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.
The rest of the cast continues to shine as well. Lukita Maxwell gets some heavier material to deal with this season, and she rises to the occasion brilliantly. One early episode has her in a bit of a tailspin, but her performance remains grounded and believable.
Jessica Williams also shines as Gaby, who has to contend with her growing feelings for Jimmy this year — an unresolved plot point from their hooking up last season. This isn't the kind of show that just haphazardly puts them together; it's not afraid to get into how messy this kind of relationship can be, and Williams handles it with aplomb.
Harrison Ford remains a comedic revelation as the crotchety Paul, and his trademark gruff delivery is deployed perfectly in nearly every instance. The series continues to serve as a reminder that he's one of our greatest working actors. Paul's journey with Parkinson's disease continues this year, and Paul — now having grown closer to the other characters and his new girlfriend Julie (Wendie Malick) — is forced to reckon a little more directly with his mortality and what effect his life has on others. The series requires him to be cranky and curmudgeonly, but also incredibly sweet and vulnerable, and it's difficult to imagine any better fit for the role.
Ted McGinley has been upgraded from recurring to series regular, and he continues to steal just about every scene he's in as Derek, the laid-back husband of Liz. McGinley has perhaps the most fun part in the series as the sensitive and self-assured guy who gets to show up and drop truth bombs on the people he loves, and he seems to revel in the role.
Season 1 of Shrinking was special. It took tropes we're all familiar with and elevated them with a combination of great writing, relatable characters and near-perfect casting. The good news is that all that remains true in the second season. The great news is that the show doesn't take the easiest routes with its characters and stories. It takes them down messier paths, but relatable and human ones, and as a result, remains entirely compelling.
Like last season, Shrinking is at its best when it's being sincere rather than funny — but it's still very funny.