How the ‘shrinking’ finale turned the TV show into Ted Lasso

Bill Lawrence’s therapy dramedy didn’t start out as a harmony-at-all-costs clone of his other TV shows. But unfortunately that was the case.
Photo: Netflix

Second season finale of Shrinks“The Last Thanksgiving,” premiered on Apple TV+ on December 24. Spoilers ahead.

The overall question regarding ShrinksThe second season was never if Jimmy (Jason Segel) would forgive Louis (Brett Goldstein), the man whose drunken driving killed Jimmy’s wife, Tia (Lilan Bowden). It was when. This harmony-at-all-costs imperative is the Bill Lawrence way, perfected through years of sitcom work Scrubs and Cougar Town; exploded in popularity with Ted Lasso; and now revived in Shrinksco-created by Lawrence, Segel and Goldstein, which in another batch of episodes has strayed far from the unpredictable barbs that marked its beginnings. In the first season, the series wondered what would happen if therapist Jimmy, despondent after becoming a widower, began giving his patients brusque, confrontational advice on how to deal with their problems. Underneath all its character-driven craziness, the question of whether Jimmy was guiding his patients toward revelations or disaster yielded imprecise answers. IN ShrinksIn the second season, however, that sense of uneasy interrogation is gone, and in its place is a pool of narrative gibberish, an after-school special masquerading as a sitcom, an act of aggression against anyone who blanches at the mandatory nature of forgiveness. The second season finale ends with Jimmy and Louis making peace and sitting together at a train station, symbolizing a new path forward for both of them. It provides a worrying view of where Shrinks goes from here, as the series has undone practically every element of dramatic interest it once had.

Consider Jimmy’s patient Sean (Luke Tennie) and his PTSD. This man argued with his family and had strangers kick him because of the vague things that happened during his military service in Afghanistan, but barely weeks later, he has convinced a near-stranger to join the US Army because it will help her “see the world” and “get (her) shit together.” And then there’s Jimmy’s best friend, Brian (Michael Urie), and his reluctance to have a child, which immediately disappears when he realizes that a baby is an accessory and admits to himself that he was just afraid of becoming a father. (No person on Shrinks are allowed to have legitimate, non-anxiety-based preferences.) What about Jimmy’s neighbors Liz (Christa Miller) and Derek’s (Ted McGinley) marital problems? Solved! Once Derek realizes that the only way their partnership works is if he is happily her punching bag. Jimmy and his senior colleague Paul (Harrison Ford)’s push-pull workplace dynamic is even tempered when Paul decides that Jimmy’s boundary-pushing form of therapy is kind of good. Jimmying, which was a selfish way for Jimmy to work in the first season, suddenly works. These are all eerily pleasant outcomes that feel both rushed and obvious, and the most seamless of them all is how Jimmy and Louis resolve their enmity.

Since Louis’ introduction, he and Jimmy have functioned as mirror images of each other: They’ve both lost the woman they love, they’re both full of self-destructive self-loathing, and they both see in Jimmy’s daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell). ) someone they have wronged and to whom they wish to make amends. Their flashback scenes in “Last Drink,” which apparently span the last days before Tia’s death, are strikingly similar. Jimmy and Tia laugh together in bed at inside jokes, then get serious and swear to each other that they will take good care of Alice. Louis and his ex-fiancée, Sarah (Meredith Hagner), gently tease each other as she moves in, then turn serious when he says, “I really love you, you know.” These men aren’t that different, though Shrinks has to pretzel its characters into unrecognizable versions of themselves to insist on this analogy.

Here’s how the resolution happens: Brian suddenly becomes empathetic enough to befriend Louis even though they have nothing in common, in an obvious echo of how years ago in college Brian befriended roommate Jimmy even though they had nothing in common . Meanwhile, Alice, who has been suffocated by being “the girl with the dead mother”, easily forgives Louis, even though he is the reason for her new persona, and then becomes estranged from Jimmy because he won’t forgive Louis. Alice’s support of Jimmying and her insistence that her father extend this approach to the man who killed his wife (“Why can’t you help him? … It would mean so much more that you come from you”) are supposed to convince us that Jimmy should have been doing this all along, traditional forms of therapy and professional codes of conduct be damned. Who needs identifiable human behavior when you can have an emotionally manipulative cry as Jimmy pulls Louis back from stepping in front of a train and killing himself, and the two face each other in recognition and camaraderie during the finale’s final scene? Blech, and also déjà vu.

An awkward but likable figure who breaks the rules, connects personally (and probably inappropriately) with the people he is supposed to be responsible for guiding and teaching, and who exists in an environment where mercy is enforced with oppressive zeal—that is Ted Lassoand it is Shrinks. Overlaps between the programs were never out of the question due to Lawrence and Goldstein’s history Ted Lasso (the former helped to create and wrote on Lassothe latter went on to write and star in it as grumpy assistant coach Roy), but a copy of that show isn’t what Shrinks at first appeared to be. Now Jimmy is AFC Richmond coach Ted, the guy with the unorthodox ideas that shockingly turn around and improve the lives of people accustomed to disappointment and stasis. Paul is Roy, the prickly guy whose sarcastic exterior hides a sour desire to be loved. Liz and her overturned rocks for her favorite people are a version of Ted and his shortbread for AFC Richmond owner Rebecca. Jimmy’s daughter, Alice, demanding that Jimmy exonerate Louis, is a reflection of Ted’s son, Henry, who reminds his father that he and underrated ex-con Nate (Nick Mohammed) once used to be friends. And Jimmy and Louis reunite on tolerant terms, realizing that the heartbreak they share is a unifier rather than a dividing line, simulating the rapprochement between Ted and Nate at the end of Ted Lassothird season — with all its associated treacherous artifices.

Where does Shrinks go now after it’s taken one Fast & Furious approach to expanding its ensemble with redeemed characters previously presented as villains? (Obviously, Goldstein is Shrinks‘s inferior version of Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw.) Interestingly, there has been no discussion of what Louis’ surprisingly short time in prison was like for him—except for the implication that he got out early for good behavior because he is one good man who made only one mistake – or why, after his release, he moved back to the same town where a woman died because of his actions – aside from his need to apologize to Jimmy and Alice, because again, he is a good man who made only one mistake. He is a figment, not a full-fledged character, and Shrinks will have to do more in his already ordered third season to make him feel more real. (It’s probably safe to assume that Goldstein, who co-created the show, will remain in the cast.) Perhaps Hagner, who worked with Lawrence on his second Apple TV+ series, Bad monkeywill return to be a part of Louis’ life after he forced their breakup before his sentencing. Maybe Louis and Sean will be roommates or work together at Sean’s food truck. We certainly can’t discredit the possibility that Louis will become a patient of Jimmy, Paul or Gaby (Jessica Williams), or maybe even take Gaby’s psychology class if he decides to go back to school and pursue a different career. Will Louis get one of Liz’s rocks to show he’s really in La Familia? There are apparently no limits to how Shrinks continues to make its world smaller, its characters more incestuous in their dynamics (think Sean dating Paul’s neurologist and Liz vetting Brian’s nanny candidates), and its vision of self-improvement is offensively simplistic. The only thing missing Shrinks is the “Faith” sign, and at this point I would like to welcome another Ted Lasso replay: It gets torn up.