(She's also particularly funny in a few early scenes with Ford that jolted me into cackles using some unexpected music cues, and her surprising friendship with Liz deepens both characters.)Īnd Michael Urie! The divine Michael Urie, yet another person who is good in everything in which I have ever seen him - and another riotous reactor - has just-right best-friend chemistry with Segel, as the two of them explore the way a friendship can be challenged, and not just strengthened, by hard times. And unlike Ted, Jimmy is not a central character who is expected to bear the weight of working miracles or near-miracles it is a show less reliant on one guy to be its foundational emotional messenger.īut wait! Jessica Williams as Gaby is also so, so good, as a woman who has very particular relationships with Jimmy, with Paul, with Liz, with Alice - you can see how Gaby is a good therapist, because she intuitively gives each conversation what it needs. The show is quieter, even though it's packed to the gills with good jokes delivered by this genuinely stupendous cast. Without the big moments that big games and big plays can bring, the scale is smaller. Community is cobbled together from people who choose each other on a daily basis their team jerseys are figurative. Support and kindness take the form of a talk between friends, a drive to work, a place to stay, an invitation, an apology. To the degree Shrinking shares these themes with Ted, it asserts them less directly. For others, it tips over into something that's almost distasteful, a bit aggressively on the nose. For some people, having those strings plucked is satisfying and magical, even when you know it's happening. Community equals team equals AFC Richmond support equals pep talks equals halftime coaching. And one of the challenges of that show, at least for people who are suspicious of sentimentality, is that because it's about sports, it sometimes makes its themes literal. But, even when punched in the gut, they often redouble their efforts to be better than the sum of their wounds and losses. ![]() They are struggling, they make terrible errors, and they cause hurt. ![]() They are doing their best for each other. ![]() And that's before Wendie Malick shows up.Īt its best, Ted Lasso is not about people who are "nice" as much as its reputation might suggest it's about people who are hurting and decent. I ask you to pause for a moment and review the number of potential MVPs who are part of that cast. It includes his neighbor, Liz (Christa Miller) and her husband Derek (Ted McGinley) his best friend Brian (Michael Urie), from whom he's estranged a bit when the story opens a young patient named Sean (Luke Tennie) who needs some extra help with trauma related to his military service and Jimmy's two colleagues at the office, Paul (Harrison Ford) and Gaby (Jessica Williams). But Jimmy's real family is larger than that. He's working to reconfigure their relationship in a new way, shaped by his grief and hers. Jimmy (Segel) is a therapist who's also the recently widowed father of a 17-year-old daughter named Alice (Lukita Maxwell). Shrinking itself is, at heart, a family story.
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