‘Shrinking’ Season 2 Shows the Cracks in Apple’s ‘Ted Lasso’ TV Universe
Ted Lasso was a one-of-a-kind character. A college football coach hired to lead a professional soccer football club? A straight, white, sports nut from Kansas capable of finding joy in jolly old England? An irrepressibly cheery fountain of inspiration whose people-pleasing positivity was born from childhood trauma? Together, these descriptions seem like a lot for one person, even a TV character, to embody. The premise is wild, the context strains credibility, and the root of the character seems far too dark for a dude who never met a pun he didn’t like.
Yet Jason Sudeikis & Co. brought it all together in a sitcom as silly and fun as it was earnest and uplifting. Ted clicked with so many viewers not only because of his goofy charms, but because he felt real. Overcoming an absurd set-up straight out of “Major League,” “Ted Lasso” did the work to ground its cartoonish coach in a way that helped his effervescent spirit endure — for two seasons, at least.
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Ever since the series put Apple TV+ on the map, the tech giant has been trying to replicate “Ted’s” success by steadily building out its “Ted Lasso” TV universe. There have been slightly more dramatic incarnations, like “Mr. Corman” and “The Shrink Next Door,” which take pieces of “Ted” to tell their own stories about kind white men facing existential struggles (often involving therapy). There have been comedic successors, like “The Big Door Prize,” which takes a heart-forward approach to light science-fiction that elevates families, friends, and general goodwill toward men.
One could even argue Papa Lasso soft-launched Apple’s entire Dad TV+ lineup — if not for Ted’s immense success, would the streamer hang so many shows on their dedicated, optimistic heroes?
But the most obvious members of “Ted Lasso’s” expanding solar system share a creator (or two) with the center of their universe. “Bad Monkey” and “Shrinking” both stem from “Ted Lasso” Seasons 1-2 showrunner Bill Lawrence, with the latter comedy also employing ex-“Ted” writer and star Brett Goldstein as a co-creator, executive producer, and Season 2 guest star. Lawrence shepherds both shows — plus a fourth season of “Ted Lasso”? — and his imprint on Apple TV+, if not TV in general, is immense. Setting aside past hits like “Spin City” and “Cougar Town” and looking solely at 2024: “Bad Monkey” just so happened to wrap right before “Shrinking’s” return, which created a run of Lawrence’s original episodes that will last from mid-August through Christmas Day.
That’s more than one-third of a year, which puts him at a prolific pace similar to Dick Wolf or Taylor Sheridan, but Lawrence’s TV universe may lack the same stability. When I reviewed “Bad Monkey,” the similarities between the affable showrunner’s latest Apple project and his biggest hit were unavoidable, but they weren’t really an impediment. Yes, Vince Vaughn is a middle-aged white guy whose way of doing business rubs most colleagues the wrong way. Yes, he’s constantly chipper, and yes, he’s willing to risk his job for what he believes is right. But Vaughn’s motor-mouthed sense of humor existed long before Sudeikis lent Coach Lasso a speedy twang, and the crime noir vibes are strong enough to distinguish the drama with light comic moments from the comedy with dark dramatic moments. The series isn’t great — certainly nowhere near the highs of “Ted Lasso” — but it’s a recognizable fantasy that’s easy enough to sink into.
The same cannot be said for “Shrinking.” Certainly not in the seven episodes of Season 2 screened for critics. And the ties to “Ted Lasso” are partially to blame.
For those who missed Season 1 (or forgot the oft-superfluous plot points the second they stopped watching), “Shrinking” follows Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), a therapist, father, and widower whose grief for his recently deceased wife keeps manifesting in risky ways. Initially, Jimmy loses himself in a sea of booze and depressants, culminating when he brings home two sex workers for a drug-fueled, backyard pool party at 3 a.m. Thanks to the sage criticism of his “nosy” neighbor, Liz (Christa Miller, who’s also married to Lawrence), Jimmy finally recognizes his dangerous behavior so he can put his grief behind him and get back to raising his daughter.
But that also means getting back to work, and to get re-motivated, he re-thinks how talk therapy can be used to better patients’ lives. Becoming what his boss, Paul (Harrison Ford), calls a “psychological vigilante,” Jimmy begins breaking boundaries: He stops listening to patients and starts telling them what to do. He lays down ultimatums, and he isn’t above blackmail. Jimmy, more than anything, wants results. He wants everyone to stop dwelling on the past so they can hurry up and get to the future — and that approach goes double for Jimmy. His new methodology for his patients is also a new form of self-medication. Jimmy is done healing. He wants to be healed already, gosh darn it.
Obviously, “Jimmying” (as one Season 2 patient calls his unorthodox techniques) doesn’t go well. Sean (Luke Tennie), his first and most prominent case study, is a military veteran suffering from anger issues, who becomes friends with Jimmy, moves into his guest house, and inadvertently beguiles Jimmy’s 17-year-old daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). None of this makes Jimmy think twice about Jimmying, nor does it prevent Sean from falling back into perilous patterns. Meanwhile, another patient being Jimmyed ends the season by shoving her abusive husband off a cliff.
