(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+)
Shrinking S2, E1-2
Shrinking is ostensibly a sitcom.
But while it is indeed very funny, full of smart, snappy, character-driven lines and gleefully absurdist situations, it is also one of the most relatable treatises this reviewer has ever encountered on grief.
If that sounds like comedy deadweight, all but guaranteed to send Shrinking to a watery sitcom grave – it’s just been reported that the show has earned a third season from AppleTV+ so even if that were to happen, and it most assuredly won’t, it’s going to rise zombie-like back again pretty damn quickly – then one episode, or all of them because it’s that compelling, will convince you that you can be really heartfelt and not stop the joking around dead (poor choice of words given the subject matter but we’re sticking with it).
In season one, it’s established that series lead, therapist Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel) is not coping at all well with the death of his wife Tia (Lilan Bowden) at the hands of a drunk driver, and in amongst the destructive welter of strippers and too much alcohol, Laird is emotionally distant from his very worried, and also grieving, daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) and dispensing some highly unorthodox, freewheeling device to his patients.
Among them are Grace (Heidi Gardner) who takes some steps with her abusive husband, at Laird’s clumsily inexact urging, that don’t precisely sit on the right side of the law, and Sean (Luke Tennie), who becomes so enmeshed with Laird, after presenting to him with some massive post-military service anger management issues, that he moves in with Jimmy and his family.
Laughing much, yet?
It may not sound like a riot of laughs but trust us it is, thanks not just to the very incisively insightful and very funny way co-creators Bill Lawrence & Jason Segel & Brett Goldstein mix the deeply serious with the gleefully light, but the fact that Shrinking is geared so that the sillier moments and the shatteringly introspective ones can sit side-by-side and feel incredibly at home with one another.
It’s a beautifully affecting but soul lifting mix – I love this review of these aspects by Bradley Adams on SpoilerTV – and it is there in full force in the first two episodes of season two where all of the characters are grappling with some fairly big issues to do with their grief while trying to get on with life.
The big complicating factor for Jimmy and Alice, and also for Gaby (Jessica Williams), Jimmy’s colleague, now-lover-but-should-they-really-be-you-know and Tia’s BFF, is the sudden appearance of Louis (Brett Goldstein) who comes to the practice Jimmy and Gaby share with senior therapist, Dr Paul Rhoades (Harrison Ford), and well and truly sets the cat among the grieving pigeons.
He’s looking for absolution you have to assume, but after he is shouted out of the practice by Jimmy, who is understandably instantly and comprehensively traumatised by Louis’s unannounced arrival, the issue becomes more one of what will this do to Jimmy and Alice and Gaby et. al who are all taking much needed steps to some sort of new normal?
It will be interesting to see where all this goes in the remaining 10 episodes but suffice to say with the high calibre of writing at work, and the appearance of comic relief characters like Jimmy’s next door neighbour’s Liz and Derek (Christa Miller and Ted McGinley) and his lawyer bestie Brian (Michael Urie), will ensure that while the chips will be very much on the table, emotionally speaking, and we will no doubt be moved in some fairly seismic ways, that we will also be laughing a lot.
A LOT.
Shrinking streams on AppleTV+
Frasier 2023 S2, E3-6
(courtesy IMP Awards)
One of the delights of watching any show is bearing witness to the moment when it truly comes into its own.
It doesn’t always happen, but more often than not, it does, with shows that look promising but shaky and uncertain in their first few episodes or season, coming into their own, all the possible pieces coalescing into something cohesive and highly enjoyable.
That wonderful transition, that fulfilment of possibility, is happening with Frasier (2023) in its second season, where context and characters have gelled to such an extent that the sitcom is evincing some of the greatness of its 11-season predecessor which ran from 1993 to 2004.
While Frasier (2023) is not yet in those stories narrative and comedic climes, still a little creaky around the edges and in its ever more engaging middle, it is getting better and better, episode by episode, with episodes five and six, “The Squash Courtship of Freddy’s Father” and “Cape Cod” respectively, giving not glimmers of promise of sitcom greatness revealed but also its near-fulfilment too.
It feels like you’re back home with family, helped along by the the fact that two characters from the original series, Frasier’s evilly but hilariously narcissistic agent, Bebe Glazier – brought to life once more in all her manipulative glory by the wonderful Harriet Sansom Harris – and his close friend and onetime radio producer, Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin) make quite effective appearances.
By effective, we mean that while some of the cameos from original characters have been fun but have felt like not much more than nostalgic window-dressing, the presence of Bebe and Roz feels organic and richly enjoyable, with the two feeling as if they are deservedly part of the current Frasier iteration.
Watching them meld seamlessly, especially Roz, whose daughter Alice (played by Kelsey Grammer’s own daughter, Greer) makes an amusingly disruptive appearance, her heart set on winning the heart of Frasier’s firefighter son, Freddy (Jake Cutmore-Scott) at the expense of his sweetly-enamoured cousin, and Niles and Daphne’s son, David (Anders Keith), whose character continues to flounder a little, the existence of his character little more than B-roll character diversion.
Everyone is brought together, Bebe aside, in the sixth episode when everyone gathers at a Cape Cod beach house, where all kinds of romantic misassumptions power a low-key farce that proves divertingly amusing but which never quite reaches the head of steam of some of the original Frasier’s most storied and best-loved journeys into farce such as “Halloween”.
It may not quite kick the comedic goals of Frasier 1.0 but it’s a huge amount of fun, underscoring just how well the characters are meshing and how their strong and steady development is well on its way to make the return of Frasier a highly-justified thing.
Rightly or wrongly, we never really want to say goodbye to any characters we love, and while you could well argue, and there are plenty of examples to back the argument, that going back and reviving a much-loved show is not a good idea, Frasier (2023) is proving that you can go back, have a huge amount of fun, recreate a sense of family and community and let the comedic good times roll.
Let’s hope the latest iteration gets more seasons to prove just how much life there is in this character, who is variously amusing, warm, pompous, vein and hilariously self-involved, just the way we liked him once, and thanks to the growing richness and strength of Frasier (2023), love him still.
Frasier (2023) streams in Paramount+