For decades, Ted McGinley’s career has been defined by terminology outside of his control. The Happy Days and Married … With Children actor has been questionably associated with shows jumping the shark and inaccurately described as a show killer, as if his addition to a series’ roster represented or even led to a hastier demise.
More recently, however, McGinley has been tiptoeing around a different and more coveted title: TV’s most valuable supporting actor.
It isn’t a surprise that McGinley, a comic talent in steady employ dating back to the early ’80s, has been funny on Apple TV+’s Shrinking. As Derek, the inexplicably agreeable husband to Christa Miller’s filter-free Liz, McGinley already was a scene-stealer. But as the second season has put Derek’s marital devotion to the test, McGinley has exhibited a level of vulnerability rarely hinted at previously.
Derek’s self-examination is far from the darkest level of torment exhibited on Shrinking. But McGinley’s elevated profile represents one of the fall’s hottest TV trends: comedies that aim to make you cry nearly as much as they make you laugh.
Think of it as the Shohei Ohtani Effect — named after the Dodgers’ superstar who doubles as a pitching ace and one of baseball’s best hitters. Traditional binaries of excellence no longer apply.
Shows about grief, mental illness and forgiveness shouldn’t be as funny as Shrinking.
Shows about grief, loneliness and degenerative illness shouldn’t be as funny as Netflix’s A Man on the Inside.
Shows about grief, self- acceptance and economic insecurity shouldn’t be as funny as HBO’s Somebody Somewhere.
What’s more, all three shows are actually comedies. There’s no The Bear-style ambiguity for awards purposes. They might not be pure escapism — Hacks, Only Murders in the Building and We Are Lady Parts do similar things with a much higher comedy-to-drama ratio — but Shrinking, A Man on the Inside and Somebody Somewhere could be defining shows for this moment of the laughing-while-crying emoji.
As Pagliacci and Smokey Robinson could tell you, there’s nothing new about the intersection of mirth and melancholy. Laughter and tears are both reactive, one more traditionally public and the other normally reserved for private, but each a sign of something involuntary and each capable of providing a different kind of catharsis. And catharsis may be what viewers need even more than escape in a world of relentless news about war, intolerance and fractured ideologies.
In finding an elusive balance, Shrinking, A Man on the Inside and Somebody Somewhere have figured out how to strike multiple chords at once, each elevated by an impeccable and well-serviced ensemble that boasts both top-line stars and newly boosted supporting players. It’s a new take on a formula that has made awards juggernauts of classic shows like M*A*S*H, helped to elevate the individual fortunes of stars like Candice Bergen (Murphy Brown) and Allison Janney (Mom), and brought generation-spanning affection to shows like The Wonder Years.
Shrinking, in particular, comes by its alchemy honestly. The series was created by Jason Segel — who honed his skills under bi-tonal master Judd Apatow — Brett Goldstein and Bill Lawrence, whose output has proved the audience’s appetite for what he’s selling. Back when successful broadcast sitcoms were primarily multicams with broad punchlines and characterizations, Lawrence was steering Scrubs through bouts of medical zaniness infused with heartbreak. Moving out of the confines of broadcast has given Lawrence twice the running time, and shows like Ted Lasso have offered the reminder that you can cry as much at the inherent goodness of humanity — when applicable — as at death or devastation.
Shrinking, which used the death of its main character’s wife as its point of entry before becoming, as Lawrence shows so often do, a series about people drinking wine and making jokes about their feelings, is a series in which characters almost invariably and instinctively do the wrong things as a prelude for eventual catharsis. It’s a show in which you want to slap every character one moment and hug them the next. And in which every member of the cast — Segel, Miller, Jessica Williams, the spectacular Harrison Ford, the revelatory Lukita Maxwell and Luke Tennie, McGinley’s fellow season two breakout Michael Urie — has risen to the challenge of earning each emotion, which wasn’t always the case in the first season.
Lawrence shows never quite let you forget that laughter and tears are the product of some level of manipulation, but the magic of a brilliant ensemble is in keeping that manipulation from making you feel dirty about it. Since an excess of subtlety might have led to the general underappreciation of something like Reservation Dogs, sometimes a little guiding hand-holding isn’t a bad thing.
See also A Man on the Inside, from Mike Schur, who used earnest tears as a carefully selected side dish to the guffaws on shows like Parks and Recreation and The Good Place but never made them an entrée before this Netflix half-hour. Featuring Ted Danson as an adrift widower who becomes a spy investigating possible misdeeds at a San Francisco retirement home, A Man on the Inside could have played as Amour meets Grumpy Old Men, which is to say a very bad idea. Instead, it’s closer to Only Murders in the Building, another comic genre exercise that’s actually a treatise on generational loneliness.
In Danson, A Man on the Inside has a star capable of selling both of its extremes, but what truly sets this show apart is its cast of too-often underserved veteran character actors, all thriving with the opportunity to have fully rounded arcs. Sally Struthers, Margaret Avery and John Getz are among the recognizable actors able to lift up their individual stories of loss and love without ever pandering, while the always welcome Stephen McKinley Henderson serves in the McGinley capacity as what feels like a small part that then becomes the show’s heart.
It’s notable that Shrinking and A Man on the Inside are able to maintain their humor despite loglines that could come across as primarily sad, through some amount of insulating privilege. The economic anxiety that plagues so many Americans when it comes to issues of mental health and long-term care goes unmentioned in these snapshots of comforting affluence.
Set in Kansas and built around people who actually need to check their bank account statements occasionally, Somebody Somewhere on the other hand directly incorporates financial worry into its themes — which makes its boundless affection for every single character, no matter how small the role, so crucial. It’s always been Sam’s (Bridget Everett) story, but in the show’s third and final season, Sam has watched as all of her friends and loved ones moved forward with their lives, leaving her searching for direction without the familiar release of communal laughter, a feeling so wholly relatable that its rawness can be difficult to watch.
Whether it’s Sam facing accusations from a friend’s wife that she’s a bad influence or Joel (the wonderful Jeff Hiller) confronting a high school bully, Somebody Somewhere is always teetering on the edge of bleakness, but always returning to a foundation of hope and community that never becomes mawkish. Here, the character actor raising the show to a next level is Tim Bagley, a ubiquitous guest performer suddenly getting a career-capping role as Brad, whose attempt to sing a song for love interest Joel is the stuff awards reels are made of.
The secret ingredient in all three shows is their deep well of collective empathy — their conviction that characters who would be comic relief on a more traditional sitcom have inner lives worthy of main-character energy. It’s a sentiment that is too frequently lacking in too many pockets of the real world. So maybe Shrinking, A Man on the Inside and Somebody Somewhere are escapism after all. They’re certainly great storytelling.
Source: Hollywoodreporter
