Shrink

Jimmying

Season 2

Episode 1

Editorial review

4 stars

****

Photo: Apple TV+

Early in the first season of ShrinkI 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 ways were clearly unethical, and the show knew it. How sustainable could that be as a plot driver for a comedy like this? By mid-season, however, the show had moved a bit away from that central hook and transformed (like so many other Bill Lawrence 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 that exercising that power irresponsibly can have serious consequences. But it was also a return to a storyline that the show had largely moved past. As much as I liked how the season ended, I wondered what approach the next season would take.

This premiere suggests that Jimmy might have a hard time quitting his usual unusual techniques; Deceiving his patients has become a kind of addiction, filling the void left by all the alcohol and drugs he once used to cope with the death of his wife Tia. 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 as he worked 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 returning to a more generic therapist-led hangout sitcom), we’ll learn more about why exactly Jimmy is so dependent on this is.

Still, I like that this episode continues to acknowledge the harmful effects of that kind of therapy. Grace is the most obvious example: as a result of Jimmy’s overly explicit advice, she is in prison, facing a possible life sentence for the attempted murder of her husband. (He survived, but he may never walk again.) Jimmy tries to justify this to Paul as “pattern interruption,” a well-known 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 would rather have a lousy husband than spend her life in prison.

Maybe the bigger problem is that Jimmy just cares too many over his patients, and lets them live in his head for free while he’s free. Paul’s dream version draws an illuminating contrast between their respective relationships with their patients: Jimmy would come undone if things didn’t go well for one of his patients, while Paul can separate himself.

During Jimmy’s real-life conversation with Paul on the subject, his mentor assures him that he hasn’t necessarily messed up, although he will probably need to continue conventional therapy for a while. But his efforts are short-lived, especially when Alice accidentally makes him promise to continue the therapist’s malpractice. She’s concerned about the possibility of him deteriorating, especially since his assurances that he’s “fine” sound no different from the lies he told her when he decided wasn’t Good. But I still have to wonder why Jimmying is so therapeutic for him. There must have been years before Tia’s death when he felt more comfortable with traditional therapy. Why can’t he find his way there now?

Either way, it’s clear that Jimmy is just as vulnerable 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 is Ted Lasso co-star and Shrink co-creator Brett Goldstein, surprisingly clean-shaven.) That vulnerability affects 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 also affects his patients themselves, including Sean, who is too afraid of disappointing Jimmy to open up about personal failures.

Overall, Sean is in a pretty good place, especially now that his and Liz’s food truck is up and running. But he still feels uneasy about memories of his past. When an old army buddy comes to town, he’s tempted to curse, even after Jimmy steps into the ring to challenge him to a fight in his latest Jimmying comeback. (It goes about as well as you’d expect.) Sean is more inspired by Jimmy’s trust in him than his crazy antics, so he decides to go ahead at first, but ultimately backs out at the last minute. second, walking right past the door of the place.

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

Jimmy has a lot going on right now, so turning his casual sexual tryst with Gaby into a real relationship isn’t going to happen. 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 tells Liz, and the longer she continues to sleep with him anyway, the more likely her feelings will be hurt. And yet like Jimmy, Gaby needs this release now, stressed as she is with moving, teaching, mediating an ongoing battle between her mother and sister, and dealing with her regular patients. She tries to leave Jimmy, but she just can’t. As a ‘pathological caregiver’, she still harbors the hope that he will eventually give her a real chance.

Liz takes it upon herself to interfere, as usual, leading to classic Gaby-and-Liz fights. However, this does not become too intense. Liz enlists her husband and Brian to unpack all of Gaby’s things while she is away, and all is forgiven. (Gaby’s probably going to rearrange all that after they’re gone, right?)

The light C-plot of the episode belongs to Paul, who reluctantly begins to accept that he is deeply in love with his doctor girlfriend, Julie. It’s not just “roommates with bennies”; they have regular morning dance sessions in their living room and even watch sports together. Paul is a stubborn man who often has trouble being open about his emotions, so at first he goes in the opposite direction, suggesting that they see too much of each other. But a night away from Julie is enough to remind him how much he loves spending time with her, so he marches over and does the grown-up thing by telling her he loves her. (She says it back, of course.)

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

• Liz and Derek’s son, Connor, still adores Alice, and for some reason he seems unable to talk to her, despite their past (they lost their virginity to each other).

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

• Brian doesn’t have much to do yet, but he’s taking on Grace’s case pro bono, so that should help him stay involved.

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

• I’m not really a fan of teeth humor, so I was more amused by Jimmy’s initial attempt to hide what was happening (the leaking blood was pretty good) than by the actual images of his messed up teeth.

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

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

• “Woof.” “That’s my thing.”