‘Shrinking’ Boss Breaks Down Finale’s Scary Louis Moment & What’s Ahead for Season 3

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Shrinking Season 2 finale. It also contains discussions of suicide.]

Shrinking‘s “forgiveness” season has come to a close, and it ended on a forgiving and hopeful note for Jimmy (Jason Segel) and Louis (Brett Goldstein, who’s also a series co-creator and writer), the man who caused the car accident that killed Jimmy’s wife, Tia (Lilan Bowden).

Jimmy’s daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell) had been trying to make her dad forgive Louis for the season’s second half, but he couldn’t do so before forgiving himself. Jimmy carried heavy guilt about his failure to show up for Alice when it mattered most after Tia’s unexpected death. Once he was able to open up about this guilt to Alice, Jimmy had the bandwidth to consider forgiving Louis, who was drowning in his loneliness and depression in the Thanksgiving-set finale.

Louis was close to dying by suicide on the train tracks where he and his fiancée used to spend time, but Jimmy arrived just in time after seeing a text on Alice’s phone that she had missed in the holiday busyness. Jimmy forgave Louis in the season’s final moment. Earlier in the episode, Gaby (Jessica Williams) reconciled with Derek (Damon Wayans Jr.), and their relationship will get another chance in Season 3 (which was green-lit by Apple TV+ in October). And Paul (Harrison Ford) finally opened up about his progressing Parkinson’s disease symptoms at Thanksgiving dinner, telling his loved ones that he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d remain independent and that he’ll be leaning on them for support moving forward.

Moving forward, as series co-creator Bill Lawrence previously explained to TV Insider, is the theme of Season 3. Here, executive producer Neil Goldman breaks down the events of the finale and teases what’s next.

Paul received some upsetting information about the progression of his Parkinson’s disease by the end of this season. Are we going to see him forced to retire in Season 3? What will the landscape look like for him?

Neil Goldman: We’re still in the throes of figuring out Season 3, but you’re certainly very perceptive in anticipating that we will be leaning in hard to what the progression of Paul’s disease looks like, how he copes with it in surprising ways, and the effect on the people around him. As to the endgame, that will be in the air, but we like to try to subvert expectations and surprise people. And so we’re exploring a bunch of different roads. The short answer is, his arc for Season 3 will in large part be dealing with the progression of it, but we are not quite sure how. We have a number of ideas in mind for how to stick a landing with him.

This season, you explored throwing other characters into therapy who were hesitant to be in therapy, like Liz. Could see Paul start to go to therapy, possibly with Jimmy as his therapist, given he’ll need to cope with his diagnosis?

In real life, most therapists do have therapists of their own. In our minds, that’s also the case for these guys, even though we’ve never quite seen it on-screen. I don’t know that we’ll see Paul in any kind of formal therapy. If anything, it might mirror his little, as he called them, chats that he had with Alice on the park bench, much more informally. One of the things that makes it interesting is seeing a guy who is very accomplished and has a big ego and thinks he’s smarter than everybody in the room and knows he’s smarter on some level than anyone in the room, open himself up to the help of other people.

And I think certainly not just Jimmy or Gaby, but the whole community, including Liz, who — we don’t know if we’re going to do it yet, but — in Paul’s presence will refer to him as her therapist because of that one session. And it drives Paul crazy. But I think we’ll be seeing Paul making good on his threat/desire to be leaning on all the people in that room in a big way in Season 3.

Apple TV+

With such a strong comedic ensemble in this cast, how much improvisation is worked into filming?

Once we’ve got what we need on the page, and once we have the scene as written, we oftentimes call it a “fun run” where they at least get one take in each bit of coverage to just riff and have fun and improv. And oftentimes, you won’t be surprised, those are the moments that make it into the show when we’re cutting it. Because all of these guys, not only are they wonderful actors and [improvisers], but they know their characters so well, better than we do at this point. Whenever they indulge in that, it really makes us laugh on the set. They often crack each other up, and it can be hard to cut around if someone isn’t expecting something to come out of somebody’s mouth. But oftentimes those jokes make it in and they’re amongst our favorites.

You experimented with a potentially romantic relationship between close friends Jimmy and Gaby this season, but that ended and Gaby seems to have found something good with Damon Wayans Jr.’s Derek. Why did you want to experiment with a Jimmy-Gaby relationship, and how does that serve the Season 3 story?

