Shrinking Recap: Pain Sets Me Free

As a therapist, is there such a thing as having too many boundaries with your patients? Probably not. But that’s what Jimmy suggests to Paul in “I Love Pain.” Shrinking tends to justifiably depict Jimmy as the Wrong One and Paul as the Right One, and that’s still the case here — Jimmy’s boundaries are essentially nonexistent, and as a result, his patients have become overly reliant. But the episode also frames Jimmy as a little bit correct when he suggests that Paul could stand to loosen up with his ethics.

This question of boundaries comes up with two of Paul’s patients — both his newest and his oldest. Sean is used to having Jimmy as a therapist, a man he lives with and can pester freely anytime. But Paul is not down for that bullshit. When he receives an essay-length text from Sean on his personal cell venting about a painful conversation he failed to have, Paul doesn’t respond by dropping everything and talking it out, like Jimmy would. He calls Sean and firmly establishes boundaries, telling him to practice the tool he learned last session.

Liz is pumped for the food blog planning a write-up of their truck, heavily focused on Sean’s veteran story, but Sean is nowhere near the point where he’d feel comfortable publicizing that (even if it’s just for a food blog with a cheesy name). More than that, he wanted the truck to represent a fresh start, and he’s not keen to start associating it with a past he’d rather forget. Anxious about how Liz could respond if he turns the interview down, he finally turns to Paul’s “Reversal of Desire” tool, which involves visualizing your worst fears and then speaking the phrase “I love pain” out loud as you embrace them.

When Sean pictures Liz calling him a baby and going Karen mode, it does the trick — he’s ready to talk to her, partly because he accepts the possibility of pain and partly because he knows the scenario he’s imagining is highly unlikely. Sure enough, Liz is totally cool with canceling. In fact, she’s still overwhelmed with gratitude for Sean and for the little business they’ve created together. She even gives him a rock, which is basically a blood oath coming from Liz.

But then there’s Raymond, who appeared in one episode late last season. Now that Paul has taken on Sean as a patient, he has the unfortunate task of cutting someone else, and Raymond is the obvious choice. “Moving Forward” showed that Paul and Ray had developed a real camaraderie after 22 years of knowing each other; Ray continues paying Paul not because he really has anything to work through, but because he enjoys the regularity of his company. But, as much as it disappoints both Paul and Ray, it’s time for them to part ways — and because it would be inappropriate to strike up a friendship even afterward, this could be their last time ever speaking.

Paul doesn’t admit it to Jimmy, but that idiot got through to him when he called Paul a “mental-health robot” with too many boundaries. The episode suggests that while Jimmy wasn’t right about Sean, he might’ve been right about Ray. That’s not necessarily a great lesson to apply to real-life therapy scenarios — I’m no therapist, but I can only imagine a few select cases where something like this would really work — but for a sitcom that has never cared too much about realism, it does work. And as a story about Paul, a perpetually gruff guy who struggles to accept love, it’s pretty heartwarming. That’s partly thanks to Harrison Ford and Neil Flynn’s easy old-timer chemistry.

Jimmy doesn’t need to reckon with these questions as directly this time, with most of his story is devoted to his relationships with Alice and Gaby. He’s struggling to figure out a way to tell his daughter about the visitor who showed up at the office. (Can you tell that “struggling to tell someone a difficult truth” is a common story in this show?) He inevitably goes about it the entirely wrong way, though he does come clean rather than drag out this secret. The parenting we see from Jimmy in this episode might be a little clumsy, but you can actually see how much his relationship with Alice has grown since the beginning of season one. She treats him with a little coldness for a couple days as she processes what he told her, but never gets angry or confrontational. In fact, the biggest indicator of her ongoing internal conflict is the fact that she hasn’t asked to borrow the car even though she has her driver’s license.

Jimmy and Alice eventually share a sweet bonding moment when they take her friend Summer’s advice and write letters to “Double D,” the drunk driver. It’s a healing exercise, and based on her request for the keys the next day, it seems like everything is smoothed over. But while Alice’s relationship with her dad may be on solid ground, the final scene shows that she’s still thinking a lot about Double D. She’s even driving to his place just to lurk outside and watch him.

Jimmy’s most dickish moment in this episode is reserved for the Gaby subplot. She finally goes through with breaking things off with him after thinking a lot about Tia, whom Jimmy still openly calls “the love of his life.” But it’s tough not having him around as a friend, especially with all the drama going on between her mom and her sister Courtney. She’s in a vulnerable place, and it’s no surprise she lets Jimmy in when he comes bearing gifts and emotional support.

I’ve seen Jimmy be an asshole in a lot of ways before, but there’s something particularly sleazy about seeing him in this manipulative mode, taking advantage of Gaby’s weepy state to get back in her pants. She calls him out on it, confirming her theory by pinning him down and exposing his bright-red sex boxers. And that pales in comparison to his biggest transgression: At a certain point he knew that she wanted something more than just sex from him, but he ignored that intuition because he was enjoying all the no-strings-attached intimacy.

I like that this season has skipped past many of the expected rom-com beats in this story line. Since we haven’t heard Jimmy’s direct perspective on his relationship with Gaby much, we don’t know for sure that he would actually date her, even without the looming specter of Tia. (He probably would, though. Who wouldn’t?) But it lands as a surprise to the audience that Jimmy already figured out her feelings at some point off-screen, probably in the few months between seasons.

There’s also a big tangle of conflicting feelings and emotional contexts at play here. Jimmy is definitely in the wrong, and it’s very satisfying to see Gaby kick him out. But she did have a role in all this: Jimmy ignored her feelings, but she also ignored her own, and tried to ignore Liz when she forced her to confront them. Still, Gaby did the right thing by ending things and actually sticking to her boundaries (there’s that word again), refusing to continue courting heartbreak even as Jimmy kept plowing past those boundaries.

People often rely on their closest friends to take care of them when they can’t take care of themselves. It’s crushing to realize that someone you care so much about might not have your best interest at heart — or, even if they do, your feelings and priorities will never supersede their own. It’s crushing to realize you’re being used, that the person you thought you could maybe be just friends with actually isn’t much of a friend at all.

Progress Notes

• Brian is not happy that Jimmy never told him he and Gaby were sleeping together, so I anticipate some drama going down between them. (Grace knowing but not Brian is pretty funny.)

• Alice brutally rejects Connor, then introduces him to Summer to get him off her back. Wanna bet Alice will get jealous after she sees them getting along?

• By the way, this is a pretty funny episode, more so than the premiere! So here’s some quotes, starting with: “We should add it to our sign out front. Rhoades Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center: Our Doctors Fuck.”

• Gaby can hold her pee for 48 hours.

• “Speaking of cars, do you remember what happened to your mom in one?”

• Also laughed pretty hard at the reveal that Derek had been listening to that whole conversation. “Speaking of cars?!”

• I can’t count the number of times my dad has said the verbatim line “he emerges from his cave,” so hearing the words from Derek’s mouth was a little triggering.

• “Paul, I told Alice. It went well.” “We’ll hang a banner. ‘Father of the Year.’”

“You left your sunglasses in my dad’s car, and he thought it would be a growth moment for me to return them to you.”

• “Can we pay her to fuck our son?” “I think maybe I’d feel more comfortable just, you know, rooting for him.”