Life keeps moving forward in the third season of acclaimed comedy Shrinking
How far we have come since the early days of Shrinking. In the beginning, there was Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), a recently widowed therapist who was coping very poorly with his wife’s death, telling his patients what he really thought of them, while drifting away from his teenage daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell), who sought solace and parental advice next door, from neighbours Liz (Christa Miller) and Derek (Ted McGinley).
Two seasons later, father and daughter have not only rekindled their relationship, but made peace with Louis (Brett Goldstein), the man responsible for the fatal car accident that forever changed their lives. Jimmy has stopped his unorthodox methods of treating patients, but his former patient Sean (Luke Tennie) has become a bona fide member of the Laird family as a result of that period — and moved on to being professionally treated by Jimmy’s colleague Dr. Paul Rhoades (Harrison Ford).
If the theme of Bill Lawrence, Goldstein and Segel’s show was “grief” in the first season and “forgiveness” in the second, we now are moving forward from the pain in the third. But the future is not without its own set of anxieties. Empty nester Liz is struggling with her purpose in life, Jimmy and Paul’s colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams) is pondering her future at the Behavioral Therapy Center, but perhaps the most pressing issue is that Paul’s Parkinson’s disease is progressing, leaving no one unaffected.
The actions these characters take due to their struggles are messy, they’re emotional — and they’re always funny. “I mean, look at Shrinking. Everything’s sloppy, everything’s intermingling. There’s a bunch of things that are kind of noisy. There’s a lot of static and grey. In this primordial ooze after grief, things just slide around real easily,” says Tennie. “What they’re trying to do is paint this picture of reality in a fun and goofy way, but also take seriously what it would look like if people commit to these decisions.”
But amid the chaos there are also great strides. For Sean, a veteran who previously was prone to angry outbursts, Paul has equipped him with ways to cope. “He has tools to face his fears, to handle his anger, to manage his expectations, to make sure that he’s not putting too much on himself, and to also make sure that he can be present for the people that he loves,” says Tennie. This season, Sean really requires these tools when faced with an ex who wants to rekindle their romance. “He really needs to figure out who he is and if he’s ready to move forward,” he says. “He’s gotta make sure that he uses these tools he’s been equipped with, or he could potentially put himself in emotional danger while also putting these people that he loves in emotional danger.”
While Alice is excited about the idea of starting her adult life, she also struggles with the idea of moving forward, and thus away from home. “There’s an excitement about looking to the future, but, more than being scared of her own future, she’s scared of leaving Jimmy behind,” says Maxwell. “Her biggest fear is pulling the rug out from under his feet. She knows that she is a solid, constant building block in his life, and he is going to go through significant change when she leaves. She just wants to make sure that he’s steady before she does the big leap.”
But, as in seasons past, progress feels safer in the presence of their chosen family — a group that Paul also finds himself leaning on in a storyline that feels parallel to Alice’s. “There’s a great acceptance from both of their characters of embracing the unknown of the future,” says Maxwell. “I think when one door closes, so many more open, and they both have strength now — and less doubt — about walking through these doors. I think that there’s a reassurance from an internal intuition. There’s a reassurance from Jimmy, for both of them. And there is a reassurance from this greater community of people. So, they’re moving forward.”
Gaby also experiences a need for reassurance in the third season. “She goes through quite a bit, feeling like she lost the game and then ultimately being pushed by her mentor to move forward,” says Williams. “I’m really proud of the Gaby-Paul stuff this season. I think it’s super-tender and sweet. And a mentor-mentee, surrogate father-surrogate daughter relationship is really important to see on TV.” There is one scene with Ford, in particular, that stands out to Williams. “It was like I was looking right into the sun and it was too bright and I needed to put my sunglasses on,” she says. “I remember watching him work and just being moved where they kind of had to keep jumping in and be like, ‘Hey, you’re really crying,’ and I was like, ‘He’s destroying in there!’ The beauty of acting is that at the end of the day, it’s just listening and believing the circumstances for one to two minutes at a time between Action and Cut. And everything I’m hearing and seeing is real — in this weird version, there are no cameras here.”
If the onscreen emotions feel palpable, it is because of the atmosphere behind the scenes that allows the cast to safely experiment. “This show, I find, really stretches me as an actor and has made me excited about acting,” says Miller. “I do so much preparation. I know my lines inside and out. I have intentions. I know what I wanna do. And then I throw it out when I get there. You know, Jason Segel’s said, ‘A day isn’t good unless you’ve failed four times’ — which could be crying in a scene where they don’t want crying. We’re all facile at jumping from thing to thing because we have the freedom and the space to do it . . . I learn every day from being with this great group of people.”
For Tennie, when it comes to these relationships, it feels like life has imitated art. “Sean and Jimmy’s relationship has grown a lot, just like my relationship with Jason. I view him as this wise older brother figure,” he says. “In terms of wisdom and believing in yourself, there is no one in my life who has a better handle on what that looks like than Jason. When we see this connection between Sean and Jimmy, I feel that same older brother arm around me in my own life. It’s really cool to see that come to fruition on the screen.”
Shrinking, streaming on Apple TV