Spoilers below for the Season 3 finale of “Shrinking”!
Don’t worry, “Shrinking” fans: Jimmy and Paul have officially made up.
In Wednesday’s finale, Paul flew back to California to patch things up with Jimmy following their unsettling quarrel in last week’s episode. (Paul didn’t take Jimmy’s anger personally. “Textbook transference,” he accurately deduced.) While they may have missed out on their ideal goodbye breakfast, Paul’s surprise return was all a setup to tell Jimmy that he needed to finally — really, this time! — move on. And not just romantically. Though, Paul did make arrangements for Jimmy to rekindle things with Sofi. (“You f—king Jimmy’ed me!”) Paul then told his mentee that he was “more of a son to me” than a burden. “For as long as I’m around, if you think you need me, I will be there for you, because I love you,” Paul said in a rare (for him), emotionally charged moment.
So Jimmy had a decision to make. Stay stuck in his ways and in his life, or open himself up to what life may have in store for him. At finale’s end, he chose to reunite with Sofi, and seemed just a wee bit more optimistic because of it.
But that’s not all! Alice left for Connecticut to start college, Sean moved out of the pool house, and Gaby and Derrick got engaged! Below, writer/creator Bill Lawrence gives TVLine an inside look at Season 3’s last hurrah, plus offers up a tiny tease of what’s to come in Season 4.
TVLINE | With Alice heading to college and Sean moving out, how is Jimmy’s handling all of these big changes throughout the episode?
BILL LAWRENCE | This is the end of that three season story that we originally pitched to Apple. You’ve got to decide if grief is going to suck you under, [or] if you’re going to break free and swim to the light. So, if you ask me what we want people to feel at the end of this, it’s that he’s gotten through. This three season story is over. He’s gotten through it and he is somebody that, were the show to end right here, you would know he was going to live a happy and joyful life. But that’s part of the fun of telling a new story, because Nick, if Season 4 started with Jimmy in the car listening to a sad song, and he turned to Brian and it’s like, “You know, I’m still super sad about my wife dying,” everybody would be like, “What are they doing? It’s the same show!” Such a buzz kill that would be. Jimmy, come on!
TVLINE | We see that Jimmy’s has been fixating on the perfect goodbye to send Alice off with. Paul calls him out on it. Is this pattern of idealism part of Jimmy’s moving on process, or is it just human nature to pursue perfection like that?
I think it’s specific to him. I think we all want goodbyes and family vacations and holidays to be a bigger deal than they always are, and they’re such a s–t-show and I internalize that. So, I think it is kind of common, not only to me but to other writers and other people, but it is definitely specific to Jimmy in the sense that as he was trying to navigate all this stuff for these three years, he was a guy prone to picturing in his head how it should look and how it should go. It is definitely something that he, as a character, needs to break free from.