Did I not say a few days ago that I smelled trouble after watching the trailer for Shrinking (Apple, 1.27)?

From Martin Robinson‘s recent review:

“The big question that comes from watching the new therapist comedy Shrinking, is: are there therapists who can help those who watched Shrinking?

“Oh boy, this is…bad. Which is very disappointing, because it looked great on paper. Jason Segel — has there been a more likeable actor ever? Harrison Ford — has there ever been a more beloved film icon? And though they may try hard (well, Segel tries hard; Ford phones it in, but that’s to be expected, he practically invented phoning it in the moment an Ewok starting hugging his leg in Return of the Jedi), the show has a death wish with regards to sentimentality: every pithy or mildly bruising encounter is followed by a plunge off a cliff into yet another musical montage of people bonding.

“Shrinking is about a therapist called Jimmy (Segel) whose wife has died, leading him into a breakdown in which he starts telling his clients what he really thinks about them and their problems. Much to the disdain of his curmudgeonly boss at the clinic, Paul (Ford), who has Parkinson’s and his own grief to deal with.

“It’s not a bad set-up, and you could imagine, say, Vince Gilligan bringing out all the darkly funny shades within that story. But here, Segel along with fellow co-creators Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso) and Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), can’t seem to help but keep things easy and breezy and outright nauseating.

“So while our first sight of Jimmy is of him drinking and doing prescription drugs in his pool with two prostitutes while his teenage daughter is asleep inside the house, he’s really nice and shuts everything down when his neighbor complains, and… well, that’s the last we see of him doing anything self-destructive on the drink or drug related. That’s some addiction.”