“Shrinking” Season 2 perfectly combines hangout comedy and moving drama

In almost 30 Years of creating or co-creating series Spin City To Peels To Bad monkeyBill Lawrence was one of the most reliable sitcom showrunners on television. He has a great sense of talent in front of and behind the camera. He has a sharp sense of humor and an innate sense of how to create a warm atmosphere that viewers will want to spend time in week after week and season after season. And he really knows how to make course corrections.

Some Lawrence shows, like Peels And Ted Lassoarrive fully trained. However, others started life with a high-concept premise that was either unsustainable or just a bad idea. Spin City was originally a romantic comedy in which Michael J. Fox's deputy mayor secretly dated a City Hall reporter played by Carla Gugino; Gugino was gone within a dozen episodes and the series devolved into a hangout comedy about Fox and his attractive office friends. Cougar Town started as a show about Courteney Cox dating much younger men; Audiences didn't like that, and so within half a dozen episodes the series devolved into a hangout comedy about Cox and her attractive dead-end friends. It's Lawrence's go-to when things aren't going well, and most of the time it works

. The trick isn't infallible: Lawrence's mid-2000s comedy

Undateable started out as the story of a gamer teaching a nerd how to talk to women, and (again) very quickly evolved into a hangout comedy about her attractive friends from a bar. The show improved, but still folded after three seasons canceled and didn't attract much attention, even when each episode was eventually performed live. One of the least shocking TV developments of the last year was this way shrinkage – the Apple TV comedy Lawrence created with stars Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein

— began with an off-putting premiere episode and an unwieldy premise before quickly becoming (say it with me) a hangout comedy about Segel and his hunky friends at home and in the office. What followed was an endearing, sweet, and often very funny debut season that leaned heavily on Lawrence's ethos that when in doubt, just let funny people make fun together. What was surprising, however, was that the season ended in a way that suggested Lawrence, Segel, and Goldstein weren't thrilled with the turn of events and wanted to go back to their original idea. Editor's Tips For those who haven't seen it (or who have simply forgotten about it in the 18 months since we saw the last episode), Segel plays Jimmy Laird, a therapist whose life is thrown into disarray after his wife dies was killed by a drunk driver. When we meet him, Jimmy spends his nights doing drugs with sex workers, working at the practice he shares with his mentor Paul (Harrison Ford) and his girlfriend Gaby (Jessica Williams), and has all but given up on his grief The stricken daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) is brought into the care of neighbor Liz (Christa Miller, Lawrence's wife and a graduate of both). PeelsAnd

Cougar Town

). He escapes the spiral by treating Sean (Luke Tennie), an Afghanistan veteran with PTSD-related anger issues, and decides to abandon his usual aloof approach and embrace a more hands-on, almost vigilante style of therapy, investing time with Sean and other patients outside of the office and even invites Sean to move into his pool house . In the process, Jimmy begins to feel better and he really helps Sean – but he also breaks the law, gets beaten up in front of Alice and her classmates, and inspires famous therapist and author Paul to give countless lectures on why the traditional therapist-patient divide exists for a specific reason. Sean aside, this is mostly a show about rich people who can easily spend money on almost any non-medical or emotional problem – and even some of them. shrinkage The first season never completely abandoned its core idea in this way

Carla Gugino disappeared or Cougar Town stopped telling stories about Cox being a cougar. But within a few episodes, it's dialed back those aspects, mostly placing emphasis on placing the characters in scenes where they can banter, set up and deliver various running gags, and otherwise be fun for both the audience and others to spend time with spend. If former enemies Gaby and Liz suddenly became best friends, then so be it, because Williams and Miller were so compatible. If Jimmy's estranged best friend Brian (Michael Urie) immediately returned to the circle of friends after a few brief apologies from Jimmy, then that was for the best, because Urie brought a lot of energy to scenes where Brian was paired with characters who otherwise had no real identity had reason to interact with him. Harrison Ford, playing his first predominantly comedic role in decades – albeit with more than a little pathos, as Paul deals with the early stages of Parkinson's disease – was a joy to have with pretty much every scene partner. Related Until the season 1 finale, almost everything seemed fine with both of them

shrinkage and the lives of its main characters. Liz and her husband Derek (Ted McGinley, incredibly affable) bought a food truck for Sean and Liz to work at shrinkage Jimmy has largely repaired his relationships with Alice and Paul, and he and the recently divorced Gaby began sleeping together in an arrangement that seemed promising for both of them. At Brian's wedding, Jimmy gave a speech summarizing his difficult journey and laying out the show's main theme of the importance of staying connected to the people in your life – so you can celebrate the good times together and support each other bad – and Paul even congratulated him on putting aside the professionally dangerous behavior from the first episodes. Everything was good… …until the season ended with Paul's patient Grace (Heidi Gardner) pushing her emotionally abusive husband off a cliff, taking another unconventional piece of advice from Jimmy too literally. Suddenly it seemed as if

shrinkage

Would they risk returning to that too dark place? Fortunately, season two proves these fears are unfounded. (At least in the first 11 of 12 episodes. Maybe Jimmy attempts a bank robbery in the finale?) Without giving away where the Grace story is going, the new episodes honor what happened without overwhelming our hero or his friends with their actions and then move on to other things as quickly as possible. And as the season progresses, there's so much going on with everyone else – and with Goldstein himself, who's strong in a recurring role as a character I can't say much about – that even in the early, more Grace-focused episodes never felt like this The show was taken over by this shocking twist. Williams, left, and Miller

Beth Dubber/Apple TV+

shrinkage still feels like itself: a big-hearted comedy that's uncompromisingly messy in terms of story and toneand one who can still turn from silliness to sadness in the blink of an eye. Sometimes Jimmy is a jerk – because without jokes about his penis it wouldn't be a Jason Segel written project, here Jimmy tries out a voice from Andre the Giant for it – sometimes he's clever and sometimes he's still tragic. But it all flows together. All others are granted a similar range. Ford has an infectious amount of fun doing and saying things he's never gotten around to in a movie or show. In one episode, a character creates a TikTok with a catchy original rap song called “Cheater Bitch,” and Paul ends up delivering the lyrics in spoken word. But when a scene focuses on Paul's fears of running out of time with his loved ones, it's incredibly poignant. Jessica Williams is somehow used even better at both ends of the tonal spectrum than she was in the first season. Even McGinley can pull off some effective serious tones in the role of the superhumanly cheerful Derek. The fact that we get seasons with 12 episodes instead of six or eight also helps a lot. Most modern series would benefit from longer seasons, but laid-back ensemble comedies like this really need the room to expand. Some characters are given multiple subplots throughout the season rather than being tied to one idea throughout the year. On trend This unlikely friendship between Gaby and Liz has become, in many ways, the defining part of

shrinkage because it gives the creative team license to convincingly make each character enjoy and care for the company of every other character. Even Goldstein's mystery man, who has good reason to be an outsider looking in on this group, makes some moving connections. (He's one of many well-known, well-used guest stars this time. Some of them – Segel's former How I met your mother

co-star Cobie Smulders, Cougar Town Alum Josh Hopkins – makes for a fun reunion; others, like Kelly Bishop and Damon Wayans Jr., are welcome newcomers.)