Shrinking: Bill Lawrence Strikes Again...As a Once Fun Series Falls Into the Ted Lasso Trap...

May 2026

 

Let’s see we had a clueless dad, cavorting with hookers and snorting cocaine... While his neglected teenage daughter sleeps upstairs...

Several no bull shit friends…

And a Parkinsonian curmudgeon fellow therapist…

 

All given to us by the same crew that gave us Ted Lasso...and Rooster

 

And for a long time it was so delightful…

 

That I had to reevaluate my opinion of Harrison Ford...

Which was never very high, but sank even lower after Regarding Henry...

 

But the 83 year old Ford has found his footing as a cranky old man...

First in 1923… and now in Shrinking

Where his comic timing as the aging therapist who suffers fools poorly...

Helps him hold his ground in a series defined by great performances by Jessica Williams and Michael Urie…

 

And then there is Jason Segel....

 

Whose oeuvre to date has been mostly movies about men who have steadfastly refused to grow up...

A more likable version of the kind of characters played by Vince Vaughn...

 

The one exception was his performance as David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour...

But even then, Segel made Foster Wallace more likable than he probably was in real life

 

Just ask Mary Karr…

 

But Segel is just not as much fun to watch as Ford, Williams and Urie...

 

Who all shine as quirky characters...

Who have no filter...

Which is a large part of their charm...

 

But in the end this matters...a lot...

 

Because Shrinking...

Like Ted Lasso...

Is another Bill Lawrence series...

 

And both are filled with a wonderful ensemble cast...

Who rotate like planets around a central character...

Who starts out guileless... and lovable...

 

So at first... we love the show...and that character...

 

Until we don’t...

 

Which is exactly what’s happening with Shrinking...

For many of the same reasons...

As Ted Lasso...

 

Of which I will have something to in a minute...

 

Now the central premise of Shrinking is that Jimmy is in crisis after the death of his wife, Tia...

 

He does eventually stop hanging out with hookers...

And decides instead to shake things up and throw out the therapist rule book...

So he starts telling his patients what he really thinks…

 

Such as you should leave that POS husband...

 

But as this series ...

Moved into Season Three...

You could feel the air going out of the balloon...

 

Just as it did with Ted Lasso...

 

There is the worsening of Paul’s Parkinsons ...

But no 80 year old with that disease is going to have standup sex in the shower...

And then dance around on the wet bathroom floor afterward...

 

Because that is how you break a hip...

 

And then there is Jimmy’s potential new girlfriend...

Who is so desperate... she’s cringe...

 

And brings to the table so many issues with her ex-husband...

Any good therapist would tell Jimmy to stay away...

 

But the real problem with Shrinking...

 

Is that Jimmy...

The therapist ...

Desperately needs a good therapist....

 

Because while everyone else has slowly come to terms with the death of Tia...

Jimmy is stuck...

 

And increasingly sad...

 

And as the seasons have gone on...

He has become progressively irritable with the people who love him...

 

Including his dad...

Who never lives up to Jimmy’s expectations...

 

But instead of just accepting that...

Jimmy seethes and sulks...

 

Because with Bill Lawrence...

It’s always about the dad...

Abandonment issues...

And therapy...

 

But in a show filled with therapists...

 

Many of whom you come to love ....

Because they are funny, clever and kind...

And so you want to hang out with them...

 

You learn they are not that good at what they do...

 

Gabby doesn’t take a call from a patient when she should have...

Which leads to disastrous consequences...

 

And she should have known better...

But she has having too much fun to answer the phone...

 

And the patient Jimmy told to leave her husband...

 

Well...she tried to kill the man instead...

 

And by Season Three Jimmy has become such a downer...

That his grief has become annoying ...

 

And has made him less sympathetic as the series has gone on...

 

Which is also what happened to Ted Lasso...

 

So this is clearly a Bill Lawrence problem...

 

And in that awful Season Three Finale of Shrinking...

Jimmy is sitting in his kitchen sad, lonely and bereft...

Which sucks all the oxygen out of a once fun show...

 

And was such a buzz kill...

It almost made me nostalgic for the screwed up Jimmy of the first season...

Who was at least having some fun...

 

But Sad Jimmy reminded me of how the originally relentlessly optimistic Ted Lasso...

Became progressively depressed over the course of that series...

 

Because the guy we loved in the first season ...

Disappeared in Season Two...

 

As Ted lost his way… as well as his Midwestern man card...

 

Crying in a therapist’s office?

I cringed just watching it…

 

So everything that made Ted enjoyable… his unfailing optimism and good cheer....

Was frittered away in a backstory we really didn’t want to know...

 

We liked Ted just the way he was… he didn’t need to change...

In fact… that was the point....

And the secret sauce of the show...

 

Because at first Ted just kept being Ted...

No matter what...

Which was why we loved him...

 

But, oh no… he had to evolve… as one would say…

Into a simpering, pathetic mess...

Who walked off the field in the middle of a  game...

Because he’s just soo sad…

 

See the pattern here...

 

Same showrunner...

Same trajectory...

 

So apparently Bill Lawrence can’t help himself...

 

And no...

 

The Sad Jimmy Problem wasn’t fixed with that lunch date in the final scene of Shrinking...

 

Because it had that tacked on feeling...

You see when writers can’t figure out how to bring a storyline to a close...

 

And you can feel the show getting ready to jump the shark next season...

By going on the road...

Which is always a tell that the writers have run out of ideas...

 

So while Bill Lawrence keeps giving us fun series...

With great casts...

 

He keeps ruining them...

 

Which is why I’m now starting to worry about Rooster...

 

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