Review: Shrinking, “Coin Flip” & “Fortress of Solitude” | Season 1, Episodes 1 & 2
As his other creation is delayed, Bill Lawrence’s latest creation similarly considers the dynamics of dramedy
We are now long past the point where “dramedy” has become a legible genre, albeit not necessarily a simple one. It’s not a complicated concept on a basic level: it’s a show that mixes drama and comedy. However, this could describe any number of television shows that are clearly one or the other but nonetheless embrace the opposite in their storytelling. Breaking Bad, for example, is often an incredibly funny show, but you would never classify it as anything other than a drama. A dramedy, then, isn’t just a show that contains both comedy and drama: it’s a show that is consciously and continuously straddling the line in an effort to disrupt audience expectations.
Apple’s Ted Lasso, developed by Bill Lawrence alongside Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, was an example of what I’ll call a gradual dramedy. When the show started as a followup to an NBC Sports commercial, it had more dramatic elements than its inspiration, but I’d place it pretty squarely a comedy—the show was earnest, perhaps, but there was no direct engagement with Ted’s inner turmoil, and Rebecca was an outright villain. But by the end of the first season, the show revealed the dramatic weight behind its characters, and pushed forward by digging deeper into those struggles in season two. There was a very simple comedy to be found in the show’s initial premise, but that show grew more distant as the Emmy-winning series progressed through its first two seasons.
Shrinking, which Lawrence created alongside star Jason Segel and Ted Lasso writer/star Brett Goldstein, follows a different model despite reaching a fairly similar balance. In this case, it’s very hard for Shrinking to be an outright comedy given where it drops us in Jimmy’s story. There’s something funny about a U.S. football coach traveling to England to take over a soccer team; there’s nothing (inherently) funny about a therapist grieving his dead wife, failing to parent his teenage daughter, and reaching a breaking point with his clients.
However, in and around the tragedy of Jimmy are the legible elements of a workplace comedy like Lawrence’s Scrubs, where Jimmy, his mentor Paul (Harrison Ford), and his colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams) navigate the ins and outs of helping people, all while they each battle their own demons back at home. There’s also the bones of a hangout/neighborhood comedy like Lawrence and Kevin Biegel’s Cougar Town, with next door neighbor Liz (Christa Miller) stepping in to co-parent Jimmy’s daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell, late of HBO Max’s short-lived Generation). But when the show begins, it’s clear that these shows can’t actually exist until Jimmy figures his shit out, the drama inherently disrupting any chance for a “pure” comedy to emerge.
The premiere very consciously drops us in at the point where Jimmy is maybe on the verge of self-discovery. Based on what we see, this is not the first time Liz has had to go next door to tell Jimmy to turn down the music he’s playing while twin escorts hang out in his pool. And we later learn that Jimmy has been ghosting his best friend Brian (Michael Urie) for a year. Thus, the “promise” of the pilot is that maybe the comedy of these situations can come back to the forefront. Emboldened by an unethical but effective approach to treating his patients like veteran Sean (Luke Tennie) with honesty and field trips to boxing gyms, Jimmy has momentum in his life for the first time since his wife’s death, and he makes it to his daughter’s soccer game at the end of the premiere in what could be the grand gesture that turns the tide of his messed up life.
But then his other patient’s husband shows up to confront Jimmy for telling his wife to leave him. And then Sean—battling PTSD and prone to violent outbursts—defends Jimmy and lands himself in jail in the process. Over the course of the second episode, it becomes clear that this situation is not going to fix itself overnight. Jimmy may be trying to be more involved in Alice’s life, but he still needs Liz to tag into the meeting with her guidance counselor, and he misses his chance to have dinner with her while trying to mend his broken relationship with Brian on the pickleball court. With Brian’s formal introduction, the second episode continues to lay out the comic dimensions of the cast of characters, but Alice’s speech in the premiere echoes in that there is no quick fix to reach the hangout or workplace comedy one might imagine: just “trying” is not enough to fix what Alice went through when her father was selfishly acting like his grief was singular, and the fact he’s moving Sean into their house after his parents kicked him out is probably not going to help things even if it contributes to the hangout vibe.
It’s interesting to watch Jason Segel in his first television role since How I Met Your Mother.1 I’ve admittedly never seen his dramatic work, and so this really is a direct followup to that show, and the opening scene evokes the persona he developed across HIMYM and films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man. But given how the show wants us to see the comedy in the characters/premise as well as the barriers to it becoming that show, Segel is a good fit: he’s a walking bit, but he’s at a point where he’s not able to use them to hide the pain and struggle. His presence and vibe are a signifier that this isn’t a straight drama (see: his Harrison Ford impression), but he sells the dramatic parts well enough to articulate this isn’t just a pure comedy, and has a nice chemistry with the rest of the cast.
Elsewhere, the show is broadly presenting the rest of its characters based on their relationships with Jimmy, which makes sense while setting up the premise. So, I suppose the best test for a show like this is whether I want to know more about each of them, and whether the show invests me in what brought them to this point. And for the most part, I would say the show was successful. Urie doesn’t get much to do with Brian given he sits out the premiere, but there’s mess in their reconciliation that feels like it could linger, and more of their dynamic to explore. Gaby is also somewhat of a minor player, filling a generic co-worker role, but Williams gets a fun runner with Paul’s water bottle, and more importantly gets a juicier scene with Liz where we learn she was also close with Jimmy’s wife. In both cases, we have capable comic actors with roles that have room to grow, which is what you want at this stage.
