Benutzerrezensionen

The first few episodes started off fairly promising and then it quickly turned into an uncreative and contrived mess. The characters are not very easy to like and they are all self absorbed. Harrison Ford's character is decent but everyone else is severely over acting and swearing almost every other word. Lazy Hollywood writing at its finest and just for shock value. The show is completely unrealistic. Skip this one and watch After Life on Netflix with Ricky Gervais. It is charming, witty and brilliantly done without the dramatic Hollywood element. Shrinking is basically a bad rip off of After Life. Don't watch this show unless you want to shrink your brain.

What just happened?

Season 1 was so sweet, funny, heart-warming, feel-good. Great dialogues, lovely acting and characters.

And then came season 2.

Cringe alert, No actual narrative, no actual storytelling but clearly lots of obnoxious characters. The cringy neighbours - Liz and her husband, Ughhh! Gaby totally unlikeable. And unreal. With unreal lives and unreal problems. Most of them.

Everybody seems hysterical, always and everywhere on high hype, laughing and making jokes -even while doing jail time, they are always happy go lucky for no reason whatsover.

And Harrison Ford. He is so bored being a part of this project that he doesn't even bother to hide it. He gives a total of 3% of his acting talent and he only seems to look at his watch to get the hell out of his scenes.

What a waste.

I love the actors, but not the script. It's not as clean as they wanted it to feel. The club lines comes from Harrison Ford, who is completely miscast. He feels tired in every scene, nothing snarky. The role was written for Stanley Tucci and he wasn't available. Jason is lovable as a shrink who is falling apart and turns into Sandra bullock from "Blind Side" by adopting his clients into his personal life. The predictable daughter is embarrassed by her father. The predictable shrink falls into predictable dilemma with absolutely predictable 1 hour endings. This show would have been better written if it had more real work believability and is Harrison wasn't so tired all the time.

Because everything Segel's character does is highly unethical: 1. Turning up to work under the influence 2. Giving advice and an ultimatum to his client 3. Bringing his own personal drama into the therapeutic space 4. Having poor professional boundaries with his clients

He says that he "used to be good at this". If he were ever good at it, he would have: 1. Taken leave to deal with his grief privately 2. Accessed a grief counsellor 3. Be aware of how his grief is impacting others, especially his own daughter 4. Ensured the safety of his clients by arranging for his colleagues to see them

I am baffled by how this ill-advised series scores 8.0. I enjoyed Scrubs and Ted Lasso (from the same creators apparently) but it is difficult to make light of a severe topic like psychotherapy, especially when the protagonist is so outlandish. The only saving grace is Ford's character, who is the voice of reason in this maddening farce.

"Shrinking" is a quirky blend of promising ideas, likable actors, and characters that make you wonder if they accidentally shrunk their charisma too.

Jason Segel's Jimmy is so spineless, you'd think he's auditioning for a role in "Invertebrates: The Musical." And as a psychologist? Let's just say he's as effective as a chocolate teapot.

Now, Harrison Ford's Paul adds some much-needed depth to the series. He may not have much screen time, but when he shows up, we're all eyes and ears. Sure, one episode dipped into the guilt-infested waters of Paul's problems, but hey, nobody's perfect!

Modern TV series can be a minefield of blame games, modern narratives, and toeing the line with all the boxes ticked. "Shrinking" manages to keep its political preaching to a modest 10-15%, so you won't be pulling your hair out in frustration.

Still, we can't help but miss the good ol' days of charismatic characters that glued us to the screen. Seems like "Shrinking" is serving the same reheated leftovers as everyone else, and it's a guilt-ridden, blame-shifting extravaganza!

But the show does have its redeeming qualities. Characters dive headfirst into complex topics, making for some thought-provoking discussions.

So, here's the final score: 1 star for the awesome actors, 1 star for tackling tough questions, but let's take away 8 stars for the shrunken charisma and modern clichés.

Seems like every character was including an F bomb in almost every sentence. Looked forced and unnatural. After 3 episodes of this it just became boring. Also found Jessica Williams character of Gabby very irritating. Couldn't take any more and switched off after episode 3.

Just to compare, I really enjoyed the Ted Lasso series, there was some heavy swearing in Ted Lasso but it was limited to just one or 2 characters where it made sense. Just doesn't work in Shrinking, the swearing was over the top. Not funny, Shrinking is a big disappointment, expected much better especially with Harrison Ford in it.

