by way of Jimmy's job as a therapist. Jimmy starts to be more intrusive in his patients lives, he starts to think he has the answers to their problems, he starts pushing them into action, not just talk.  The intent I believe was part "therapist, heal thyself" and also part thought experiment on different therapies.   It does follow through on this intent, but, less and less with each episode, and by about episode 5 of this 10-episode season, it's definitely not just about Jimmy anymore.  It's sense of being a "dramedy" gives way pretty quickly.

If you look at Jessica Williams' Gaby, there's no way where she winds up at the end of the season is where she was forecasted to go. Gaby starts off the series divorcing her malaised husband, only to see him rebound quickly and become successful. There is a hint of Gaby's ex wanting her back, and I can only think there was a more serious on-again/off-again, "this therapist's life is a mess" style story originally intended, but it does a HARD pivot into unexpected territory.

By the end of the first season, every main cast member is engaged with every other cast member in a meaningful (if not necessarily organic) way, and the show lives more for the time the characters spend with each other than it does with advancing a story arc or agenda. The time the characters spend together, though, just happens to move their stories forward. What is left behind is the Shrinking-ness of it all, the need to frame the show around therapy sessions.  The writers have more to say about the characters than they do about the therapy process, and that's more than OK, it makes the show.

1 Good - Casting. What Lawrence seems to have realized with his shows is that you can have all the plans in the world for the story you want to tell, but there's basically two ways to go with an ensemble cast: 1) build an ever-expanding universe around them or 2) tighten the circle.  With the premise of therapists treating patients as a framework, the universe could be ever-expanding, but while the therapy sessions don't fully go away, the attention isn't on them.  The circle is tightened.

When Jimmy starts taking Sean (Luke Tennie) places outside of the office for therapy, the moments that work are those of connection, not of the concepts Jimmy's hoping will help. When Sean moves into Jimmy's poolhouse, from a "dramedy" standpoint, it's a bad idea, but from a comedic ensemble set-up, it tightens the circle. It pulls the characters closer. It means Sean and Alice start to engage, it means Sean and Liz encounters, it starts to centralize the show around Jimmy's home and not the workplace.  Sure, Sean could run into Gaby and Paul at the office, but it's better when they see each other around the neighbourhood.  They just have to keep finding ways for Gaby and Paul to turn up at Jimmy's...and they do.

I don't think Shrinking was meant to be such an ensemble, but instead a Segel-led production. Yet, when you have the creative pull of two of the team who made the cultural phenomenon Ted Lasso, Apple TV+'s greatest success story (not their best show, that would be Severance), the world is their oyster and they just so happened, to, god knows how, pull Harrison Ford into this damn thing as Paul.  When you get Harrison Ford for his first-ever sitcom, you can't just have him play a small supporting role.  There's likely a fear factor to getting the biggest movie star of the past 50 years to be in your TV show, and a trepidation in writing his character into too many scenes with other, less famous actors on the show, but Ford seems shockingly game to put his comedy hat on, in a rather undemanding and, probably, rewarding role.  The dramedy of Paul revolves around his Parkinson's affliction, and his relationship with his estranged daughter (sort of a worst-case-scenario prognostication for Jimmy and Alice), but the show lets the character be part of the fun, too, and it seems quick to realize that Ford wants in on it.  The best relationship in the show is Paul and Alice, as they, effectively sneak around Jimmy's back, forging a tight grandfather-granddaughter-like bond. It's a great juxtaposition to the other strained relationships each has in their lives, that they come together and are able to have the relationship with each other that they wish they had with their own family. Young Maxwell holds her own in every scene and manages a genuine connection with Ford.

Williams is a comedic performer who just dominates scenes. She's energetic, charismatic and radiant. She just shines, and the show quickly, and wisely, finds a way to fold her into other characters lives so that she can be on screen more.  It sacrifices her story arc in the process, which is a downside, and it needs to find a meaningful arc to build around her, but her presence is welcome in every scene.

You're not getting a Bill Lawrence production without Christa Miller (except Ted Lasso, I guess) so Miller's Liz as the standoffish-yet-invasive-yet-supportive neighbour seems kind of forced into the show early on. The character here seems a variant of her Ellie character from Cougartown and it needs to work at differentiating her. Miller can't be the surly one, because Ford has that down on lock.  It takes work to integrate her into the show, but they find it. Again, some of the connections here (like between Liz and Gaby, or Liz and Paul, or Liz and Sean) aren't necessarily natural, but once the ice is broken between them it opens up an easy opportunity for more.

Michael Urie seems almost an afterthought in the first few episodes, which makes me think his character Brian, Jimmy's best friend, was a late addition to the show for queer representation.  Urie's performance as Brian is spot on, relentlessly positive and a little egocentric, he's magnetic, but by the end of the first season, what hasn't been sold is the connection between Jimmy and Brian. Friends, yes. Best friends, maybe not. Had the dramedy of it all continued, I could see that connection being forged faster.  But Brian has been integrated with Gaby and Paul, and they just need to find an in to connecting Brian and Liz and Brian and Alice (they kind of missed the opportunity for him to be "Uncle Brian" for Alice).

1 Bad - Spectre. The patients that Jimmy treats were likely meant to be a greater narrative thrust for the show in its conception, but as it pivoted to being more interested in getting the characters to interact with each other, the therapy sessions fall to the side. Sean and Jimmy's relationship has gone from being therapist and patient to Sean basically becoming a part of his family. Jimmy's other patients, for the most part, are largely forgettable, to the point that the season finale has a montage to remind you of them and the benefits of his irreverent therapy has had on their lives leaves you straining to remember just who they are. It's almost like closure, the show signing off on that chapter of its storytelling, until it leaves a literal cliffhanger ending with Heidi Gardner's character, Grace, and her abusive boyfriend.  At this point the show has already pivoted into an insular hang comedy, so the sudden injection into serious real-world ramifications is jarring, far more so than when Grace's boyfriend beats the crap out of Jimmy in the second episode and Sean comes to his defence.

Therapy is so intimate, personal, and often painful, the type of comedy that comes from it needs to be more subtle and delicate, lest it lead to making fun of the people in therapy. It can lead to situational humour, or cringe comedy, and it's clear that's not the type of show this wants to be. So given the ending of the season that's become so character focused, why the need to toss this weighted plot twist that's so external to the ensemble?

META:
The first ad for Shrinking quite literally told us nothing about the show. It was straight on head shots of the actors, bouncing into frame obviously on a trampoline, against a stark, monochromatic teal backdrop, Kid Cudi's "Pursuit of Happiness" doing most of the heavy lifting tonally. Segel, Williams, Miller. Urie..faces we are familiar with, and probably even like from many, many other successful projects, certainly raising an eyebrow of interest. Citing Ted Lasso and Scrubs maybe eliciting a little "Oh?"  But then Ford walking on scene, looking disapprovingly at Segel, and one could only say "what the hell is this?"  Yes, by the time the ads started coming, Ford had already broken the TV seal with his Yellowstone expanded-universe show, but that was something specific and tangible, genre-wise...this...was intriguing.

Ford, quite literally, sells the show. I would have likely given it a chance without Ford, given the Segel, Lawrence, Williams of it all, but my attention wouldn't have been as immediate without Indiana Solo in place.

I was uncertain after the first two episodes really where it was going, and whether it was working, but when it starts to make the pivot, I really fell into it, keen to rejoin these players week-to-week. Ford being surly and vulnerable but in a funny way is a genuinely special thing, but everything that surrounds him is special too.