Summary
Shrinking Season 2’s emerging theme of forgiveness is really highlighted in Episode 6, “In A Lonely Place.”
Forgiveness takes many forms, and Shrinking goes over a few of them in Episode 6 of Season 2, “In A Lonely Place”. That title applies to basically all of the major characters at this point, who each have personal subplots and crises that they’re grappling with. But keeping that to themselves is proving not only difficult but also ill-advised, since almost all of the resolutions that occur in this episode – and there are a couple of big ones – are team efforts.
It’s not all positive, though, and Liz might be speeding towards calamity, with Derek’s trademark unflappable demeanor about to be tested. But we’ll have to see how all that goes in a subsequent installment. This one is about progress.
Daddy Issues
After Sean got himself beat up at the end of the previous episode, he spends all of this one laid up in hospital with a lot of swelling and under the influence of copious amounts of drugs (don’t worry, the good kind.) But the Dutch courage makes him a little too honest with the people around him, which is everyone except, of course, his dad.
When Jimmy and Paul hear that Tim visited briefly and then left and is struggling with the fact that Sean got into another fight (just after confessing that it was Tim who had let him down in his life), the former decides that the only approach to the situation is some Jimmying, which has now taken on a life of its own as an office verb.
Paul isn’t wildly keen on this idea but he agrees to go along anyway, and the two of them paddle out to where Tim is enjoying a lonely fishing trip to convince him to visit Sean. And, while he’s still a bit suspicious of therapy in general, he does listen enough to later visit Sean and, crucially, take some responsibility.
It’s nice to see Paul going along with Jimmy’s ridiculous approaches to therapy because they still make for one of the best character pairings in the entire show. Not the best though, as we’ll see…
All Is Forgiven
Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in Shrinking | Image via Apple TV+
Of course, the best pairing in Shrinking is Brian and anybody else. In this case, it’s Alice, since he finally plucks up the courage to tell her that he spoke to Louis at the end of Episode 4 and has been speaking to him quite regularly since. They’re close to being buddies.
Brian realized pretty quickly what the audience picked up on immediately – Louis’s life is incredibly bleak, and he exists in a stew of guilt that can only be remedied by having some kind of relationship with Alice. This is why he was so keen to speak to her before. He might not be able to articulate it, but what he needs from Alice is forgiveness – it’s the only way he can move on with his life.
It does, admittedly, take a while to get there. Alice is hostile when Brian introduces her to Louis, understandably, but they eventually soften a little. Louis asks them questions about Tia, and Alice and Brian recall fond memories of her, some of them they’d even forgotten. Brett Goldstein is wonderfully understated in these scenes, and Alice eventually finds it in herself to forgive him. The moment comes upon her quite suddenly and unexpectedly, but everyone, including Louis, can tell she means it. It’s a very nice moment.
Gaby and Liz
Shrinking Season 2, Episode 6 also spares some time for Liz and Gaby, but since Gaby is back in the main group now after patching things up with Jimmy, there’s a lot of overlap, so they’re worth looking at together.
After the debacle with her mother and sister, Gaby is still looking for a little bit of reassurance that she was justified in how she handled the situation. She assumes she’ll get that from Liz, but even she makes it clear that Gaby was wrong and needs to make amends. Eventually, she does, visiting her mother in the hospital after her glaucoma surgery and releasing Courtney from her years of indentured servitude.
It’s about time, and it’s still a bit wild that Gaby still needs a minimum of three months to figure out how she’ll find time to care for her own mother, but it’s progress of a kind. But it’s also progress that inadvertently overlooks Liz, who is struggling more than anyone seems to realize. The stuff with Sean really got to her, Connor isn’t speaking to her, and it seems like everyone is making progress in their lives except her. While Derek’s aloofness is usually his best quality, here it’s useless, and just when he needs to be more attentive to his wife, he’s failing.
So, Liz looks for attention elsewhere, and it does seem like she’s going to get it from Mac. How far this will go is anyone’s guess, but hopefully not so far that it’ll be impossible to come back from. As usual with Shrinking it feels like one step forward for some characters and two steps back for others, but for the audience, the most overlooked and underappreciated show on TV continues to fire on all cylinders.