All of this created a rather dubious first impression of Jimmy. For a guy whose anger manifests like a Sesame Street puppet, he puts a lot of people in clear and present danger. (Yes, that’s a Harrison Ford reference, but Paul is too smart to let Jimmy fuck up his life.) Heck, between Sean, the sex workers, and the drugs, Jimmy has a habit of inviting danger into his own home — a home he shares with his child. He’s irresponsible, sure, but he’s also unbelievable — someone we’re told to root for, laugh with, and believe in, but someone whose actions and attitudes make doing so all but impossible. This isn’t exactly a fantasy that’s easy to sink into, even for a sitcom.
But in Season 2, Jimmy knows he screwed up (again). He goes to Paul, who’s always discouraged what little he knows about Jimmy’s methods, and asks for his help. The scene feels like the show taking what little accountability it can for the criticism it faced in Season 1 over how dangerous Jimmy’s ideas were and how difficult it was to enjoy a comedy while its lead is putting so many lives at risk.
Paul, in the show, limits his criticisms. He only tells Jimmy that he fucked up with Sean by creating a codependent relationship, which they correct by assigning Sean to Paul for further counseling. That’s a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t alleviate the lingering concerns about other patients. Jimmy is going to keep Jimmying, just not with Sean. (Well, not officially with Sean, but they are still living together.) In a weird bit of blame-passing, Alice even makes her father promise to keep Jimmying, without really knowing what she’s asking him to do.
Despite all this, Season 2 sometimes feels like it’s desperate to forget about Jimmy’s experimental therapy stuff and lean into its breezy, better half: the 2000s-era sitcom half, where work colleagues and personal relationships are one in the same and everyone hangs out, fights, and makes up, knowing everything will be OK in the end, because life’s mess also makes it beautiful. There are so many group hangs, rom-com get-togethers, and juvenile humor (including a startling number of poop jokes) that it’s clear the sitcom could function without Jimmy’s psychological torture sessions. (As Rolling Stone’s Alan Sepinwall notes, Bill Lawrence loves pivoting from a faulty high-concept premise to an easygoing hang-out comedy.)
To be fair, Jimmy can’t go back to being a normal therapist without abandoning the entire premise of the show. There’s unresolved trauma, there’s a man whose methods may be unconventional, but his heart is in the right place, and there’s a group of people willing to rally around this guy. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s a “Ted Lasso” situation, and Season 2 sees Jimmy reckoning with his past in ways reminiscent of Ted’s own journey to mental health. No, Jimmy doesn’t start going to therapy himself. (Although, my god, how has he not?) But his day-to-day life is interrupted in a way that forces Jimmy to face his old demons, much like Ted’s panic attacks interrupted his life and forced him to seek help.
If Lawrence pulled off Ted’s transformation, why can’t he do it again with Jimmy?
Simply put: Because Ted and Jimmy aren’t the same. They aren’t in comparable situations, and they don’t carry the same responsibilities. Ted grieved the death of his father by spreading cheer to everyone he met. The pressure of incessant positivity proved too much for him personally, but preaching radical kindness had a positive effect on those around him. Moreover, Ted’s job is to coach a soccer club. While he arguably left a lot of the play-calling and general preparation to his No. 2, Coach Beard, Ted inherited his tricky situation (a football coach hired to lead a soccer team), and he deployed his atypical methodology knowing it was universally applicable. Encouragement and inspiration are useful on any team, no matter the sport.
Jimmy chose to create a tricky situation (a licensed therapist who breaks the rules), and he deployed his atypical methodology on a hunch. Boundaries have been in place between patients and therapists for decades, and he broke them while counseling real people with real problems — people who don’t know any better than to trust their therapist. Why? Jimmy is grieving the death of his wife. He wants his patients to escape their ruts, overcome what’s weighing them down, and live the jubilant life he’s tried to embody since he started Jimmying. If “yolo” was still a thing people said, Jimmy would’ve said it 10 times by now.
But radical kindness isn’t a therapeutic technique, and Jimmy’s outlet for processing his own trauma is putting too much of a burden on others. He’s using his position of power as a therapist to bully patients into doing what he wants, when he wants them to do it, and his oblivious narcissism is dragging everyone down with him (even Harrison Ford). Because of this, moving between “Shrinking’s” dramatic and comedic moments is taxing. The suspension of disbelief required to go along with Jimmy and get along with Jimmy is often too great. Whereas “Ted Lasso” established a fantasy that eventually came to feel real, “Shrinking” can’t escape the dubious reality of its own fantasy.
The same can’t be said for Jimmy. Some jobs come with greater responsibilities than coaching soccer, and the longer “Shrinking” tries to justify Jimmy’s Jimmying, the more difficult it becomes to see him as a nice man with good intentions. Like Ted, he’s stuck. Like Ted, he’s sad. But unlike Ted, he’s also selfish. And that’s one character trait that just doesn’t fit.
“Shrinking” Season 2 premieres Wednesday, October 16 with two episodes on Apple TV+. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale on December 25.
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