Shrinking

With no sense of exaggeration intended, this show consistently hits it out of park, offering up characters who admit their flaws, embrace their foibles, and ultimately improve as a result. This might all sound a little bit safe for some, but have faith, because very soon Shrinking will be picking up Emmy awards – remember where you heard it first.

The writers do an amazing job of pinging back and forth between various characters and their relationships on a level rarely seen in a TV comedy. ... You never know what goes on behind the scenes, but one gets the feeling Ford is having one hell of a great time on this show. We’re sure having a hell of a great time watching it.

Every character in “Shrinking” is worth getting to know. The biggest surprise is how great Ford is at just letting loose in a comedy. (Trust me, he’s hilarious). “Shrinking” deserves to become a huge hit.

While Shrinking does sail a bit close to the wind at times, it mostly does a good job of keeping its whimsical side sufficiently anchored in reality.

Judging by the first six episodes sent out to critics for review, Apple TV+’s first 2023 comedy kicks off the year with a helluva bang. The well-balanced dose of sarcastic and contagious humor (rooted in pain and heartache) is the kind of prescribed laughter we need to heal our souls after a long and hard day.

By the second episode it's gelled into an easygoing hangout comedy filled with charming characters who are, by almost any measure, way too involved in each others' lives but also seem incapable of living without one another. ... This is very much an ensemble series that gives the rest of the cast plenty of welcome room in the spotlight, with Williams and Ford effectively playing co-leads.

Shrinking embraces the messiness of interpersonal relationships in that aspect. While some problems can’t be wrapped up in 45 minutes, some really great stories can be told in 30.

This is a promising and unique venture, blending highbrow (shout-out to Carl Jung!) and lowbrow (projectile vomit humor!). The sharp writing offers poignant feels, and the cast seems up for anything.

An endearing and earnest comedy, and all of the ridiculously unprofessional behavior — against which Jimmy’s disapproving colleagues provide the show’s voice of reason — is in service of affectionate character studies and a boatload of healing.

Shrinking has such affection for its flawed and funny characters that you may even yearn for extra sessions. [30 Jan - 12 Feb 2023, p.8]

Episode by episode, it's notable how "Shrinking" isn’t rushing to get anywhere. But the characters are so strong, with the plotting always keeping their dysfunctional relationships in flux, that the series works as a hangout in which you care most about everyone’s honesty with themselves and others.

Given the richness of the casting, it’s also hard to imagine the show going beyond its first season, though there are many reasons you wish it would. ... Everyone comes off as authentically human, save perhaps for Jimmy. But he’s a work in progress, with an entourage of endearing role models showing him how to be real.

The pieces of Shrinking are familiar — though one of them, Harrison Ford’s comic turn as Jimmy’s mentor Paul, is the kind we haven’t seen in a while — but they still work, particularly in the hands of this excellent creative team and cast.

Segel is ultimately the one carrying the show - Ford, Maxwell, Jessica Williams and the rest of the central players all put in strong, engaging performances, but this thing rests on Segel's shoulders, and he doesn't disappoint.

If the show does start to lose you, it won’t be for long. (Unless, perhaps, you’re a real therapist.) Breezy episodes and clever writing ripe with undeniable jokes and razor-sharp relatability help anchor Shrinking‘s effective execution. But its greatest strength lies in a charming cast with excellent chemistry and characters you can’t help but root for.

In a way, the series has a good deal in common with “Ted Lasso,” in the sense that it succeeds not because of its premise – which sounds completely ordinary and familiar – but in spite of it. “Shrinking” isn’t a big idea, but with a big heart and genuine laughs, it, too, achieves its goal.

It only takes a few episodes for “Shrinking” to feel like a true ensemble.

Nestled between the shenanigans, which include a fair amount of sexual frankness, is a generous and thoughtful accounting of grief.

You may love “Ted Lasso” or you may hate it, but you can’t argue that it isn’t sure of itself. Less so with “Shrinking,” though it has a kind of comfortable, lived-in pace and execution that makes it easy to watch.

At its best, “Shrinking” is a show about how decisions have unexpected ripple effects. One doctor decides to go off-book and that pushes his friends and colleagues to take leaps that they may not have otherwise considered. That’s an easily watchable concept. It treads water a bit too much in the middle of the season after its set-up has kind of drifted away and the writers are content to just bounce the now-established characters off each other, but this is also the section of the first season in which it feels the ensemble starts to gel.

Without Ford, “Shrinking” may have been unbearable, but with him, I ended up happily revisiting episodes just to enjoy the actor’s spark. Perhaps I’m alone in suffering compassion fatigue when it comes to Segel’s cartoonish sensitive types.

[Harrison Ford's] dry delivery of Paul’s acerbic one-liners and verdicts on his younger colleagues’ antics provides a much-needed counterpoint to the schmaltz that often threatens to overwhelm, and his gravitas grounds a show whose fluffy pieces could otherwise easily float away.

Ford seems poorly used and out-of-place in this comic milieu; that he’s stiff and uncomfortable is a joke with diminishing returns. Better are his dramatic scenes. ... Whereas Segel is more at sea. An open-hearted performer whose emotional palette is big, bold and easy to read, Segel cannot make Jimmy’s confessions feel special or earned. ... With that in mind, I enjoyed Jimmy’s relationship with Gaby, as the pair of therapists’ chemistry seems to exist beyond words. And his relationship with his daughter Alice, too, felt pleasingly underexplored.

Like Ted Lasso, Shrinking is sweetly funny, and sentimental almost to a fault. It’s worth watching for a goofily poignant Jason Segel — and a gloriously grouchy Harrison Ford.

Ironically, if Ted Lasso himself had sat down to write a comedy it might well have turned out like this one. It just needs a voice in the writers’ room to shout "bollocks" from time to time when the cheese overwhelms.

When you put Harrison Ford in full curmudgeon mode next to Jason Segel and Jessica Williams, there’s just not denying that you’ve got a competently funny show on your hands. But what is it saying? I mean, other than the platitudes it seems to spout: that all of us (even therapists!) are struggling? That we’re all doing our best?

Its characters may be quick-witted, entertaining, and portrayed by skillful actors, but listening to them drone on about the same personal problems becomes enervating over the course of ten episodes.

It’s tempting to just keep talking about Harrison Ford, because aside from Paul, the news about “Shrinking” isn’t so good. ... The cycle of yelling, crying and apologizing is so constant that even within episodes you lose track of what people are yelling about and what they’re apologizing for. Tonally, however, the show is a quiet, somewhat monochrome drama, and the result is that it never quite feels in sync.

The overall impression left by Shrinking is that it’s slightly less than the sum of its admittedly impressive parts. It’s simultaneously too heavy to work as a hangout sitcom a la Cougar Town, and too lightweight to work as an earnest exploration of grief.

Everyone in the show seems willing to give Jimmy a second, third or umpteenth chance to redeem himself but based on these first two episodes, viewers might not be so accommodating.

Segel, Goldstein, and Lawrence try to frame Jimmy as relatably flawed. Instead, he comes off as a casual perpetrator of gross therapeutic malpractice whose negligence as the sole remaining parent to a girl suffering acutely from her own grief constitutes an ongoing emergency. The result is a show that labors mightily to affect and inspire but ultimately only grates. And its construction is even flimsier than its content. Plot holes are common.