Shrinking Recap: Maladaptive Behaviors

Since the beginning, Shrinking has revolved around some key themes: therapy, grief, trauma, forgiveness, and the struggle to communicate with emotional honesty. But this is also a show about parenthood, as we can see in an episode like “Full Grown Dude Face.” And while it may not be one of the most intense or heartbreaking installments of season two, I think it might actually be the one that moved me the most on a personal level.

Let’s start with the weakest story line, which is still enjoyable. A few episodes ago, Courtney agreed to give Gaby three months to figure out a plan for taking care of their mother. But that timeline gets moved up in this episode when she decides to join the military, inspired by the sense of purpose that it gave Sean and Jorge. Courtney also likes the idea of seeing more of the world after being cooped up with her mother for so long. She offers to hold out for next year, not wanting to rush Gaby into making up her mind about the Phyllis of it all, but Gaby can’t expect her to do that. She gives her blessing, and the relationship between the two sisters seems better than ever.

Paul functions as Gaby’s sounding board in this episode, and he offers a couple of different diagnoses. With so much going on in Gaby’s life right now, she’s in a bit of a selfish phase, secretly rooting against her own sister because Courtney’s fulfillment will mean taking on more serious responsibilities herself. But Paul also suggests that Gaby could use a little selfishness, that her “lifelong caretaker tendencies” damage her ability to set healthy boundaries. When Phyllis visits Gaby’s place for the first time, Gaby proves him right by passively agreeing to let her mother live with her.

It’s a little unclear how we’re supposed to feel about all this, especially without knowing where it’s going. Should we root for Gaby to be more selfish and put herself first? We’ve already seen that side of her earlier in this season in her reluctance to let go of her resentment toward her sister. I’m not sure it would be easy to cheer for her to put her mother on the backburner again, especially considering Paul’s comment about wanting to be closer to his daughter as he gets older.

Much of “Full Grown Dude Face” is about what we owe to our parents and what we owe to our kids. Brian, who didn’t have any plans or particular desire to have kids until the past month or two, is still figuring out in real time what exactly it means to him. With the news that he and Charlie will be meeting with a five-months-pregnant mom this week, those thoughts are in overdrive — especially because Brian has always been bad at first impressions.

Jimmy points out Brian’s tendency to lash out at people out of fear of rejection, a defense mechanism he’ll need to overcome. At least he’ll have Charlie there to lean on; nobody dislikes Charlie. But when Ava shows up to Jimmy’s house (it’s closer to where she works), Brian quickly finds himself falling into old patterns, pacing around and rambling anxiously until Charlie tells him to stop and breathe. (He should’ve stopped him a lot earlier, honestly.) Fortunately, Brian’s honesty about his nervousness allows everyone else to relax a little, and they end up connecting over some shared interests like troll pencil toppers and musical theatre.

The smartest touch here is the way Bill Posley’s script draws a connection between Brian’s paternal desires and the rest of the friend group. I’ve felt a little mixed about the adoption story line because we haven’t seen much of Brian earnestly wanting a child, but this mini-monologue locks it into place: Brian is inspired by the little community that their friends have built and feels safer having a kid knowing the whole “village” will be involved. “The only reason our friends aren’t here right now is because they put their kids first,” he says. “And that’s the type of parents that we want to be.”

But it isn’t meant to be. Later that night, Charlie gets a call from Stuart confirming that Ava went with the other couple. It’s an unexpected, refreshingly melancholy ending, and it doesn’t represent a regression; Brian is visibly saddened by the news, which shows that this is something he truly wants now. That makes it a decidedly bittersweet moment for Charlie, who is moved by his husband’s disappointment. The presence of their other friends makes it feel much more bearable, a reminder that they really do have a support system.

Jimmy has had to deal with some unusual parental problems this season when it comes to Alice’s secret conversations with the drunk driver who altered their lives irrevocably. But the Louis storyline is on pause for now, though Alice will get suspicious of Louis’s absence and short texts before long. Jimmy’s parental problems in this episode are, on their face, pretty commonplace: His daughter is growing up and asserting her independence more and more, and he’s holding on tightly while attempting to let her live her life. (“Dad life!” Derek says. “Make your kid think you don’t care when you do.”)

