Shrinking Season 2

I have just finished the second series of this excellent show.

I felt the second series was going to be a hard sell, but the premise (therapists are just as messed up as the people they are helping) continues to provide fruitful in providing that delicate mix of comedy and melodrama.

Side characters are important

In a series of multiple stories and multiple problems, there were always going to be some that stood out and some that were a little flat. I thought that the character of Derek (played by Ted McGinley) really shone this time around, compared to the first series. Whereas before he felt a little like a straight man for his more 'funny' wife, this time he really had to deal with stuff. I imagine next series he'll have a bigger role.

There's a lesson for my writing there - don't ignore the side characters at the expense of the main. If it's balance correctly, they can get the audience as invested as the others.

Too funny to be a tragicomedy?

This is not the first 'tragicomedy' show that I've watched in the last few years. It seems to be everywhere at the moment. Rather than seeing this as an indictment of how terrible things are, I prefer to think of them as writers and people looking for the best in difficult circumstances. We all have shit going on, and we all have things that we need to sort out.

The difficulty when writing things like this is balancing the sad with the happy. Too much of one can overshadow the other, and leave the audience feeling a little unfulfilled.

Shrinking sometimes leans a bit heavily to the comedy side, with all the characters wisecracking in ways that only confident people in a cosy writers room can. There's an element of escapism to this - no matter what we're dealing with, we should all be willing to help lighten the mood with a wisecrack now and then. It did take me out of the character's suffering a little.