Review: Shrinking, “The Field” | Season 3, Episode 4

There comes a time when a show that’s grown past its initial premise the way that Shrinking has may want to step back and say, “Hey, what was up with all that back in the pilot?” And for a show invested in personal growth and exploration, it only feels right for Shrinking to do, as it’s put in “The Field,” a little soul searching. The first two seasons of the show portray and reinforce the motivations and reasoning behind “jimmying,” but if you were to state it in basic terms to a lecture hall full of clinical psychology students—like Jimmy and Gaby do this week—those students would be justified in raising the same ethical questions Paul did once upon a time. And they’d have all the more reason to balk if one of the patients and beneficiaries of this radical new method stood up and revealed that Dr. Laird was also using his guest lecture as immersion therapy for a fear of public speaking.

“The Field” isn’t a full-on Frank Grimes situation. Poking and prodding at jimmying isn’t the whole point of the episode; it’s more of a device to flush underlying issues between Jimmy and Gaby to the surface. And it’s part of a larger chain of revelations and realizations that comprise the true meat of the episode—first and foremost Paul’s Field-assisted decision to retire.