Shrinking – Season 1 Episode 7 “Apology Tour” Recap & Review

Apology Tour

In Shrinking Season 1 Episode 7, everyone recovers from Brian’s engagement party the next morning. Jimmy and Gaby wake up together. But while Gaby feels no regret (he’s “safe” after all; they could never have feelings for each other), Jimmy can’t say the same, feeling guilt-ridden over betraying Tia.

Jimmy decides to go on an “apology tour” to make amends for everyone he hurt last night. He starts with Brian, then moves onto Alice. Alice wants to forgive and forget, obviously thinking about the mistake she made trying to kiss Sean.

With Sean, Alice tries to pretend like nothing happened. But to her disappointment, things become awkward, and Sean stops hanging out with her.

Meg flies in to help Paul prepare for the future. He doesn’t feel like he deserves it and tries to apologize for his past mistakes, but Meg insists she’s forgiven him.

But later, when Paul refuses her offer for him to move in with her family, she becomes angry and returns home early. It hurts her that Paul doesn’t want to spend time with his family while he can still take care of himself. On top of that, everyone has always told her what a great man Paul was, and she never got to see that. Even now, he’s stepping up for other people in his life, like Alice, and not for her.

Liz is wary of Derek’s upcoming retirement, and lets him know that he’s going to have to find something to do out of the house. He understands that she needs her space, but he can’t do that. He’s worked hard to get to the point where he can relax at home. She’s just going to have to find her own hobbies. 

Sean has a heart-to-heart with Liz about struggling to get a job, and she encourages him to find something that makes him happy, which for him would be cooking. He then confesses his situation with Alice. He feels she’s mad at him, but Liz knows better. Alice is likely just scared of being abandoned again.

Gaby, meanwhile, tells Alice she’s proud of her, even though she’s embarrassed. She put herself out there, and that means she’s on her way back.

In a session, Jimmy realizes he allowed Gaby to make himself feel better about them having sex, but he didn’t return the favor. Instead, he made it about him.

He later tells Gaby that, although he takes care of his patients, he’s gotten into the habit of letting others take care of him–especially her. After they had sex, she told him she had no regrets, and he should have said it back. She made him feel hopeful that he might be ready for something real someday.

After some barbecue with friends and family, Jimmy has a conversation with a picture of Tia. He tells her about the situation with Gaby. Alice overhears that he slept with her–and she doesn’t look happy about it.

The Episode Review

Shrinking has been slowly constructing a parallel between Paul and Jimmy, and this episode builds on that more than ever. Paul’s strained relationship with Meg sheds light on why he and Alice have become so close. It’s also making more sense not only why Paul would mentor Jimmy, but also why he’s so hard on him: He sees himself in the struggling therapist. As Paul and Jimmy continue to struggle to make amends with their daughters, I hope they can open their eyes to learn some hard lessons from one another.

I also really adore the way the aftermath of Jimmy’s and Gaby’s sleeping together was handled. Gaby is such an amazing character and Jimmy is so oblivious, I worried that writers would undermine her individual character arc to advance Jimmy’s own. But in fact, they used this instance to highlight a flaw of Jimmy’s (selfishness) while beautifully executing an advance in their friendship.