Shrinking season three review – Harrison Ford is the best thing about this unapologetically soapy show
Such is the surfeit of TV offered up to us in the streaming age that there are whole shows featuring A-list actors that only two of your friends have heard of and even fewer are watching. A case in point: Apple’s Shrinking, a dramedy from the creator of Scrubs and Ted Lasso about a grieving therapist who, rather than merely nodding and looking sad, decides to get brutally honest with his patients.
Now in its third season, its brightest star remains Harrison Ford, who plays our protagonist Jimmy’s (Jason Segel) grouchy but good-hearted boss. It’s probably for the best that it isn’t in the big leagues: while Shrinking has its moments of greatness, the series is – by and large – an unapologetically soapy confection best enjoyed, like most sweet things, in moderation.
As season three begins, we are reunited with therapist Jimmy (a man who previously described himself as a sufferer of “resting dead wife face”), mentor Paul (Ford) and a cast of slightly-too-close friends, family members, patients and neighbours. Having spent the final moments of season two forgiving the drunk driver who killed his wife, Jimmy seems set to begin rebuilding his life in earnest.
The writers, however, have other plans: I’m all for restorative justice, but the back-slapping hangouts with drunk-driver Louis (Brett Goldstein) are pretty weird, even for a character as needy as Jimmy. Meanwhile, Paul’s Parkinson’s symptoms are worsening, leading the mentor to become the mentee (“If you see me sinking,” he commands Jimmy, “pull me up”). Change is in the air, be it via Paul’s health issues, or Jimmy facing the prospect of an empty nest now that daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) is off to college (it’s not totally empty, of course, with former patient and military vet Sean, played by Luke Tennie, still living in his pool house). In case we didn’t totally get the point, Segel spells it out for us in the series opener: “Everyone around me seems to be so full of joy lately … I’m still getting knocked on my ass by the smallest things.”
What follows are 11 warm, inoffensive but undeniably mawkish episodes, weaving Paul and Jimmy’s personal issues in with B-plots about their wider friendship group and their health scares, adoption dramas, fearsome ex-girlfriends and useless adult children. Indeed, parent/child relationships anchor this series, not least Jimmy’s own difficult history with his father, played by Jeff Daniels. There’s the potential for something profound here but, as with many parts of Shrinking, the schmaltz is often shovelled on so thick that it’s like you’re being told exactly what to feel and when.
Michael J Fox as Gerry, a Parkinson’s patient. Photograph: Robert Voets/Apple Tv
When it’s on the right side of wholesome, it works: big ensemble scenes where the likes of therapist colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams), Jimmy’s erstwhile bestie Brian (Michael Urie) and neighbour Liz (Christa Miller) make the show quick-witted but cosy, even as they frequently overstep one another’s boundaries. But lack of boundaries is also one of the show’s biggest issues: the unsolicited advice, the lying on each other’s beds in outside clothes, the fact that every single character is inexplicably close with Alice. Much suspension of disbelief is required, and that’s before we even get to the therapy sessions.
While it’s not Shrinking’s responsibility to be wholly accurate, I do find myself wondering whether some of the plots here – therapists showing up at bars to find their clients, clients being passed between different therapists in the same practice, therapists seeing multiple people from the same friendship group and so on – risks making a mockery of the profession. While medical or legal dramas are often well-researched, Shrinking treats therapy as merely a synonym for conversation, and not particularly empathetic ones at that (“it’s your hour,” says Gaby to a client she is particularly exasperated with, “so you can stay fucked up!”). Sometimes it feels as though Ford – the show’s emotional anchor, who gives a measured but frequently devastating performance as Paul – is in a completely different programme altogether.
Still, there are plenty of astute observations about relationships here. And Michael J Fox is excellent as a fellow Parkinson’s patient, Gerry, who quips that he might take up stunt work because of how frequently he falls over. But for a show about therapy, Shrinking is weirdly afraid of getting too deep. Even though this show has a hint of a victory lap about it, a fourth season has already been commissioned, so this won’t be its final outing. But, like so many shows of the streaming era, it’s not yet made its mark.
This article was amended on 28 January 2026. An earlier version said that Shrinking’s third series could be its last; in fact, a fourth has been commissioned.
