Gaby’s marriage has seen better days, and even the judgmental, intrusive Liz is clearly struggling with empty nest syndrome(*). Like Jimmy and Paul, all the characters are carrying around their own pain. He hasn’t done nearly enough of this in his career, given how utterly wonderful he is at it. Most of it, though, comes from his delivery, and from his ability to commit to the reality of this character - Paul is in the early stages of Parkinson’s, and struggling to make amends with his estranged daughter Meg (Lily Rabe) - even as he fits in seamlessly alongside more natural comedians like Segel and Williams. Some of the humor around Paul comes from the iconic status of the man playing him, as the writers understand that it’s inherently amusing to hear Harrison Ford say “raw-dogging” (a term he’s using incorrectly), or watch him eat Doritos while stoned. But if it’s a muscle he rarely exercises, it is still in incredible shape. You’d probably have to go back to 1988’s Working Girl to find him playing someone this normal, in this light-hearted a vehicle. But he’s very rarely placed himself in a purely comedic project like this.
Ford’s facility with delivering jokes shouldn’t be shocking to anyone who’s watched even five minutes of him as Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Good as Segel is - and as good as Williams, Miller, Maxwell, Tennie and everyone else are - the show’s greatest asset turns out to be Harrison Ford. But the collaboration with Lawrence and Goldstein is clearly a good one for him, dialing him back just enough so that Jimmy feels fully human even when he’s sobbing in his car to a sad song and screaming, “FUCK YOU, PHOEBE BRIDGERS!” Both in his own projects and when he works for other people (like on How I Met Your Mother), he can occasionally take this approach too far and become a cartoon. It is, again, a role tailor-made for Segel, who’s always been great at turning anger and melancholy into comic fodder. Ted Lasso and AFC Richmond Still ‘Believe’ in Season Three Teaser Segel’s own writing often strikes a similar tonal blend(*), and he’s once again playing a man who feels everything far too deeply, and expresses his emotions far too strongly.
#The spectacle shrinking series
(Even if few characters take the idea as far as Jimmy does.) The mix of goofy yet gentle humor and unapologetic sentimentality is straight out of Ted Lasso- not a surprise when this series was created by Ted boss Bill Lawrence, Ted actor/writer Brett Goldstein and Segel. Jimmy decides to become a “psychological vigilante” who oversteps ethical boundaries with patients to more quickly help them, which is the central tension of pretty much every fictional story about therapy. In other words, the premise of Apple’s new dramedy Shrinking - in which Jason Segel plays Jimmy, a therapist whose life and psyche have been an utter mess since his wife died in a car accident - is not exactly new.
#The spectacle shrinking professional
(Even Jesus described the phrase as a proverb.) The notion of a doctor being unable to tend to his own maladies is such a fundamental form of dramatic irony, professional variations on it have existed throughout the history of storytelling. If “Physician, heal thyself” wasn’t a cliché at the time Jesus said it, it almost certainly was shortly afterward.
0 kommentar(er)
