I heard that Tim Baltz, who played BJ on The Righteous Gemstones, starred in a sitcom about an inept Shrink, so when we got Apple Plus, I clicked on Shrinking, Episode 1.
Scene 1: Husband and wife, Liz, in bed. Hey, that's not Tim Baltz. It might be Ted McGinley, who I last saw on "Married..with Children." He tells her it's her turn to handle it. They argue, but she goes -- not to take care of a new baby, har har, but to yell at the next door neighbor.
He is sitting by the pool, fully clothed, wiggling his fingers in a bizarre way while two bikini babes frolick in the pool. Heterosexual male gaze, anyone?
Liz tells him that it's 3:00 am, and he should turn the music off. But he and the bikini babes are partying with adderall and opioids. So why aren't you nekkid in the pool with them?
"What about Alice?" Must be Bizarre Guy's wife.
Left: I didn't realize it until I checked the IMDB, but Bizarre Guy is played by Jason Segal, and he's the focus character! I don't know why they decided to fool viewers into thinking that Liz and her husband were the focus characters. Malicious editors?
He gets into his car, but it's out of gas, so he rides a bike -- badly. When bikers zoom past him, he yells "Suck my dick!" Inviting someone to engage in gay sex as an insult! Bizarre Guy is homophobic.
He ends up at the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, where he has an appointment with his shrink, Tim Baltz.
Wait -- Bizarre Guy is the shrink! But those bizarre finger movements, like he has some kind of psychotic disorder. The doctor is crazier than his patients!
Scene 3: Bizarre Guy holds his head under the water faucet, then returns to his patients:
"I hate my mother"
"The barista made me spell 'Dan'"
"I always go out with superficial girls!"
Left: Jason Segal's butt.
"My boyfriend made me go back to fetch my sunglasses, but they were right on my head the whole time. Then he called me stupid, but he said I had great tits, so he loves me." Great Tits is displaying them very brazenly for the aesthetic pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.
Bizarre Guy blows up: they've been through this again and again. If your boyfriend calls you stupid, he doesn't love you. Besides, he's not that great: "His muscles are too big, and his shirts are too tight. Nobody likes that!"
Forget that gay men exist, Bizarre Guy? Or maybe gay men don't exist in this universe, except in slurs. But obviously Great Tits likes it.
Left: Big muscles, tight shirt. Any questions?
"Just leave him!" Bizarre Guy yells.
"Ok." She goes home to pack her stuff. That was easy.
Scene 4: Sister/Daughter from Scene 2 is singing a silly song to the water she's pouring (yes, to the water) while old guy Harrison Ford rolls his eyes. "It's too much water." She must be volunteering in a nursing home, with Harrison Ford as the cantankerous geezer.
No, it's the break room at the Cognitive Center. Sister/Daughter is a fellow shrink, pouring her own water due to her "character quirk" of being health conscious. And thinking that water is sentient.
Bizarre Guy bursts in and confesses that he just told a patient what to do. They are upset: this is against the rules of shrinking.
"We all know what they should do. Why not just tell them?"
"They have to figure it out for themselves."
After they criticize him some more, Bizarre Guy agrees to shrink patients "by the book" from now on.
Scene 5: Bizarre Guy is on his way out, when Sister/Daughter stops to flirt with him. Ok, not his Sister/Daughter, his Flirtatious Coworker. But why do the two characters look identical? .
After flirting, she gives him a referral: young soldier, just back from overseas, keeps assaulting people, and his parents are worried. What about the victims and the police?
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.