That comes into play when Jimmy meets Dylan, a grown-looking dude in his kitchen who’s actually a 17-year-old there for a casual date with Alice. It’s a pretty standard sitcom scenario, especially as it escalates into slapstick with Jimmy choking on a grape and Dylan performing the Heimlich, but it eventually leads to some insightful moments of truth.

Jimmy has to pull off a delicate maneuver familiar to many parents: Let Alice separate herself without making her feel guilty about it. And he actually does a pretty good job! I really like the choice to let him succeed here; sure, he privately gushes about Alice’s beauty after seeing a photo of her in a new dress for Dylan’s school dance, but he didn’t insist on coming to the store with her, nor does he give her date another dad talk.

That little bit of restraint makes all the difference in allowing Alice to open up to Jimmy when she needs his help — which she still does because you never really stop needing a parent. When someone recognizes her from the “Cheater Bitch” video and exposes her “girl with the dead mom” status at Dylan’s after-party, her father is the one person she thinks to talk to; he’s really the only one who can understand being consumed and defined by loss, this loss in particular.

He also has some valuable wisdom that stretches back to episode three of the show, when Jimmy first said he had “dead-wife face.” As he explains to Alice, he first started using the phrase in order to claim ownership of his grief, to let people know they didn’t need to walk on eggshells around him.

Alice takes a page from her father’s book when she returns to the porch and chats with her new friends. When one girl makes a flippant comment about wishing her mother would disappear forever, then apologizes in a panic, Alice brushes it off: “I’m fine. I just have dead-mom face.” Like father, like daughter.

There was a time when Jimmy didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to be there for his own daughter — when a year flew by without any real connection or understanding between the two. He can never truly get that time with Alice back, and that will continue to haunt him, especially whenever Louis comes up. Perhaps that’s one reason why he’s overly invested in her day-to-day emotional life now; he ignored her cries for help once and can’t stomach the idea of letting that happen again.

But the Jimmy of today, no matter his many remaining issues and the blow-up sure to come, is a different man than back then. When he coasts by the party in his car at the end, checking in on Alice like he promised he wouldn’t, it doesn’t feel overbearing, like the breach of a delicate father-daughter boundary. She actually mouths “thank you,” which somehow made me tear up — just the simplicity of it, the acknowledgment that these two will always mean something deeply important to each other. At least in this moment, Jimmy can tell the difference between a genuine request for privacy and the obligatory aggrieved-child routine. He knows when his daughter needs him, and he knows when she doesn’t, and he knows that it’s okay to experience less and less of the former and more and more of the latter as she becomes an adult.

There’s something sad in that, as we can see from the wistfulness on Jason Segel’s face when he drives away. But as the camera lingers, his smile fades slightly, and he takes a deep breath before settling into a deeper smile. Watching your kid grow up might hurt a little, but we can feel how grateful Jimmy is for the time they have together.

I don’t expect this to be everyone’s favorite episode of Shrinking season two; it does feel like an in-between moment with some lighter thematic material than usual. But sometimes I think this show is best when it comes to the small, beautiful details, not when it’s taking big melodramatic swings. As touching as it is to watch a young woman forgive the man responsible for her mother’s death, it can’t beat watching a father and daughter reconnect. These are two people who understand each other better than anyone else, and nobody can take that away from them.

Progress Notes

• This episode actually reminded me of the show Parenthood, which used to regularly bring me to tears.

• Our main follow-up to Liz and Derek’s story is that Liz is sucking up to her husband (“I’m nice now”), so I’m curious if there’s more to come there — you know, when they aren’t busy comforting their son Matthew about getting fired from Buffalo Wild Wings.

• I get that Liz is the type of white woman who would say, “I’ve always wanted a mixed-race baby,” but it’s almost too obvious for her.

• Alice echoing her dad’s “Sometimes we lie, Sean” got me.

• Wasn’t it years ago now that Alice was crushing on Dylan? And now they’re just going on a first date and she doesn’t even seem to know him that well?

• Really nice to see a scene between Alice and Gaby as they go dress-shopping and to acknowledge in dialogue the reasons they haven’t shared as much screen time lately.

• So apparently Jorge has been working at the food truck and staying with Sean for the past few weeks? Does that mean Jimmy is casually housing yet another person now?

• “Oh my God, Jimmy, are you good at your job?” “Yeah, sometimes.” “Arrogant.”

• “Can you be on a registry if you emotionally abuse children?”

• “Enjoy my house.”