By comparison, Miller and Ford—who earn “with” and “and” credits, respectively—are the key pieces to this puzzle. In Miller’s case, she’s playing a variation of her neighbor character from Cougar Town, but as an empty nester who has thrown herself back into parenting her neighbor’s daughter, despite the fact—per her conversation with Gaby—she was maybe not as close to her parents as you might presume. After recurring and guest parts in recent Lawrence productions, it’s great to see her in a more substantial role, and likely exploring a degree of autobiographical storytelling given she and Lawrence are close to being empty nesters themselves.
Paul, meanwhile, is a great reminder of Harrison Ford’s comic timing. After avoiding the parade of A-list stars rushing to TV, Ford arrives in two TV projects this winter, but this one feels like it gives him room to explore the many facets of his skill as an actor. There’s a dramatic weight to Paul, whether in his mentoring of Jimmy or in the hints at his relationship to his daughter and his battle with Parkinson’s disease as he works to help Alice deal with her grief. But there’s also something wry and funny about Paul’s irascibility, particularly as he reacts indignantly to Jimmy’s overtures toward Alice despite having been the one to suggest it to him. He’s a difficult man, but he’s never a mean one, which makes it easy to see how he fits into the constellation of character dynamics being established here.
I don’t know if Shrinking spends enough time here interrogating the ethics of Jimmy’s new approach, which doesn’t necessarily feel as legible as it would be if this was telling a more focused story and not trying to balance the two comedies interconnected to each other. But the nature of dramedy is embracing the messiness of life, blasting through parts that you don’t want to explore (“It’s a comedy!”) and swerving into heavier dramatic territory when you want to raise the stakes (“It’s a drama!”). So far, Shrinking has an adept cast, promising dynamics, and enough of a hook to make me want to see more. And so no matter what kind of dramedy it eventually wants to be, I’m along for the ride.
Stray observations
The show is very consciously an “L.A.” show, but this was especially clear when they filmed the scene after Brian lawyers Sean out of charges for the assault outside the office building on the Warner Bros. lot. It’s always a telltale sign—I don’t know how much of the rest of the show is being filmed on the lot, but I always have a good “Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme” moment with that office building.
“What the fuck is pickleball?”—if you’re unaware, there is an ongoing battle going on in cities like Los Angeles over public tennis courts being overrun with Pickleballers, so this also felt like a particularly L.A. observation in its own right.
I’m curious if Ted McGinley as Liz’s husband will ever become more of a character in his own right, or if he’ll mostly exist to pop into stories to make snippy—but ultimately fairly good-natured—comments about “the kid who’s not our kid” and the like. I’m enjoying this level of involvement, FWIW.
Sean’s family situation is pretty underwritten to be able to more efficiently move him into Jimmy’s place temporarily, so I’m curious how much his individual story beyond his relationship with Jimmy evolves as the show continues. Is someone like Sean a transitional character, whose arc is likely to end even as the show continues with the core characters? Or will he remain integrated into the setup?
If you’re unaware, Christa Miller doubles as Lawrence’s in-house music supervisor. And thus, I would like to issue a note that I feel like “Mid Air” by Paul Buchanan is too strongly associated with About Time for me to accept it another context, and that two Vampire Weekend needle drops in two episodes was maybe overkill. But as always with Apple shows, the music budget remains huge, and overall fit the show well.
Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of Shrinking. Will I have a huge amount to say every week? I’m really not sure! But I had screener access, liked what I saw, was able to pre-write some reviews before I started traveling, and I am a strong believer that Lawrence’s dramedy dynamics are worth considering in greater detail. Consider it a warm-up as we await Ted Lasso’s uncertain return later this Spring.
Edit: Yeah, I missed that Dispatches from Elsewhere happened, and never got to Winning Time, so this should of course read “First TV role that I noticed, an excusable circumstance as determined my Mayor of Television John Landgraf’s Peak TV Decrees.”
Really enjoyed these two episodes. I like the tone so far - it's a bit silly but also manages to feel quite grounded. The scenes with Paul and Alice in ep 2 were particular faves
This show has swept me off my feet. I am so damn charmed by it and can't wait for more—and I am very grateful to Apple's modern take on the weekly-release model for keeping me grounded and able to appreciate a series all the better.
With dramedies arguably making up the bulk of what I watch, I have started to distinguish them as 'comedy-forward dramedies' or 'drama-forward dramedies'. A series can change its designation season to season (and the best ones do). Ted Lasso started comedy-forward, and season two became drama-forward. Similarly, I'd say You're the Worst started as comedy-forward but by it's marvellous end was more drama-forward. Better Things too.
Definitely agree with what you've said about the subject matter being critical here because I think the best dramedies of the last decade have been drama-forward. I'm thinking here of Transparent, Kidding, maybe even Barry, and now, I think we can add in Shrinking. All of which are not dealing with funny-ha-ha circumstances, but which mix wit with emotional realism to counterbalance the uncomfortableness that comes with certain subject matter.
sidenote. The Discovery and Windfall are both view-worthy drama performances from Segel