‘Shrinking’ Season 3 Ending Explained – They Should Just Leave It Here

I have many thoughts about the finale of Shrinking Season 3, some of them not altogether positive, so let me be clear right out of the gate — as I wipe away tears from that final scene and mentally hand Harrison Ford all the Emmys — that Episode 11, “And That’s Our Time”, is wonderful television. It’s deeply moving, resoundingly hopeful, and leaves virtually the entire cast in a better place than the show found them. It’s also unmistakably an ending. And that’s kind of the problem.

Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be a problem, especially in this age of finales never quite feeling like finales. But it’s a problem here because Shrinking has already been renewed for Season 4. What’s more, creator Bill Lawrence has promised that it’ll be “a completely new story”. The same actors will be playing the same characters, but, and I quote, “People shouldn’t be surprised if there’s a time jump and it feels like we’re telling a completely different story.” That sounds like a terrible idea, but we’ll discuss it a little later.

In the meantime, let’s break down Season 3’s send-off.

Gaby and Derrick Get Engaged

Early on in the finale, Gaby finds an engagement ring that Derrick has unskillfully hidden from her. She tries it on — of course — and gets it stuck, so she has to visit Liz for lubrication purposes and discovers that basically everyone knew about Derrick’s intention to propose except her. But this isn’t the betrayal Gaby initially tries to present it as, and instead becomes an avenue through which she can address her own attachment issues and finally start taking her future seriously.

Now, on the one hand, we’ve been through this all before; we had it when Derrick showed Gaby the building he suggested she use for “their” trauma centre. But on the other hand, Jessica Williams, who has been an underatedly vital performer this entire season, sells the evolution in Gaby’s character so compellingly that it’s easy to imagine her entire arc across three seasons has been building to this one specific moment. It’s excellent writing, expertly delivered, and the raw emotional power of later events shouldn’t distract from that.

With (almost) everyone present, Gaby stages a theatrical reverse-proposal in which she finally fully commits to Derrick, and it’s a fantastic payoff to their relationship. For once, Gaby doesn’t undercut the sentiment with jokes or forced silliness. She’s all in, and so are we.

Jimmy’s Not-So-Perfect Goodbye

The main dramatic idea of this finale is that Jimmy is about to be completely alone, perhaps in a way that, despite outward appearances, he still isn’t emotionally ready to deal with. It isn’t just Alice going off to college, although that’s a huge part of it. It’s also Brian and Charlie going to Tennessee, Liz and Derek (and indeed Gaby and Derrick) going to Barcelona, Paul going to Connecticut, and Sean moving out of the pool house, all at the exact same time that Alice is going to college.

Rather than dwell on his pending solitude, Jimmy instead hyperfixates on making Alice’s last day at home a “perfect” one, an effort that is undermined at every turn, mostly by Summer. I don’t love Summer as a character, but that’s mostly because she’s not really a character; she’s a font of dumb gags and, here, a source of unnecessary conflict and annoyance. Summer and Alice fall out needlessly, since they’re both struggling with the idea of their pending separation, and Jimmy plays mediator so well that Summer ends up accompanying Alice all the way to college. That means she’s there at the airport when Jimmy tries to give his rehearsed emotional goodbye speech. He has to settle for something more improvised and less meaningful.

But as we’ll see later, this is the point. Perfection is the enemy of progress, after all, and Jimmy’s continuous striving for idealised versions of everything in his life is impeding his progress. It ruined his relationship with Sofi and prevented him from saying a proper goodbye to Paul. He’s allowing it to ruin his remaining time with Alice instead of savouring the goodbye he was able to get, which is a lot more than many could hope for. He’s his own worst enemy. If only he had a therapist father figure who could talk him through it.

Sean Is Spreading His Wings

Before we get to that, a minor point about Sean, who, now that I think about it, has become one of the show’s most underrated characters. He was initially introduced to make a point about Jimmy getting too close to his patients, and then he never left. But his storylines have really helped to round out Alice, Paul, and now Jimmy’s arcs, making him vital to the overall picture even if he has never occupied the limelight. It’s the same here.

Sean has moved out of Jimmy’s poolhouse, thanks to Derek, but he hasn’t told Jimmy that yet, since he doesn’t want to dump it on him while he’s still smarting about Alice’s departure. Naturally, Jimmy keeps positioning Sean as his only remaining lifeline, so Sean increasingly can’t find a way to tell him that he’s leaving — that he has, in fact, already left, and Jimmy just doesn’t know it yet.

He eventually does, obviously, and Jimmy takes it well, just like he took Gaby’s news about turning Paul’s practice into a trauma centre well. But it sits with him in the same way. When he messages Paul to tell him that he’s both happy about it and not, it forms part of Paul’s justification, helped along by Meg, Julie, and Alice and Summer, who have stopped to see him on the way to college, to travel 3000 miles for a breakfast intervention to finally tell Jimmy what he needs to hear.

Luke Tennie in Shrinking Season 3 | Image via Apple TV+

Harrison Ford, Take A Bow

Not for the first time in Shrinking Season 3, Harrison Ford completely steals the show here in the ending. In many ways, this outing has been about Paul; about his worsening Parkinson’s and the changes he is making in his life and relationships on account of that. But central to Paul’s identity is his relationship with Jimmy, a kind of reluctant surrogate fatherhood — and, albeit less reluctant, grandfatherhood to Alice — that both characters have leaned heavily against at various points in their own arcs.

“And That’s Our Time” is as fitting a conclusion to that dynamic as it’s possible to imagine. Paul tearfully telling Jimmy that he loves him as a son and will always be there when he needs help is devastating stuff, without betraying Paul’s gruff, impatient character. I was bawling in this scene, which I rarely do, at least to that extent, but it just felt so perfect, and so overdue, that it’s sure to become one of the defining scenes in all of Shrinking‘s three-season run.

And Paul’s kindest gesture is, perhaps, setting up a breakfast date with Jimmy and Sofi. He leaves the decision of whether to sit down with her or run away from his future to him, but we know which he’ll choose, scars and all, and the season ends with him sitting down opposite Sofi to get the next chapter of his life started. It really is quite beautiful.

Which is why Shrinking should have ended there.

Shrinking Season 4 Is A Terrible Idea

“And That’s Our Time” is an ending. It’s a near-perfect resolution to every character arc. It makes considerably less than no sense to return to these characters, especially not after a time skip that will have irrevocably reshaped their essential relationships.

It’s easy to see where things will pick up. Liz and Derek will be grandparents; Alice will either still be in college or will have just finished, perhaps beginning to transition into the workforce; Charlie and Brian will be parents to a toddler, not a baby; Sean will be flourishing in his career and perhaps getting more serious with Marisol. Paul will, I think, be dead; I expect that’ll be the inciting incident that brings the fractured cast back together for a trip down memory lane.

It just sounds awful. It’s too literal, robbing the natural conclusions of their pleasing ambiguity. I could be wrong, of course, and I often am, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least bit if this were the general shape of the season, and if I can call it now, it shouldn’t happen. It has the distinct whiff of a three-season story that was commissioned for a follow-up on account of its popularity early enough that Bill Lawrence didn’t anticipate running out of story to tell.

I hope I’m wrong, obviously. But we’ll have to wait and see.