Shrinking Season 2 Review: Dark, Profound, And Still Full Of Heart

There is a darkness in "Shrinking," the Apple TV+ comedy created by star Jason Segel and "Ted Lasso" writers Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein. It's a show about grief, trauma, and all the twisted ways we deal with those issues, from strange affairs to flat-out foolish decisions. It's endearingly messy and its cast is endlessly charming, but there's always that darkness there too, waiting to rear its head when the characters least expect it.

The narrative challenge of a show like this, then, is twofold. The show has to find a way to ride into that darkness without losing any of its comedic light, and it has to convince its audience that the darkness is real, powerful, and worth contending with, even when viewers are just happy to watch Segel and co-star Harrison Ford go toe-to-toe. It's a potent formula, one that Season 1 didn't always reckon with. Now, Season 2 is here; the darkness is more potent than ever, and the show feels like it's taking bigger risks with all the goodwill it's earned. One of TV's warmest shows is back, and it's even better.

Season 2 picks up shortly after Season 1 left off, and apart from some issues with his patient Grace (Heidi Gardner), who offered an almost literal cliffhanger at the end of last season, things are going really well for Jimmy (Jason Segel). He's still having a little fling with his co-worker and friend Gabby (Jessica Williams), things are great with his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) and his neighbor Liz (Christa Miller), and with the help of his mentor Paul (Harrison Ford) he's moving on after his wife's death that took place before the series. Season 1 was all about Jimmy fighting to get back to a healthy place, often with the unexpected help of his patient Sean (Luke Tennie), a veteran who's trying to turn his life around — and as Season 2 dawns, he seems to really be enjoying that healthy place.

But of course, healing is a journey that doesn't ever really end, and that means that Jimmy's about to face a whole new slew of problems. Riddled with anxiety over whether or not he did the right thing with Grace, and facing new questions about his relationships and his own potential selfishness in navigating them, Jimmy is forced to re-examine everything he thought he knew about his own mental health and the circumstances of his life, and this time it might be even harder.

The "Shrinking" writing staff has clearly not lost a step, and they bring their best to the early episodes of the second season with stories that feel like a natural evolution of where Season 1 wrapped up, rather than a string of introductions to new problems that are just there to create drama. There's a sense of growth not just in the characters, but in the larger narrative. That's especially evident when Jimmy and his friends and family learn, grow, change, and freak out not just because new things are happening, but because those new things are connected to old things the audience already knows about. Like a good therapy session, it all feels contextualized and comprehensive and part of a greater emotional whole, and that extends to the performances of the cast.

As Jimmy, Jason Segel has sort of handpicked the perfect character for himself thanks to his role as co-creator and writer, and it's not lost on him for a moment that he gets the chance to embody this guy with every ounce of commitment he's got. We're used to seeing Segel in earnest, vulnerable roles like in "How I Met Your Mother" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," but even by those standards he's rising above here. Maybe it's the influence of Harrison Ford, maybe it's the joy of being in this ensemble, maybe it's just his own maturation. Maybe it's all of those things, but whatever's happening, it means Segel is turning in some of the best work of his career.

And he's not alone. Lukita Maxwell, Luke Tennie, Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, and Michael Urie (as Jimmy's best friend Brian) are all doing incredible work walking the line between light and dark, hysterical and sardonic. The real MVP, though, is Ford, who perhaps unsurprisingly is turning in remarkable work and making it look easy. As a gruff therapist who's trying to shepherd his younger coworkers through life while also entering a new phase of his own life, Ford is able to deal with his aging as a performer and a man with deft, deeply human work, and every moment he's onscreen is a joy.

But the best part about this season of "Shrinking," even beyond the greatness of the cast and their work together, is the show's courage to be about more than joy. Joy never leaves, but it's also never alone. While the first season dove headlong into the darkness of grief, Season 2 dives into things like resentment, regret, suppression, and flat-out desperation with careful, beautifully navigated emotional resonance. These characters are going through big things, hard things, and often it seems like it's only getting harder for them. But because "Shrinking" is so wonderfully human, so warm, so rich with the vibrance of life, we want to keep watching, because like the characters, we can see a way through the darkness too.

"Shrinking" Season 2 arrives on Apple TV+ on October 16.