‘Shrinking’ Shows the Seams
'Shrinking' is a terrific show, but even terrific, well-written shows sometimes expose the sausage-making.
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Life is unfair1; somehow I am decades younger than Harrison Ford, and yet he’s both more handsome and more interesting than I am2. This might explain why I resisted watching Shrinking for so long—a man can only take so much humiliation in this life3.
But I’m glad I did finally check out the show, because it’s quite funny and warmhearted in the Bill Lawrence way4. The show focuses on Jimmy (Jason Segel) as he emerges from a period of deep depression after his wife Tia’s death in a car accident5. Jimmy’s a therapist, and part of his reaction is to start some very unconventional therapy with his patients, mostly involving becoming way too involved in their lives outside of formal therapy sessions. His colleagues—curmudgeonly Paul (Ford) and enthusiastic Gaby (Jessica Williams)—who was also Tia’s best friend—care deeply for Jimmy and his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell) and try to help him avoid his worst tendencies with varying success.
That’s a solid setup, and if it sometimes plays a little fast and loose with reality that’s okay. The sheer good-natured warmth of the show’s tone carries you forward, and there’s some very funny stuff in there. But even good shows sometimes cut a few corners—serial TV is a weird beast where you’re constantly tweaking the universe, adding and subtracting according to the needs of the story6. When the show hit season two, it faced a choice: Have Jimmy continue to recover from the devastation of his wife’s death, or find a way to plunge him right back into it. And since this is television, they decided, of course, to plunge him right back into it, which required some awkward sausage-making writing7.
Have You Met Louis?
Throughout season one, we know that Tia was killed in an accident with a drunk driver, but by the end of the season things are looking up in terms of Jimmy and Alice’s trauma—at least they’ve dealt openly with it and are still standing. As season two opens, we learn that Jimmy was actually at the crash site, actually saw his wife being stuffed into the ambulance, and actually saw and knows who the drunk driver was.
It’s not that this doesn’t make sense in real world terms, it’s that there was zero discussion of this or even implication of this in the first season. All the discussion and therapy around the accident and its fallout, and the driver—Louis—is never mentioned8.
But this is series television, so you can’t just say hey, that first season felt kind of complete, like we ended on a nice button of resolution for these characters. No! You either find new trauma to explore, or you reopen the existing wounds. Shrinking decided to go the latter route for Jimmy and Alice, suddenly introducing Louis so we can have fun watching them writhe in agony all over again, figure out how to be better people all over again, and share a lot of heartfelt hugs9.
It’s not bad writing, really, it’s just a spot where the seams show.
I Have Resting Dead Wife Face
This isn’t restricted to TV shows. Sequels in books and other media often have to retcon stuff to keep the story going10—when your story needs to go in a certain direction but the raw materials for it don’t exist in the first episode/book/season/whatever, as a writer you have one choice: Forget the idea or write some awkward lines that cram the necessary information into the new narrative11.
So, in Shrinking’s second season, we suddenly learn about Jimmy’s presence at the crash, and when Louis shows up to seek redemption Jimmy obviously knows who he is and is instantly triggered by his presence, even though for the audience this is all new information that slightly undermines the previous story. You can’t help but wonder that Louis never once came up in all the conversations about Tia’s death. But in order to get Jimmy and Alice back into a place where we can be entertained by their trauma12, we have to roll it back a bit with some new information. Otherwise we’d have a season about some new trauma, which can feel just as jerry-rigged, honestly, depending on how it’s handled.
This doesn’t make the show any less enjoyable, in part because we’ve all been trained our entire lives in the way our entertainment machines work, so our brains just sort of skip over these gaps when they pop up, and in part because Jason Segel and Lutika Maxwell do a fine job of selling the idea that Louis is a concept they both knew about all the time and simply chose to never reference, even obliquely, once while constantly wading through their grief and sadness over what is arguably the most important event in their lives13.
Just goes to show: No matter how many books or TV shows you sell or how rich (or not rich14) you are, writing a serial story is damn difficult, y’all. Believe me, no one wishes it wasn’t more than me.
NEXT WEEK: Saturday Night relies on the Moron Line.
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For example, look at my hair. No one deserves this.
Also, richer. By an order of magnitude.
And yet every time I think I’ve reached my limit on humiliation, I find new depths I am capable of plumbing.
This is one of those shows where people get angry about savage emotional betrayals, there’s a 2-minute montage set to Sad White People Soft Rock, and then everything is forgiven and everyone is back to sipping cocktails on tasteful outdoor furniture in a $2.5 million house. Do I want to go to there? Yes, please.
THIS IS A COMEDY.
It’s the Happy Days law: Subtract one Cunningham brother and add a Chachi as needed. Wow, I am old.
I specialize in this kind of writing because I constantly forget my own universes and have to explain why my characters suddenly have new powers or are now speaking in Pirate.
Watching Brett Goldstein act sad in British is unnatural. The man is shaped be funny.
This is a show where children essentially raise themselves and somehow don’t get into drugs and Death Metal. Alice looks like a well-adjusted clothing model.
Or just to screw everything up, Midichlorians I am looking at you.
Joke’s on you: I am the KING of awkward lines. It’s how I landed The Duchess as my wife despite her being 45 leagues above me.
Nothing is better than other people’s problems. It’s the only reason to have friends, honestly.
As one does.
Author’s Note: Personally I am so not rich I have to think seriously about buying a new pair of socks.
I grew up in Florida (where a lot of celebrities gravitate to, for a reason I've yet to fathom--even a member of the Cure lived there for a while), so I'm a little immune to celebrity-agog-itus, btu ask me how bummed I was not to run into Harrison Ford after he landed (Actually landed. In a plane he was flying.) in Wichita. LOL!
I’m presently writing the sequel to a book that hasn’t sold, which means I’m spending less time working on the new book than going back and fixing things in the old book so the new one makes sense.
This, of course, assumes anything I write makes sense.