Shrinking Recap: A New Best Version

Let’s get this out of the way first: How I Met Your Mother reunion!? I have no idea if Cobie Smulders will appear again in the remaining two episodes of season two, but the idea of her playing a love interest for Jason Segel is blowing my mind a little. Marshall and Robin? I always liked their low-key chemistry as friends, so the idea of watching them kiss is both fascinating and a little strange to me.

Jimmy meets Sofi to buy her yellow Mini Cooper, a present for Alice’s 18th birthday, which is exactly like Tia’s old car. He brings Derek along on the errand for help with negotiating, though he should know Derek’s idea of good negotiation means folding immediately when he feels an ounce of empathy for the seller’s situation. But when Jimmy comes back for the car, he and Sofi really click, bantering about the end of their respective marriages (his wife is dead, her ex-husband is dead to her). She even half-jokingly suggests that she had it worse than him since he gets to keep all his good memories of Tia while she’s stuck with tainted memories of the husband who left her for her best friend.

Jimmy is pleasantly surprised by Sofi’s willingness to get deep rather than entirely avoid the subject of his dead wife, even though this show is full of characters willing to open up with the slightest prodding. Still, it’s a sweet scene, and Smulders is charming in a straightforward rom-com adorkable way that feels distinct from her edgier vibe in HIMYM or Andrew Bujalski’s underrated movie Results.

It makes sense to check back in with Jimmy about his dating life at this point in the show. It’s been at least a couple of months in story time now since he and Gaby stopped sleeping together, and while he’s still not really ready to pursue anything serious, he’s considering dipping a toe back in. Still, he can’t bring himself to ask Sofi out yet, even though he recognizes the potential there.

When I look at Jimmy, I don’t see someone totally stuck in stasis. He and Alice are as close as they’ve ever been, and both of them are in better places individually than at any other point since they lost Tia. Alice even quits unofficial park-bench therapy with Paul this week, seeing a path forward in her grief journey that she can handle without so many routine check-ins. Directly confronting and then connecting with Louis, the man she once thought had ruined her life, was a huge part of that growth; she seems light and at peace now in a way she certainly didn’t early in the season.

That’s why it hurts so much when she realizes her dad cut Louis off. Alice only says a few sentences to Jimmy in his bedroom at the end of the night, but they’re brutal, beginning with those first words: “You told him not to talk to me even when you knew it was helping me?”

That sums it up, doesn’t it? There’s no law requiring Jimmy to forgive the man responsible for his wife’s death, but it’s selfish to deny his daughter a relationship that has been so good for her — and to lie about it, making her feel crazy. There’s something ironic about it, like a self-fulfilling prophecy: Jimmy cuts off Louis because Louis reminds him of the selfish, neglectful version of himself who ruined Alice’s 17th birthday, yet doing that led to him ruining her 18th birthday. I don’t have much sympathy for Jimmy here, but I understand his headspace in that closing “Fuck!” moment.

At a certain point, growth becomes a choice with your own stubbornness, fear, and insecurity as the biggest obstacles. That’s why it’s helpful to have a friend who will be straight up with you about your failing defense mechanisms, and Paul and Gaby have served this role for each other lately. In the aptly titled “Changing Patterns,” Gaby calls Paul a pussy after he doesn’t ask Julie to move in with him following her husband, Elliot’s, death (and the sale of her house). He’s content to just say she’s “crashing” with him. But Julie knows the drill and gets that it takes Paul a while to accept the change in his routine; she’s already been moving in over time and waiting for him to catch up. As he very sweetly puts it later in the episode, he thought he was living the best version of his life before he met her, but now he has found “a new best version.”

Gaby spends most of this episode seeing the truth of Paul’s words from last week about her caretaker tendencies. When her anxious patient Jackie (a returning Edy Modica) asks her to babysit for an hour, she caves, prompting a smug “classic Gaby” from Paul. She could’ve gone to lunch with her lovely, attractive boyfriend, but instead, she’s stuck in the office, violating a professional boundary.

A grateful call from Paul convinces Gaby to follow his lead and do the hard thing: Tell her mom she doesn’t want her to move in with her. It’s hard to watch, especially with the bad timing and Phyllis’s palpable excitement, and Ashley Nicole Black’s script doesn’t go easy on Gaby by having her mom take the news lightly. She’s deeply hurt, especially by Gaby’s firmness, and asks her to just go.

Part of me is still a little confused by the idea that Gaby needs to start choosing herself, since a lot of her season arc has revolved around stepping up to take more responsibility with her family. But dealing with Phyllis’s health and maintaining a healthy mother-daughter relationship will provide plenty more drama and lead to plenty more introspection for Gaby in future episodes and seasons, so I’m happy to see where this goes. Growth isn’t an easy or linear process, and everyone gets in their own way sometimes.

Progress Notes

• Part of me feels like Liz and Derek moving on so easily from their issues and reverting to a pleasant state of affectionate one-sided animosity is a little too easy. But then there’s Ted McGinley getting choked up, saying, “I’m just happy,” and it gets a lot harder to complain.

• I enjoyed Gaby and Liz negotiating with Alice about her birthday party and Liz’s later reluctance to let Alice go have fun with her friends.

• Pretty much any Derrick lines about his unfamiliarity with the friend group are guaranteed to be funny. This time, we got “I wouldn’t miss your boss’s girlfriend’s husband’s funeral” and “There’s a receipt inside in case you don’t like it, which you won’t because I don’t know you and I don’t know what you’d like.”

• The scene with Paul and Derrick is also great. There’s just something delightful about watching Harrison Ford and Damon Wayans Jr. talk to each other.

• Paul is now using “My bad” for basically any insincere apology, which is a solid running joke.

• “Eat my ass, Brian. And hate it ’cause I’m a girl.”