In Shrinking, available on Apple TV+, therapy is not a safe space. In the plot of the series, sitting in the therapist’s chair entails listening to hard and direct truths that no one else wants to say and that it costs a bitter pill to admit. Jimmy (Jason Segel) is a psychiatrist who doesn’t have the tools “to heal himself.” But he believes that healing the rest implies not lying again.
A phrase that he will repeat over and over again with a certain cynical sense that hides the pain he suffers. But it’s really about the tricky dilemma you’ll have to deal with. Especially when the world around you slowly starts to crack. So much so that the great first scene is that of Jimmy drugged and singing loudly. The mix of vulnerability and humor is amazing. At the same time, the actor’s ability to express such a duality.
The character goes through a major duel, which extends to all places in his life. Hurt, battered, overwhelmed by the absence of his wife, Jimmy feels that everything around him is false. At least, that he stopped having meaning, meaning and value. The exploration of the mind of a man who understands pain better than anyone is elegant.
Shrinking
On Apple TV+’s Shrinking, therapy is not safe territory. At least, not in the traditional sense. In Jason Segel’s argument, the psychological confession is not generous. Much less is it sublimated or idealized. Jimmy (also Segel) is a psychiatrist who doesn’t have the tools “to heal himself.” A phrase that he will repeat over and over again, with a certain cynical sense that hides the pain he suffers. Especially when the world around her slowly starts to crack. So much so that the great first scene is that of Jimmy drugged and singing loudly. The mix of vulnerability and humor is amazing. At the same time, the actor’s ability to express such a duality.
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Score: 4.5 out of 5.
Much more, Shrinking is wise enough not to exceed the conception of good and evil as extreme points. The therapist, who does not find a single reason to believe that what he learned in the office is useful, is a singular figure.
Both for the decisions he makes, and for the well-constructed view of what he needs to understand to fight his inner conflict. The way she gets it is a hilarious “epiphany” that is perhaps the best plot point: it’s all about telling the truth. As frankly as possible.
Which leads to no longer hiding what you think. Jimmy has run out of patience to soften his opinions and that includes, what he thinks about his family and friends. He will do it with his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) and his worried companions Gaby (Jessica Williams) and Paul (Harrison Ford). But, specifically, with his patients. In a dynamic that turns Shrinking’s plot into an open questioning of contemporary hypocrisy without any concealment.
A new way of doing therapy in Shrinking
One of Shrinking’s most interesting points is its honesty. Once Jimmy has moved past euphemisms and dissembling, his responses are as cutting as they are creative. Also much more useful than the formulas that his profession imposed on him for a long time.
Emotional pain is not easy to comfort, even for an expert on the subject. So black humor is the thread that links big concerns to darker places. He does it with intelligence and a point of view that, although bordering on cruelty, is nothing more than frontal.
Shrinking’s Jimmy could only be irritating, unsympathetic or awkward, were it not for the fact that Segel imbues him with a deep humanity. His sadness is evident, as is the hopelessness that, in the end, is the center of all his conflicts.
Mourning is a weight that he carries everywhere and, in a way, it began to define him, although he does not know when it happened. The obvious thing is that telling the truth is his way of creating a change, of feeling that the line of a gray and hollow life acquires importance.
Shrinking, telling the truth to heal, both the patient and the therapist
Suddenly, Jimmy discovers that he doesn’t need—and can’t—keep listening to his patients’ unhealthy and disorderly behaviors. But it is not a decision that is born of bad intention. It is suffering that comes to show him that life is too short to wallow in what is harmful. “We are complacent with what hurts us,” he says openly. “Irresponsible and, in the end, our own victims.”
It might seem like a very elaborate sentence for a plot based on comedy. But the whole context stands on its graceful ability to border on awkwardness. From conversations with his daughter, a teenager his father doesn’t quite understand, to her magnificent discussions with his colleagues. Shrinking uses laughter as a set of perceptions of the human being and never makes the mistake of laughing at the dark spaces that it encompasses.
For the script, it is much more important to make it clear that love, the need for company, loneliness and anguish are sensitive elements. But to come to understand that, effort is needed. Which, of course, also entails confronting Jimmy’s honesty, enraged and, at times, just impatient. “Can anyone be blamed for being afraid?” he says in one of his memorable moments. The answer could be either yes or no. However, the premise does not make it so simple.
Harrison Ford, the power of knowing how to listen well
Of course, one of the biggest points of interest in Shrinking is Paul, played by Harrison Ford. The elderly therapist, with a degenerative ailment, is in some ways a more experienced and vulnerable reverse than Jimmy. Both, by different paths, have discovered the same “revelation”. Usually each patient knows what he needs, but he cannot get it on his own. At the same time, they enjoy their mistakes and making them over and over again.
But Paul, unlike Jimmy, knows that human nature tends to make mistakes. “We are poorly built structures and you have to play with those cards,” Ford insists. He doesn’t say it nicely and he doesn’t say it sweetly either. His is cynicism. Paul’s mocking and sometimes raw energy is what sustains Jimmy, torn to pieces. Together they form an ideal duo and are, without a doubt, the heart of an argument that denies having one, but is much more generous than it tries to hide.
Shrinking is a story about the human spirit, carefully reconstructed after being swept away. Whether due to suffering, illness or old age. The reason doesn’t matter. What is evident is the sense of where this version of the freedom to tell the truth and its consequences is headed.
“We have no choice but to be a little ruthless,” Jimmy says in his therapist chair. A patient looks at him stunned. “Cruelty is as effective as a pill,” he then insists with a smile. Perhaps the phrase that best sums up this strange and sensitive story.