Shrink

I like pain

Season 2

Episode 2

Editorial review

4 stars

****

Photo: Apple TV+

As a therapist, is there such a thing as having? at many boundaries with your patients? Probably not. But that’s what Jimmy Paul suggests in “I Love Pain.” Shrink tends to rightly portray Jimmy as the Wrong One and Paul as the Right One, and that is still the case here – Jimmy’s boundaries are essentially non-existent, and as a result, his patients have become too dependent. But the episode also marks Jimmy as somewhat correct when he suggests that Paul could use some loosening up on his ethics.

This issue of boundaries comes up in two of Paul’s patients – both his newest and his oldest. Sean is used to having Jimmy as a therapist, a man sympathizes and can bully freely at any time. But Paul doesn’t want that nonsense. When he receives a text from Sean on his personal cell phone talking about a painful conversation he didn’t have, Paul doesn’t respond by dropping everything and talking it out, like Jimmy would. He calls Sean and firmly sets boundaries, telling him to practice the tool he learned last session.

Liz is excited about the food blog planning a write-up of their truck, heavily focused on Sean’s veteran story, but Sean is nowhere near the point where he would feel comfortable publishing that (even if it’s just for a food blog with a lame joke). name). More than that, he wanted the truck to represent a fresh start, and he’s reluctant to associate it with a past he’d rather forget. Worried about how Liz might react if he turns down the interview, he eventually turns to Paul’s “Desire Reversal” tool, which involves visualizing your worst fears and then saying the phrase “I love pain” out loud as you embrace them.

When Sean imagines Liz calling him a baby and going into Karen mode, that’s enough: he’s willing to talk to her, partly because he accepts the possibility of pain and partly because he knows the scenario that he imagines is highly unlikely. And sure enough, Liz is totally cool with canceling. In fact, she is still overwhelmed with gratitude for Sean and for the small business they created together. She even gives him a rock, which is actually a blood oath from Liz.

But then there’s Raymond, who appeared in one episode at the end of last season. Now that Paul has taken Sean on as a patient, he has the unfortunate task of cutting someone else, and Raymond is the obvious choice. ‘Moving Forward’ showed that Paul and Ray had developed a real camaraderie after knowing each other for 22 years; Ray continues to pay Paul, not because he really has anything to deal with, but because he enjoys the regularity of his company. But as much as it disappoints both Paul and Ray, it’s time for them to part ways – and since it would be inappropriate to pursue a friendship even after that, this could be the last time they ever speak.

Paul won’t admit it to Jimmy, but that idiot got to him when he called Paul a “mental health robot” with too many boundaries. The episode suggests that while Jimmy wasn’t right about Sean, he may have been right about Ray. That’s not necessarily a great lesson to apply to real-life therapy scenarios — I’m not a therapist, but I can only imagine a few select cases where something like that would actually work — but for a sitcom that’s never too concerned with realism given, it works. And as a story about Paul, a perpetually grumpy man who struggles to accept love, it’s quite heartwarming. That’s partly thanks to Harrison Ford and Neil Flynn’s easygoing old-timer chemistry.

Jimmy doesn’t have to deal with these questions as directly this time around, as most of his story is devoted to his relationships with Alice and Gaby. He struggles to think of a way to tell his daughter about the visitor who showed up at the office. (Can you tell that “struggling to tell someone a difficult truth” is a common story on this show?) He inevitably goes about it in all the wrong ways, though he makes it clear rather than dragging out this secret. The parenting we see from Jimmy in this episode may be a little awkward, but you can really see how much his relationship with Alice has grown since the beginning of season one. She treats him with some coldness for a few days as she processes what he told her, but never becomes angry or confrontational. The biggest indicator of her ongoing internal conflict is the fact that she hasn’t asked to borrow the car, even though she has her driver’s license.

Jimmy and Alice ultimately share a nice bonding moment when they follow her friend Summer’s advice and write letters to “Double D,” the drunk driver. It’s a healing exercise, and based on her request for the keys the next day, it seems like everything has been ironed out. But even though Alice’s relationship with her father is on solid ground, the final scene shows that she still thinks about Double D a lot. She even drives to his house to lurk outside and watch him.

Jimmy’s most dickish moment in this episode is reserved for the Gaby subplot. She finally goes through with breaking things off with him after thinking a lot about Tia, who Jimmy still openly calls “the love of his life.” But it’s hard not to have him as a friend, especially with all the drama going on between her mother and her sister Courtney. She’s in a vulnerable place and it’s no surprise that she lets Jimmy in when he brings presents and emotional support.

I’ve seen Jimmy be a jerk in many ways, but there’s something particularly nasty about seeing him in this manipulative mode, taking advantage of Gaby’s tearful state to get back into her pants. She calls him out on it and confirms her theory by pinning him down and exposing his bright red sex boxers. And that pales in comparison to his biggest transgression: at one point he knew she wanted more than just sex from him, but he ignored that intuition because he enjoyed all the no-strings-attached intimacy.

I like that this season skipped a lot of the expected rom-com beats in this storyline. Since we haven’t heard much of Jimmy’s direct take on his relationship with Gaby, we’re not sure if he would actually dating her even without the looming specter of Tia. (But he probably would. Who wouldn’t?) But it comes as a surprise to the audience that Jimmy had already discovered her feelings at some point off-screen, probably in the few months between seasons.

There is also a big tangle of conflicting feelings and emotional contexts at play here. Jimmy is definitely wrong, and it’s very satisfying to see Gaby throw him out. But she did play a role in all of this: Jimmy ignored her feelings, but she also ignored her own, and tried to ignore Liz when she forced her to confront them. Still, Gaby did the right thing by ending things and actually sticking to her boundaries (there’s that word again), refusing to continue pursuing heartbreak even as Jimmy continued to plow past those boundaries.

People often rely on their best friends to care for them when they cannot care for themselves. It’s crushing to realize that someone you care about so much could do that not has your best interests at heart – because even if they do, your feelings and priorities will never supersede theirs. It’s crushing to realize that you’re being used, that the person you thought you could be just friends with actually not such a good friend at all.

• Brian does not glad jimmy never told him that he and gaby slept together so i expect some drama to happen between them. (Grace knows, but Brian doesn’t, which is pretty funny.)

• Alice rudely rejects Connor and then introduces him to Summer to get him off her back. We bet Alice will get jealous when she sees that they get along well?

• This is a pretty funny episode, by the way, even more so than the premiere! So here are some quotes, starting with: “We need to add it to our logout page. Rhoades Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center: Fucking Our Doctors.

• Gaby can hold her urine for 48 hours.

• “Speaking of cars, do you remember what happened to your mother in one car?”

• Also laughed pretty hard at the revelation that Derek had listened to that entire conversation. “’Speaking of cars!?”

• I can’t count the number of times my dad has said the verbatim phrase “He’s coming out of his cave,” so hearing the words come out of Derek’s mouth was a little triggering.

• “Paul, I told Alice. It went well.” ‘We’re putting up a banner. ‘Father of the Year.’”

“You left your sunglasses in my dad’s car, and he thought it would be a growth moment for me to give them back to you.”

• “Can we pay her to fuck our son?” “I think I might feel more comfortable just advocating for him.”