Therapy rarely begins smoothly. Initial sessions tend to be colored by weeping, hesitancy and half-truths as the clinician and client get a feel for each other. You could say the same of many TV shows, but since we’re talking about “Shrinking,” surely you see parallels. Season 1 was all awkward introductions, with Jason Segel’s Jimmy Laird sticking his hand out for a nice-to-meet-you shake, with standard-issue TV wounded healer listed on his Hello My Name Is tag. Jimmy, our psychologist, is barely making it through talk therapy sessions because he’s not quite holding it together.
We’re dropped into Jimmy’s life not long after his wife died, leaving him and their teen daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) to make sense of the unthinkable. At work, his mentor Paul (Harrison Ford) acts more like a father figure toward Jimmy, and his colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams), who was also Tia’s best friend, ends up sleeping with him.
