CinemaBlind’s Review: 85%
This review is based on Shrinking Season 2 Episodes 1-11
If you loved the first season of the tragicomedy drama series Shrinking, you won’t be disappointed with the new one. Season 2 adds more comedy, emotions, and in some ways more tragedy.
Created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel, and Brett Goldstein, the Apple TV+ comedy-drama series continues the story of widowed therapist Jimmy Laird and all the people around him as they face some new hurdles as well as some unexpected old ones.
In Season 2, the feel-good comedy takes some bold swings and for the most part, everything feels like it’s landing. The characters in the series are becoming more and more familiar like the traditional television shows we used to love and that’s rare in the streaming era.
Everybody in the cast is on their A-game and it’s just fun to see Harrison Ford just having fun as a grumpy mentor figure to our lovable but emotionally unstable protagonist, Jimmy (Segel). While I think the duo of Ford and Segel is undeniably charming and hilarious what makes the show great are its brilliantly written characters played by Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, Lukita Maxwell, Michael Urie, Luke Tennie, and Ted McGinley. The addition of Damon Wayans Jr. and Brett Goldstein to the cast in Season 2 is also great to see.
The initial hook for the series was Jimmy practicing his new radical form of therapy on his patients and that worked wonders for its first season but it was never going to last as you will see in Season 2. The story does break free from that and tries to give us something more human and heartfelt. While most of the time everything in Season 2 is bright and cheery when those dark moments come it is really scary and emotional because you have already fallen in love with these characters.
In conclusion, Shrinking Season 2 is as hilarious and heart-warming as you remember from its first season and in my experience, this time around you will enjoy it more because of the familiarity we have developed with these characters and this world. While some jokes are a bit too corny, but the rest of the series completely makes up for them by being an immensely entertaining piece of television.