‘Shrinking’ Season-Premiere Recap: Pattern Interruption

Early in the first season of Shrinking, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the show’s premise. It’s one thing to follow a therapist with unconventional methods, but Jimmy’s way of doing things was clearly unethical, and the show knew it. How sustainable could that be as a plot engine for a comedy like this one? By the halfway point of the season, though, the show had moved away a bit from that central hook, transforming (like so many of Bill Lawrence’s other shows) into a more low-concept hangout sitcom about a group of characters. Then, we got that literal cliffhanger of a final scene: Grace, one of Jimmy’s biggest success stories, pushed her husband off a cliff.

It was a reminder that therapists often have quite a lot of power when it comes to their patients, and wielding that power irresponsibly can have serious consequences. But it was also a return to a story line that the show had mostly moved past. As much as I enjoyed how the season ended, I wondered what tack the next season would take.

This premiere suggests that Jimmy quitting his usual offbeat techniques could be difficult; Jimmying his patients has become something like an addiction, filling the void left by all the liquor and drugs he once used to cope with his wife Tia’s death. Season one also suggested this idea early on as we saw Jimmy come back to life after a year of grief, reinvesting his energy into his work life while working hard to make up for lost time with his daughter. But I do hope that if the season sticks with this conflict (rather than dropping the quirky therapy and reverting back to a more general therapist-led hangout sitcom), we’ll learn more about why exactly Jimmy relies on this so much.

Still, I like that this episode continues to acknowledge the harmful effects of that type of therapy. Grace is the most obvious example: As a result of Jimmy’s overly explicit advice, she’s in jail, facing a potential life sentence for the attempted murder of her husband. (He did survive, but he might never walk again.) Jimmy tries to justify this to Paul as “pattern interruption,” a familiar term in normal therapy that means exactly what it sounds like. But there’s really no way to see this as a win; Grace even points out that she’d rather have a shitty husband than spend her life in prison.

Perhaps the bigger problem is that Jimmy just cares too much about his patients, letting them live in his head rent-free while he’s off the clock. The dream version of Paul draws an insightful contrast between their respective relationships with their patients: Jimmy would come undone if one of his patients didn’t turn out okay, while Paul can separate himself.

During Jimmy’s real-life talk with Paul about this subject, his mentor reassures him that he didn’t necessarily fuck up, though he should probably stick to conventional therapy for a while. But his efforts are short-lived, especially when Alice inadvertently gets him to promise to keep committing therapist malpractice. She’s worried about the possibility of him regressing, especially because his assurance that he’s “good” doesn’t sound any different from the lies he told her when he decidedly wasn’t good. Still, though, I have to wonder why Jimmying is so, well, therapeutic to him. There must have been years prior to Tia’s death where he was more comfortable with traditional therapy. Why can’t he find his way back there now?

Regardless, it’s clear that Jimmy is as fragile as Alice and Paul say, based on his explosive reaction to the (conveniently timed) appearance of the drunk driver responsible for Tia’s death in the final scene. (That’s Ted Lasso co-star and Shrinking co-creator Brett Goldstein, startlingly clean-shaven.) That fragility is affecting his relationships with his family and friends, including Paul, who was forced to assuage Jimmy’s earlier fears about messing up with his patients. But it’s also affecting his patients themselves, including Sean, who’s too afraid of disappointing Jimmy to be open about any personal failure.

Sean is in a pretty good place overall, especially now that his and Liz’s food truck is up and running. But he’s still uncomfortable with reminders of his past. When an old army friend comes to town, he’s tempted to flake, even after Jimmy gets in the ring to challenge him to a fight in his latest Jimmying relapse. (It goes about as well as you’d expect.) Sean is more inspired by Jimmy’s confidence in him than his goofy antics, so he decides to go through with the hang at first — but in the end, he pulls out at the last second, walking right past the door of the spot.

Sean’s continual lack of friends outside his therapist’s circle perfectly proves Paul’s point about their confusing dual relationship, especially with his lie about how it went with the army buddy. So for his next appointment, Sean goes to Paul instead of Jimmy. Their little hello feels a bit bittersweet, but it’s for the best. Besides, they do literally live together, so it’s not like these two are out of each other’s lives. At most, he’ll probably see Jimmy 50 minutes less per week from now on.

Jimmy is dealing with a lot right now, so turning his casual sexual arrangement with Gaby into a real relationship isn’t front of mind. Maybe one day Jimmy will be ready to get serious, but today is not that day, and Gaby is aware of that. It’s an “uneven dynamic,” she points out to Liz, and the longer she keeps sleeping with him despite that, the more likely her feelings will get hurt. And yet like Jimmy, Gaby needs this release now, stressed as she is with moving, teaching a class, mediating an ongoing fight between her mom and sister, and dealing with her regular patients. She tries to quit Jimmy, but she just can’t — as a “pathological caretaker,” she’s still holding out hope he’ll give her a real shot eventually.

Liz takes it upon herself to interfere, as usual, leading to some classic Gaby-and-Liz fighting. This one doesn’t get too intense, though. Liz enlists her husband and Brian to unpack all of Gaby’s stuff while she’s away, and all is forgiven. (Gaby’s probably going to rearrange all that after they’re gone, though, right?)

The light C-plot of the episode belongs to Paul, who is starting to reluctantly come to terms with the fact that he is deeply in love with his doctor girlfriend, Julie. They’re not just “roomies with bennies”; they have regular morning dance sessions in their living room, and they even watch sports together. Paul is a stubborn guy who often struggles to be open about his emotions, so at first he goes the opposite way, suggesting they see too much of each other. But a night away from Julie is enough to remind him how much he likes spending time with her, so he marches over to her place and does the mature thing by telling her he loves her. (She says it back, of course.)

So much of Shrinking is about that need for communication and connection, about having an open and honest heart. So when Jimmy pulls back out his old recurring lie at the end of the episode — telling Alice that his day was great — there’s real cause for concern. Sometimes, you think everything’s fine until the past comes roaring back.

• Liz and Derek’s son, Connor, is still pretty into Alice, and for some reason, he seems incapable of talking to her despite their history (they lost their virginities to each other).

• Gotta love Harrison Ford’s grin when Jimmy says Paul pushed him off a cliff in his dream.

• Not a ton for Brian to do yet, but he’s taking on Grace’s case pro bono, so that should help keep him involved.

• Gaby’s student Keisha seems like a fun new character.

• Not really a fan of teeth humor, so I was more amused by Jimmy’s initial effort to hide what happened (the leaking blood was pretty good) than the actual visuals of his fucked-up teeth.

• “I don’t need to numb myself by snorting molly off of some stripper named Ecstasy … I might have been snorting ecstasy off a stripper named Molly.”

• “After Mom died, one day you were my dad, and the next I was getting a ride to school from a sex worker.” “She was also a Lyft driver. She did both.”

• “Woof.” “That’s my thing.”