A great television season is hard to pull off, but following it up with another comes with added pressure to stick with the core ideals that made it good in the first place — which is exactly what the cast and crew of Shrinking have with their second season.
Picking up shortly after where Season 1 ended, our characters are where we left them. Jimmy (Jason Segel) is dealing with the consequences of his radical interventionist approach to counselling. Grace (Heidi Gardner) is in jail following her actions in the last season’s finale, and Jimmy visits regularly. Sean (Luke Tennie) opened a food truck with Liz (Christa Miller), but his relationship with Jimmy has progressed past the doctor/patient boundary and may no longer be effective.
It’s refreshing that Jimmy is in these positions; a lesser show would have had his new approach to his work be 100 percent successful, but this season has him realizing that boundaries exist for a reason.
Segel, for his part, maintains the melancholy but upbeat energy that made Jimmy so relatable in the first season. He’s doing better, but still has room to grow and heal, and the appearance of a new character played by Ted Lasso‘s Brett Goldstein threatens to throw his and his daughter Alice’s (Lukita Maxwell) lives back into disarray. (Nothing can be written about Goldstein’s character that isn’t a spoiler, but rest assured that he is great.)
As with the first season, there are some heavy themes, but the series handles them with grace, subtlety and humour that keeps everything relatable. There are plenty of moments when characters behave rashly but never out of character.
Link: https://exclaim.ca/film/article/shrinking-season-2-review-apple-tv
‘Shrinking’ Rises to Its Tall Order in Season 2 | Exclaim!
