[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Shrinking Season 2 Episode 6, “In a Lonely Place.”]
Despite the tragic circumstances bringing Louis (Brett Goldstein) into Jimmy (Jason Segel) and Alice’s (Lukita Maxwell) life in Shrinking‘s second season, the character provides some catharsis for the latter. In Season 2 Episode 6, Alice learns that her godfather, Brian (Michael Urie), has been spending time with Louis, the man who killed Alice’s mom in a drunk driving accident. The teen was angry when she first met Louis in his coffee shop in a previous episode, but Episode 6 saw her connecting with him by sharing stories about her mother, Tia (Lilan Bowden). Here, Maxwell, Goldstein, and Urie explain this unexpected trio and how it changes things in the season’s second half.
Louis debuted at the end of the Season 2 premiere at Jimmy’s office in the hopes of apologizing. Jimmy was shocked and angered and had to work up the courage to inform his daughter of this meeting, and then Alice needed to see Louis for herself though she couldn’t explain why. Maxwell says Alice will continue to explore this “infatuation” with Louis moving forward. “She’s drawn to him for some reason,” Max explains, and Alice needs to “find an answer” about why she’s “drawn” to this person and “find closure, even though she doesn’t necessarily want to interact with him.”
Alice has difficulty opening up about her mother; we rarely see her sharing happy memories. It’s not for lack of desire to look back on the good times, Maxwell says. When Brian brings Alice to speak with Louis, Louis asks her to share what Tia was like. He’s desperate to know positive things about this woman since his only knowledge of her is about the tragic end of her life and his hand in it. Maxwell says that Alice can open up to Louis because it’s the first time in a long time that the car accident and their grief aren’t the main topics of conversation surrounding her mom.
“That’s one of the only times we see her really talk about Tia in depth. Of course, she’s going to talk about her mother with fondness and kindness, and I think that talking to Louis about it specifically, it’s cathartic for her to talk about her grief,” Maxwell shares. “Because in Season 1 and after Tia’s death and after Jimmy went off the rails, she had to keep it together so much and be avoidant in her grief. And so in Season 2, we’re seeing her go through the motions and the process a little bit more and feel a little bit more and makes some mistakes in grieving. But that just makes her more human.”
With six episodes down and six more to go in Season 2, meeting with Louis is the turning point for this midway mark. Goldstein, who is a co-creator of the series with Segel and Bill Lawrence in addition to being a writer and now guest star, explains why Louis was needed in this story. Even without his presence, the grieving Tia plot would still be compelling. So, why introduce the drunk driver as a character this season, and how does it play into the theme of forgiveness?
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Louis lets them “really challenge the ideas of the show,” Goldstein explains. “Everyone knows you should forgive, it’s good for you to forgive. Everyone knows that very simple concept, but then stick it in the most challenging place it can go, which is, oh, if it’s so easy, can you forgive the man who killed your wife? Can you forgive the man who killed your mom? Then we’ve got a meaty story for the season and it affects everyone and it permeates the whole thing.”
Jimmy will continue to avoid seeing Louis, but there’s no world in which these characters won’t meet again. Goldstein warns that “there’s a storm coming” on that front, “and I think it’s going to be very challenging for everyone, is all I can say.”
Brian has heaps of empathy for someone who’s constantly called a narcissist. Urie explains why Brian is compelled to help the man who killed one of his best friends.
“There’s a really beautiful line when he’s explaining helping Louis at the end of Episode 6 where he says, sometimes you just see it and you know that a person needs help,” Urie says. “I think he surprises even himself with that … To get a scene like that, to be the conduit between this tragedy and helping to mend this fence was quite beautiful.”
“This narcissism is the characteristic they gave to Brian in order for him to overcome it. I think he spent so many years, decades of his life pretending to be one thing, which is straight,” Urie explains, “and then to come out as gay and have a best friendship that bridges that, it’s a really interesting dynamic that happens a lot where you have these relationships when you’re pretending to be something you’re not. And then when you discover who you really are, the relationship changes.”
“In his rebirth, he did become a more selfish individual and he was a narcissist,” Urie continues. “This situation with Louis chips away at that and gets to the heart of who Brian really is. And really it helps them all.”
Shrinking, Wednesdays, Apple TV+