This article contains spoilers for Shrinking Season 3 Episode 7.
Across three seasons, Shrinking has perfected its balance of humour and grief. This week’s episode, “I Will Be Grape,” circles around Tia’s birthday, using the occasion to bring the entire group together while pushing several characters towards the next stage of their lives. Like many of the show’s strongest episodes, it uses an emotional milestone to explore how grief evolves.
Given the episode’s focus on Tia (Lilan Bowden), Jimmy (Jason Segel), and Alice (Lukita Maxwell), Shrinking also returns to the complicated emotions surrounding Alice’s upcoming move to college. Wesleyan is redoing its gym, so she must report for preseason training immediately after graduation. The news does nothing to ease Jimmy’s anxiety. Since the Season 3 premiere, he has clearly felt his daughter slipping away from him. He imagined a very different summer: trips, beach days, and plenty of time to stare at her before she left. Instead, the reality arrives much faster than he hoped.
Elsewhere, Summer (Rachel Stubington) tells Sean (Luke Tennie) that it’s time for him to move out of the pool house. Marisol (Isabella Gomez) must be going slightly mad with the arrangement, and Sean admits that she does not love it. The conversation turns into a strange moment of reassurance for Jimmy, who insists he will be fine living alone once Alice leaves.
Summer offers to move in when Alice abandons him, explaining that her own apartment has become unbearable thanks to her mum’s new hobby of training birds. Jimmy briefly considers the idea before asking whether that sounds sad because he genuinely thought about it. Sean quickly reassures him that he isn’t going anywhere either, though he can’t live in the pool house forever. It plays for laughs but also reinforces how much Jimmy relies on the unconventional family he has built around himself.
One of Season 3’s strongest storylines has come through Gaby (Jessica Williams) and her patient Maya (Sherry Cola). Watching Gaby slowly break down Maya’s walls and provide her with the care she needs has produced some of Shrinking’s most thoughtful work. That progress, however, took a worrying turn last week.
Maya struggles with loneliness. After scrolling through her friends’ seemingly perfect lives on social media while drinking, she called Gaby and asked if she wanted to grab froyo. When Gaby asked whether Maya needed to talk immediately or if it could wait until their next session, Maya said it could wait. The moment made it clear that she needed someone. Given Gaby’s insistence that Maya reach out, and Maya’s habit of downplaying how she really feels, it is difficult not to believe that something important was missed.
This week, Maya messages Gaby to say that she needs to skip therapy. The episode withholds the consequences of that choice until the end, but it suggests that something devastating is unfolding.
Derek (Ted McGinley) returns home following his emergency bypass surgery, but Liz (Christa Miller) already has more than enough on her plate. Derek’s mother, Connie (Candice Bergen), has been staying with them for two days, and Liz can feel herself slowly losing her mind. The problem is not that Connie has been difficult. In fact, she has been suspiciously pleasant, which Liz interprets as the calculated work of an evil genius. The dynamic plays into recognisable in-law tension, allowing Miller and Bergen to play beautifully off one another.
Paul (Harrison Ford) also finds himself at a crossroads this week. As he begins winding down his practice, the psychiatry department keeps sending him patients with Parkinson’s. Julie (Wendie Malick) reminds him that he has become a positive role model for those patients and tells him she is proud of how he handles both the illness and his work. Paul, as usual, deflects the sincerity with humour. His tremors have recently become bilateral, which he deserves as having “24/7 jazz hands”.
Since the tremors spread to both sides, Paul cannot stop thinking about the small things he may soon lose. Gerry (Michael J. Fox) urges him to think about his legacy instead. Rather than dwelling on what might disappear, Paul should focus on everything he has already built.
That question of legacy leads to one of the episode’s most meaningful exchanges. Paul tells Gaby that he thinks the world of her and wants her to take over the Rhodes Cognitive Behavioural Centre. Jimmy no longer practises CBT, and Gaby has the skill to carry the work forward.
While Gaby appreciates the offer, she knows it’s not what she wants from her career. She already does important work with Maya, and she hopes to spend more time helping the veterans who have started appearing at the MMA gym. Paul reassures her that whatever she chooses to do will be the right decision. Ford and Williams remain one of the show’s strongest pairings, and Apple TV would do well to maximise campaigning for both come awards season.
The episode repeatedly returns to Jimmy and Tia. In a flashback, the two sing A Thousand Years while Jimmy plays the piano. Tia mishears a lyric, insisting the line is “I will be grape,” providing the episode its title. The scene cuts back to the present, where Jimmy sits alone at the piano playing the same song. It’s a simple transition, but Segel portrays grief with such earnest vulnerability that the moment devastates.
As Tia’s birthday approaches, Jimmy realises that it will be the final one he and Alice spend together before she leaves. He decides that the day should feel joyful rather than heavy. To honour Tia, Jimmy gathers some of the group. He, Alice, Brian (Michael Urie), and Summer all wear the most problematic shirts Tia ever bought them. They talk to her as if she were still present.
Louis (Brett Goldstein) unexpectedly arrives. Alice had mentioned they would be there, but never thought he would actually come. The group decides to play Tia’s favourite game, Chubby Bunny, stuffing marshmallows into their mouths while trying to say “I love you, Mum” or “I love you, Tia”. When Louis begins choking, it plays as if Tia almost got him back, perfectly capturing the show’s ability to balance grief with laugh-out-loud comedy.
Their conversation turns to Jimmy’s own life. Louis asks whether he ever called Sofi (Cobie Smulders). Jimmy admits he did not, though he briefly dated a nice nurse whom he hopes he never sees again because it would ruin her life. Despite the dark humour, the two men part on a warm note, reflecting how far their relationship has come.
Later, Jimmy asks Alice why she invited Louis without telling him. Alice explains that she wanted Jimmy to see what he had accomplished. He helped the one person he had the least reason to help, and she wants him to start doing the same for himself. She cannot leave for college if she thinks he will sit alone in the dark. Maxwell continues to come into her own.
Meanwhile, Liz’s battle with Connie finally comes to a head. Connie admits that much of her kindness has been fake, while Liz bluntly tells her to enjoy the visit, as she cannot imagine any scenario in which she will return. The argument eventually softens after Derek goes missing. Medically, it isn’t safe for him to be outside, but Derek believes it to be safer than staying in the house with his wife and mother.
After confronting one another, Connie acknowledges that Liz has done a good job raising her boys. Liz admits in return that Connie may have offered Matthew (Markus Silbiger) some valuable advice after all. The resolution feels fitting for a storyline built on generational misunderstandings.
The episode closes with a small celebration. Jimmy plays A Thousand Years on the piano while Sean joins on guitar. Sofi arrives midway through the song and enthusiastically joins in, out of tune. She jokes that she does not usually meet someone’s entire family on a first date, especially when it also falls on their dead wife’s birthday. Cobie Smulders is a welcome addition to Shrinking’s ensemble and would benefit from becoming a series regular next season.
Shrinking then delivers its most devastating turn yet. After enjoying the evening, Gaby notices several missed calls from Donna, who reveals that Maya has died. It’s a brutal ending that sets up what likely will be one of the most difficult storylines Shrinking has tackled. The series feels more than capable of handling that weight, as does Jessica Williams.
