Shrinking (Apple TV+)
Harrison Ford says he keeps working at 82 because it gives him ‘essential human contact’. But if that means acting in sitcoms like Shrinking, he’d be better off joining a bowls club.
Shrinking is everything that’s awful about American comedies. It’s laboured and unoriginal, the characters are stereotypes, the sets patently fake, and the dialogue is elbow-deep in schmaltz.
Ford plays a grumpy psychotherapist with Parkinson’s disease, mentoring a middle-aged colleague called Jimmy (Jason Segel) whose wife was killed by a drunk driver.
If that doesn’t sound like a bundle of laughs, wait till you meet his client, Jimmy’s housemate Sean (Luke Tennie), an ex-soldier with anger management problems and PTSD.
Still not chuckling? Try this one-liner, delivered in Ford’s best gravelly mumble: ‘Any time Sean feels disregulated, he looks for outside help.’
The psychotherapy set-up ought to be funny. The greatest U.S. sitcom ever made centred on two psychiatrists — Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier (the version with David Hyde Pierce, not the lumpen sequel with Nicholas Lyndhurst)
Shrinking is everything that’s awful about American comedies. It’s laboured, the characters are stereotypes, the sets patently fake, and the dialogue is elbow-deep in schmaltz
To give Sean ‘tools’ to help with that disregulated feeling (I think my gas boiler had something similar), Ford teaches him ‘reversal of desire’ therapy: he has to imagine whatever he fears most and ‘move towards the pain’.
That’s not just unfunny, it’s dreadful advice. Naturally, it works wonders for Sean — he has an epiphany, stops tormenting himself with guilt, and finds the courage to tell his employer that he doesn’t want to be interviewed on her friend’s podcast. What a lump-in-the-throat moment, eh?
Earlier this month, Ford told Vanity Fair, ‘As far as I’m concerned, everything I’ve ever done is comedy.’ It’s true that, as Han Solo and Indiana Jones, he delivered some of cinema’s best wisecracks since the heyday of Humphrey Bogart. But wisecracks need witty writing, and that’s what Shrinking abundantly lacks.
It’s doubly frustrating, since the psychotherapy set-up ought to be funny. The greatest U.S. sitcom ever made centred on two psychiatrists — Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier (the version with David Hyde Pierce, not the lumpen sequel with Nicholas Lyndhurst).
And mob boss Tony’s tense confessional sessions with his therapist in The Sopranos infused that masterful crime drama with a streak of dark comedy. Shrinking fails to deliver anything like that. Instead, it’s a mishmash of crude sex gags, humdrum domestic scenes and psychojargon.
Characters frequently appear unexpectedly, causing other characters to over-react — though this doesn’t appear to be a running joke, just a cheap and repetitive device to generate ‘humour’.
It’s a mishmash of crude sex gags, humdrum domestic scenes and psychojargon
Characters frequently appear unexpectedly, causing other characters to over-react — though this doesn’t appear to be a running joke
Jimmy and his next-door neighbour Derek gurn or jump up-and-down on the spot, like all dads in jaded American comedies. Their teenage children — all played by actors plainly in their 20s — have no purpose except to be supportive and wise beyond their years.
And naturally there’s a Gay Best Friend: his name is Brian (Michael Urie), and he is also friends with Jimmy’s neighbours. Why can’t they have their own Gay Best Friend? I can’t imagine that in California they’re in short supply.
What Harrison Ford finds so comedic about Shrinking is hard to guess. But perhaps he’s been laughing to himself ever since his agent told him what Apple was willing to pay.
