It’s all about "Changing Patterns" on a celebratory Shrinking

The latest episode of Shrinking’s pretty stellar second season (there’s only two more to go, in case you’re wondering) is titled “Changing Patterns.” Only it could just as easily have been named “Negotiations.” For what are we doing when we’re trying to change patterns if not negotiating with ourselves (and others) about the behaviors or choices that are no longer serving us? 

That is very much the question that Gabby (Jessica Williams), Paul (Harrison Ford), and even Liz and Derek (Christa Miller and Ted McGinley) are grappling with in this episode as they all ready themselves to celebrate Alice’s milestone birthday. Yes, young Alice is finally turning 18, an occasion that finds Jimmy (Jason Segel) equally thrilled and terrified. Thankfully he has a plan to make it a memorable one: He’s aiming to get her a yellow Mini Cooper like the one her mother used to drive in college.

No one is more excited for Alice’s birthday than Liz and Gabby, both of whom plan to negotiate their way into forcing the soon-to-be adult to let them help her get ready to go out with her friends and enjoy a nice sit-down dinner with Jimmy & co. (Alice, good negotiator that she is, ends up countering with no more than a cake-in-the-kitchen hang.) It’s clear the two women take their roles as surrogate mothers seriously—even when they seem to be struggling with how to behave like full-grown adults in their own lives. Namely, Gabby is still going ahead with moving her mother in with her (and even roped in Brian and Jimmy to help with the move) while Liz is stuck in a “shame spiral” that’s keeping her trying to be extra nice to Derek as she continues to atone for her kiss with Mac. The two are so strong willed and confident on their own (Gabby takes no shit from anyone, and neither does Liz, who even finds herself cussing out folks at Sean’s food truck when she and Derek cut the line), yet they’re wilting in those situations at home. 

The episode opens with the death of Julie’s husband, which is the event that leads Gabby to try and lecture Paul on changing his patterns. He’s still “Mr. Fortress of Solitude,” letting Julie “crash” at his while still keeping it all casual (classic Paul). Which is enough to irk him and get him to call her out on her classic-Gabby behaviors: She’s always putting other people’s needs above her own. How else can you explain her agreeing to babysit her patient’s toddler (nixing yet another Derek lunch date!) and refusing to be honest with her mom?

They all need to change their patterns. They all need to find a way to make choices that will feel true to them. For Gabby, that means finally telling her mom that she doesn’t think it’ll be a good idea to have her move in, a move which is met with the sadness and melancholy Gabby anticipated.

For Liz, after a nice pep talk from her friends (namely Brian), it means refusing to play good wife to Derek (it’s so unnatural to them all!) and go back to being the bossy “Shrimp Bitch” (an instagram comment’s title for her) she knows herself to be. Which only makes Derek finally feel more at home and at peace.

And yes, Paul does heed Gabby’s advice and sits down Julie (Wendie Malick, oddly given very little to do these past few episodes) and tells her he’s okay with letting her officially move in. He’s trying to be more vulnerable and he’s happy she’s allowed him to imagine a better future (and present) than he once could. It’s a sweet moment that’s immediately made all the warmer when Julie admits she knew that was coming. It’s why she’d already been decorating his apartment with her family photos. 

But the key scene of this episode (which features no negotiating at all) centers on Jimmy meeting the woman who’s selling her yellow Mini Cooper: Sofi (played by fellow How I Met Your Mother alum Cobie Smulders). Their meet-cute, once Derek leaves, is sweet and awkward and funny. And it has the kind of crackling chemistry you get when you pair two actors who had close to a decade’s worth of camaraderie to pull from. Even when Jimmy reveals his wife is dead, Sofi leans in, saying her ex did too: “He’s dead…to me.” Only she fumbles the punchline, then proceeds to try again, and then to explain it. It endears her to Jimmy. Might this be the girl who finally gets him to move on? 

Not that Jimmy does anything with that meet-cute right away. Instead, he throws Alice a lovely birthday gathering, gives her Sofi’s old car, and then debriefs with the boys (a.k.a. both Dereks) before later getting a text from Sofi that suggests she’ll be the one taking the lead. Ah, yes, a perfect birthday for Alice…or it was until she realizes that with a car she can now head to see Louis (Brett Goldstein), who’s apparently doing a lot better, and confront him about why he hasn’t texted her back. And that’s how she learns it was Jimmy who’d kept Louis from contacting her, thus “ruining” her birthday (her words, as soon as she gets back home). Which, yes, leaves Jimmy yelling out into the void. Teenagers—you can’t win, amirite?

Stray observations

• • Will not be able to get Jessica Williams clapping her hands above her head while saying “big flapping pussy–’cause that’s what you are” out of my head.
• • Is it me or has Sean been mostly sidelined in the latter half of this season? This episode alone found him merely cracking jokes on the side, baking a marbled cake for Alice, and mostly just… standing around with no subplot to call his own.
• • At some point, we’ll have to talk about how much of Alice’s life revolves around her dad and his middle-aged friends, yes?
• • In an episode with many charming and pitch-perfect joke constructions, there was perhaps none that made me laugh harder than Jimmy asking, rhetorically, “Who hurt you?” to Paul, only to have his curmudgeon colleague deadpan, “My dad.”
• • I hope that’s not the last we see of Gabby’s toddler-mom patient (played by Jury Duty’s Edy Modica).
• • Jimmy’s level of cringe is so off the charts that him writing up an acrostic poem to celebrate Alice (“A is Amazing”) didn’t even register as cringe. It’s just classic Jimmy.
• • For those wondering, that was Charlotte Cardin’s “Confetti” closing out the episode, which I immediately added to my Spotify.