14/20
Plot
A bereaved therapist begins to tell her clients exactly what she’s thinking
Ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making a huge difference in people’s lives, including his own. The Shrinking Movies share their best character-defining moments from Season 1 and find out who does the best Harrison Ford impression. When Brett Goldstein, Jason Segel, and Bill Lawrence asked how they got Harrison Ford on the show, Segel said Goldstein originally wanted a “Harrison Ford guy”; and prepared to audition for the likes of Ford.
Eventually, Goldstein talked to Ford and sold him the role
Segel told Goldstein that he should at least take it to Ford first, thinking he would immediately reject it, but at least other people would hear that the project had been brought to Harrison Ford, generating interest from other major actors . Goldstein still doesn’t understand what he did to convince her, but he was glad nonetheless. Featured on WatchMojo: The 10 Best TV Shows of 2023 (So Far) (2023).
But where is the humor?
When I watched the first episode of this series, I thought I was watching a reality show about a small, unassuming village whose residents were struggling with an epidemic of Tourette syndrome. Imagine my surprise when I learned from a friend that Shrinking was slated to be a sitcom. The plots lack the wit of, say, an average episode of Gilligan’s Island.
His lips move, but that’s it
The acting certainly doesn’t add to the fun. Star Jason Segel has an acting range that ranges from showing his confused happy face, to his confused sad face, to his confused face. This is in stark contrast to Harrison Ford’s performance, which could be classified as “mono-faced”; performance.
Overall, Shrinking is a cultural embarrassment aimed at the teenage to less mature twenty-something demographic
We would have expected more from the man who single-handedly invented a whole new realm of comedy: the small plane pilot comedy. The rest of the cast needs no acting skills, as their sole purpose is to give a simple, mostly out-of-context performance with one side intended to give the show a smooth “weirdness”; veneer. Unfortunately, the lines on offer are neither clever nor funny, leaving the show looking like peeling wood held together by a veneer of duct tape.