We wanted, given that Jimmy and Gabby felt like it was coming to a close — although I’ll say never say never just in terms of what we’re considering, not in terms of any place we’ve landed yet — we just wanted to expand Gaby’s world a little bit this season and get to know a little bit more about her. And that’s why we also introduced her mom and her sister.

It’s a tough show because there’s a lot of characters to service anyway, just amongst the regulars, but you also run the risk of it feeling, not literally obviously, but figuratively, incestuous, just in terms of the stories happening with each other and the dating each other. So in order to make things keep feeling real, which is important to us, and grounded, you have to devote some time to rounding out these characters and their worlds. And we did want to see Gaby in a fun relationship, but also a relationship that challenged her and brought up some of her core issues, which in Gaby’s case was how she can be a caretaker to a fault and see how that plays out when she’s in a relationship and how it affects the relationship. Derek 1 [Ted McGinley] says it to her earlier in the season, something along the lines of “someone needs to take care of you for a change.” And that relationship [with Derek 2] really is a metaphor for Gaby grappling with that issue.

Can the ultimate caretaker let her guard down and let somebody be nurturing and caretaking of her? That’s something we’ll also be tracking through Season 3, seeing how once she commits herself to this relationship that’s not without its speed bumps, what that looks like both comedically and dramatically for them in Season 3. As far as end game, again, it’s definitely one of the things we’re playing with if for no other reason than we love their chemistry and we love Damon as a performer. We just think they’re really fun together, and their characters do feel like they complement each other.

Apple TV+

Jimmy stops Louis from dying by suicide in the final moments of this season. Why have Jimmy specifically come to Louis’ rescue in this moment?

Related

Why Wendie Malick Calls 'Shrinking' Romance With Harrison Ford a 'Gift'

In the same way that Derek 2 is, to some degree, a metaphor for Gaby’s issue, Louis to Jimmy symbolizes his own failures and his own guilt, and really it was a prerequisite for Jimmy to forgive himself before he was able to forgive Louis. And that’s no accident. Jimmy even says at the end of [Episode] 8, I’m really mad at myself, and this guy represents to me just how much I biffed when I always thought I would come up strong in the wake of Tia dying and his parenting of Alice. So it was symbolically very important [for Jimmy to save Louis].

We thought that it was Jimmy who was able to forgive Louis because it represents really him finally making peace with the fact that he can’t undo the past, but he also doesn’t have to live his life feeling guilty about the past and the ways he came up short.

Is Brett Goldstein going to be back in this role in Season 3, and will we see him be welcomed into this found-family dynamic since the season will be about “moving forward”?

It’ll be about moving forward. It won’t be easy for [Louis], but I do think we’ll see Louis in Season 3 if for no other reason than to check in on him and how he’s doing. And even in respect to that theme of moving forward, is he able to do so? Jimmy and Louis, we’ve taken some pains to try to illustrate have been living to some degree parallel lives in the wake of this tragedy. And so I think that parallel will continue into Season 3.

With respect to moving forward, can Louis patch things up with his fiancée who he pushed away? He’s working in a cafe, which he’s happy to do, but in our minds, there was a career that he has to think about getting back to. Nothing’s written in stone yet, so I have to be careful about what I say, but yes, the short answer is we will see him. I don’t know for how many episodes. I don’t know that the whole friend group will embrace him the same way Jimmy does. I think there are some stories to be told with respect to other people and how they see Louis.

Apple TV+

I’m especially interested in Gaby’s reaction to him, given that Tia was her best friend.

So are we. Because while Brian and Jimmy, we know, have dealt with Louis, it’d be interesting to see what the other characters feel and think about this relationship even continuing at all past just the closure that Jimmy’s able to finally get in the finale.

Will Season 3 be the final season? I know it was pitched to Apple as three seasons by co-creator Bill Lawrence, who always plans for three seasons for his Apple shows.

It was pitched as three seasons, but I think as Bill said recently, if people want a fourth season, we certainly feel like there’s more stories to tell, even if we have to move away from Jimmy being mourning his wife, not that that grief is not linear. Obviously the idea of him mourning can stay alive, but it can’t be the biggest thing on his plate.

Shrinking, Seasons 1 & 2 Available Now, Apple TV+

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or dial 988. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.