Summary
Just when it seemed like Shrinking Season 3 was becoming a tad too predictable, “Hold Your Horsies” provides a pretty major complication, as well as the usual great jokes and aching sentiment.
I love Shrinking more than just about anyone, but I think it’s fair to say that Season 3 was threatening to fall into a bit of a holding pattern. We’ve got our Big Thing for the season (Paul’s impending retirement on account of his worsening Parkinson’s), and we’ve got all the core subplots we need to be working on in the meantime (Brian and Charlie raising Sutton; Liz and Derek’s relationship with Matthew; Gaby’s relationship with Derrick and, increasingly, Maya; Alice going off to college; Jimmy’s love life; and Sean’s relationship with Marisol). This seems like plenty to be going on with, but the whole arc needed something that Episode 5, “Hold Your Horsies”, capably provides: A curveball.
It’s not an entirely unexpected curveball — there were very brief hints of it during the premiere — but it certainly qualifies in terms of its implications, since it could quite easily shake up a few existing dynamics, and maybe even one or two that haven’t started to flourish yet. It’s a very welcome injection of new, slightly worrisome energy, and it’s supported by great-as-ever progress in almost all of the usual subplots. So, let’s break it all down. Matthew is still ghosting Liz after he overheard her calling him an embarrassment, so we’ll jump right into the juicy stuff.
Jimmy and Meg? Didn’t See That Coming
So, Paul’s retiring, and it’s up to Jimmy and Brian to help him shut things down. But Meg is coming over, which is more pressing for Paul, given he has insisted on spending as much time as possible with his family, and it also excuses a hilarious Les Misérables recital that goes on much longer than you’d think it would as Jimmy and Brian take Paul to the airport to pick her up.
Now, I presumably wasn’t alone in noticing a brief connection between Jimmy and Meg at Paul and Julie’s wedding, but it was easy to imagine, given Jimmy’s other romantic options — particularly Sofi, who he seems destined to be with — that it wouldn’t amount to anything. “Hold Your Horsies” even plays with this expectation. When Paul sends Meg and Jimmy to his storage unit to collect some things, you can feel the tension, but Meg calls him her “adoptive brother”, and Jimmy opens up about Sofi, so it seems, again, like it isn’t going to go anywhere.
Meg also reveals that she came to town to ask Paul to move to Connecticut with her, and that he agreed, which is pretty major news, though I imagine it’ll only happen after he retires. Still, you’d think it’d be more of a distraction than it ends up being. When Jimmy and Meg drop off the stuff Paul wanted, he doesn’t even thank Jimmy before unceremoniously dismissing him, which gives Meg a pretext to turn up at his house later to tell him that he deserved a thank you. And to kiss him. Earlier, Jimmy had said he wanted one uncomplicated kiss to get him over the hump, so maybe Meg’s just trying to help, but honestly, I’m not sure this qualifies as “uncomplicated”.
Gaby Chooses Derrick
“Hold Your Horsies” is so-called because this is what Gaby and Derrick are calling their agreement not to talk about marriage or babies until January 1, 2027. Gaby has longstanding commitment issues thanks to her messy divorce, which is no secret, and she tends to cut and run when she feels things getting serious, so the agreement is a self-preservation thing. In the meantime, she can focus on Maya, reminding her that Xanax and Zinfandel aren’t really her friends and probably shouldn’t keep her company together.
But Gaby makes the mistake of telling Derrick about her dream to open her own trauma centre one day. He sees this as an opportunity to find the perfect potential property for the venture, and when he shows it to her, he uses the personal pronoun “we”, which sends Gaby spiralling so badly that she has to corral her entire inner circle to analyse Derrick’s long-term potential. This is mostly an excuse to get a lot of funny characters in the same room together, but the unlikely highlight pairing turns out to be Paul — him being “kidnapped” by Liz repeatedly is a great recurring gag — and Gaby’s mother, who is living with her temporarily since her live-in nurse has gone on vacation.
Ultimately, Gaby chooses Derrick, though she isn’t quite prepared to make a decision on the trauma centre just yet. Their respective futures, though, are open business, which is a pretty big step for her.
Alice and Sean Stop Hiding
Elsewhere in Shrinking Season 3, Episode 5, Alice worries she might be boring, and Sean struggles to relinquish the newfound control he has over his life to pursue a relationship with Marisol. And even though they’re kind of unrelated, the two subplots dovetail pretty nicely here.
It helps that Marisol is — rather inexplicably — friendly with Summer now, since that means that she, Sean, and Alice are all planning to attend the same party. Sean is reticent, though, since he usually works on a Friday night, and the routine makes him feel in control. Paul, who is somehow becoming even more up-front the closer he gets to retirement, tells him that the disruption is good for him and he needs to learn to let loose a little, which is a fair point.
But it’s easier said than done. When the party needs a cash entry fee, Sean opens the food truck to drum up the funds, and it gives him an excuse to keep working even while the others go inside. It’s Alice who comes back out to reassure him, giving him a reminder that both of them have been hiding from their traumas for much too long. It’s time they took some chances, so they both end up going to the party and having a great time. Progress!
