Shrinking's Tone Was Always The Biggest Issue In The Writers' Room
Everyone deals with emotional issues in their own way, and there's no one specific "correct" way to process life's traumatic events. For some, experiencing grief comes with severe depressive episodes, but for others, the ol' defense mechanism of laughing it off takes center stage. The fact that there's no universal guidebook to working through trauma makes the field of psychiatry a complicated one to put on screen, but Bill Lawrence's Apple TV+ series, "Shrinking," isn't afraid to try.
The series centers on a grieving therapist named Jimmy (Jason Segel) who has been neglecting his patients, his family, and himself in the wake of his wife's passing. After finally snapping mid-session and telling a client exactly what he thinks about their situation, rather than creating a space for them to come to the realization on their own terms, he begins incorporating more questionable (and unethical) approaches to better his clients' mental health.
When we spoke to Bill Lawrence before the show's premiere, he stressed wanting to find the comedy in grieving. As someone who admittedly thinks a whole lot about dying, I am definitely in the camp of finding laughter to be the best medicine. But there's a fine line to walk when incorporating humor with hardship, as it's important to keep things from feeling too heavy but without unintentionally trivializing the importance of a traumatic event. Fortunately, finding the appropriate tonal balance was at the forefront of Lawrence's mind and the rest of the writers' room on "Shrinking," and the show is better for it.
Finding the sweet spot
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, show creators Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein, and Jason Segel discussed finding the correct tone to "Shrinking," and their approach to using the best possible voice for the show. "The biggest issues on this show were always tonal," said Lawrence, "the sweet spot."
He cited a moment in the second episode when Michael Urie's character playfully says "Everything goes my way" to Segel's character Jimmy, who cuts through the positivity with "It's hard to be around someone who always says 'Everything goes my way,' when your wife just died." The two sit in silence for a moment, letting the weight of his comment sink in before Urie replies, "I didn't say everything goes your way." There's an immediate cathartic laugh between the two of them, and a sense of relief washes over the audience.
"That's how my friends and I talk to each other when we're dealing with real dark s***," Lawrence said. "And if that line had not worked, I don't think the show works." Jason Segel agreed, especially as the person playing the show's complicated protagonist:
"People will feel like he's a good guy. You can push him right up to that line. If you cross the line, I'll tell you. But otherwise, I'm pretty sure I can land him back into likability. And it'll be more fun if we make him unlikable."
Depiction is not an endorsement
As a character, Jason Segel's Jimmy Laird is a lot. As "Shrinking" co-creator Brett Goldstein told The Hollywood Reporter, "If you think of that very first scene, you've got a man doing drugs by the pool where he's hired sex workers and he's keeping up his neighbors, like, that's your intro to him, and I don't think there's a second where the audience doesn't go, 'I like this guy.' [Laughs]" The moment is emphasized further when the audience realizes that Jimmy is also a father, and his destructive behavior has a direct impact on his equally grieving teenage daughter. "Shrinking" doesn't try to paint Jimmy as a positive influence, and he's essentially the anti-Ted Lasso. Segel echoed Goldstein and said, "I know! 'Aw, he's going through a tough time.'"
"Shrinking" is very clear from the start that this is a show about a broken man trying and failing to put himself back together again after an unimaginable loss, and the harm he causes on his selfish path to recovery. It's refreshing to see such a complicated character in the leading role, because humans are not stock characters or archetypes — they're imperfect messes. I've always lived by the motto "We're all just idiots trying our best," and a show like "Shrinking" perfectly encapsulates the sentiment.
New episodes of "Shrinking" are released on Apple TV+ every Friday.