I use IMDB to find out whether a series or film is worth watching. Anything above 8 points has always seemed okay to me. Unfortunately, I fell for this series. The series is rarely funny and mostly rather embarrassing. It deals with a lot of vulgar and adolescent nonsense. I watched all two seasons until the end in the hope that it would improve. Unfortunately, this hope was not fulfilled. Overall, a complete waste of time. Sometimes the dialogue was so bad that I was really annoyed afterwards. I'm still giving it 2 points because Harrison Ford plays a pretty decent role. So, for anyone who wants to get information from IMDB, just ignore the series, it's not worth it.

This started off ok, but soon reverted into yet another American profanity fest.

Why is it that the F word is used so often? Is this and other references (suck my ****) supposed to be funny? Adult humour? More like mucky playground humour.

It is just indicative of sloppy "run out of ideas" comedy.

This had the makings of being watch-worthy, but obviously the writers ran out out of ideas very quickly.

For the record, it is an American comedy-drama television series created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein. It stars Segel as a grieving therapist who decides to become drastically more involved in the lives of his patients.

Comedic or otherwise, there is not a grain of reality in his character. He would be out of a job.

Good cast and overall plot, and it would have been an entertaining show, but for the language which makes it completely unwatchable. Why the writers feel that crass language will somehow make the show better, is a complete puzzler. And if the "f" bomb were not bad enough, there's the disrespectful use of the Lord's name. Would they ever disrespect the name of "Allah"? No they wouldn't I'm quite sure. The overdone use of profanities is evidence of the degradation of our society and completely unnecessary for good writing. And writers, please ask yourselves if you would speak that way in front of your children, parents, or grandparents, I am willing to bet you wouldn't.

The show can be pretty funny. While you clearly shouldn't take it seriously from psychology perspective, season 1 hits some semblance of balance for your suspension of disbelief, characters are flawed, but not too annoying. In season 2, however, writers come out of the woodwork with their red flags on display - bright and proud.

Listing everything would take too much time, but one blatant example is the subplot of one of the characters who is revealed to be childfree. The amount of ignorance and disrespect this is handled with is astounding. The character's partner knows how much this person doesn't want kids, lies pretending to be fine not having kids, waits until after the wedding to drop the bombshell about actually wanting kids. Then none of the character's friends, even therapist, treat this as a serious issue, which it is. The show presents this as something dumb. The character ends up caving under pressure from literally everyone else for no reason at all.

There are some stupid things in the show, but this one was the stupidest because of how dangerous it is. It propagates disrespect in real life towards people who don't want children, as if there's something wrong with it. Spoiler: there isn't. It normalises lies to your partner until you have them trapped.

In real life the only healthy solution to this situation would have been a divorce. But I guess the writers have an agenda despite hiding behind alleged progressiveness.

I liked the premise and how it started. (As the shrink begins to skrew up the therapies with his patients while he has to deal with own personal grief). And I appreciated initially the serious comedy-drama with a light and optimistic touch (reminded me of the satire of Recreation Park, and the philosophy of the Good Place, with a more serious touch of In Therapy ).

But very quickly, after barely a few episodes. I do not like anymore. The patients are mostly evacuated from the scenery. Except a few only to feed and provide some opportunistic storyline twist.

All revolves around the 3 main characters' family and entourage. It now seems nobody really work in that show.

Plus I really dislike some characters (So unidimensional and superficial, I even want to slap some of them every time there are on screen), not respecting basic boundaries, while frivolously then seriously stomping on them. They are cringy only for the « fun » purpose and not even with a witty one. The only interesting character is Paul. But even his storyline is gradually taking the usual bad turn of series tropes.

And now, talking about tropes, the series accumulate the usual ones (sentimental affairs, sex with colleagues, parent-kid usual difficult relationship, etc).

Then the show is going in circle, going nowhere and even recycling its own ideas.

I was expecting to brilliant show with satire and smartness but it turned shallow, predictable, patronizing between the lines, very cliche and artificial.

It lacks authenticity and depth with a spicy funny touch (British are definitely better at this).

Eventually : Disappointing.

This show seems to be a favorite with a lot of people, so what am I missing? The characters are.a whiny and obnoxious lot, so typical of too many programs these days. Jessica Williams' character, in particular, seems to do nothing but yell and moan the whole time. Jason Segal's character is a self-absorbed jerk and even Harrison Ford, usually likable, is just annoying.

The actors aren't helped by some truly awful writing. Profanity tries to pass for wit.

There may have been a good premise here, but it fails in the execution. Hopefully at some point, Harrison Ford will find a better show for his talents.