The Shrink Next Door

This tragic true story finds just the right blend of comedy and drama, as it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity of this situation while also finding the deep trauma occurring to be deeply disturbing. The Shrink Next Door is a consistently beguiling series that pushes Rudd and Ferrell as actors in ways we’ve never seen before.

The series immerses audiences in the lives of its lead characters in order to elicit two distinct reactions: sympathy for one, indignation for the other. The tension that grows over eight hour-long episodes can feel redundant and aggravating at times, but the payoff is well worth it.

Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd buoy one of the more compelling podcast-to-TV adaptations to date.

Rudd's boyish charm is so pervasive he almost makes you believe there's affection for Marty beneath Dr. Ike's smarm, while we yearn for Marty to wake up and reclaim the shaggy humanity at the core of Ferrell's wonderful performance. [22 Nov - 5 Dec 2021, p.9]

It's a methodically paced, odd but mesmerizing piece set to an infectious soundtrack highlighted by its strategic use of '80s soft rock hits. Besides, the cast hoists the show over and through its slack spots.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. It does occupy a sort of no-man’s-land between comedy and drama, being neither very funny nor very dark. In the hands of another writer or director it could have gone in either of those directions, and would have been a richer experience, but it is still a great yarn, entertainingly played and buoyed along by Rudd.

Together they [Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell] create a fascinatingly intricate psychological system of adulation and abuse. .... The miniseries is an in-depth, visceral portrait of long-con indoctrination, of how what feels like love may actually be contempt.

Playing against type, they [Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell] play beautifully off one another.

As creepy as Ike’s obsession is, it never gets creepy enough to be truly unsettling. All in all, though, it’s worthwhile just to see Ferrell and Rudd expand their acting ranges a bit and delve deep into a story that’s so strange, it has to be true.

It’s a shanda that a story with so much potential intrigue and talent behind it winds up as the one thing its protagonist always untruthfully claims and wishes he is: forgettably, plainly fine.

“The Shrink Next Door” strikes a few chords over eight episodes and holds your interest throughout; it’s easy to invest in Marty’s path to a healthy, happy life, and the series avoids making Ike into a one-note villain. But for a true story built around a master-manipulator, this straight-forward retelling could’ve benefited from a bit more chicanery.

Well-acted and evenly plotted, the 8-episode limited series is nevertheless an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Everything about it — from the cast to the directors (Michael Showalter, Jesse Peretz) to the trailer — says "dark comedy," but Shrink is, at best, a lightly comic tragedy.

If the show’s writing falls short, its cinematography, including manipulations of foreground and background, proves defter in its conveyance of character.

Marty’s story is a pitch-black story of not knowing what boundaries are, but the series doesn’t play up the absurdity enough, too self-amused that it got the packaged charisma of two stars to depict it.

Ferrell is too plodding a dramatic actor to bring much nuance to Marty’s vulnerability. Still, the sheer size and nerve of the three-decade scam will keep you going to the end.

Though the performances are uniformly terrific – Ferrell has to walk the highest tightrope, making Marty believable but not too pathetic — “The Shrink Next Door” is Exhibit A in streaming series bloat. There’s not enough story to justify eight episodes.

It's a slow burn (too slow, but hey, limited series tend to do that).

“The Shrink Next Door” is tonally confused and often misjudged, putting Rudd and Ferrell in an untenable position where they are tasked with being simultaneously earnest while also winking at the audience, which has a way of putting their performances in air quotes. Actually, everything here feels set off by air quotes.

“Shrink” is not really funny, or apparently trying to be, apart from in the sense of “something’s not right.” It’s a comedy in that it’s not a tragedy, and that, in spite of the dark themes, it has been mounted with some buoyancy. There are, of course, odd moments when Ferrell gets to clown. But again the series is restricted by the facts of the case. A good comedy could be built on the foundation, but it would need to be rebuilt from the ground up and probably be over in a couple of hours.

It all results in a show I found more effective in the final few episodes than the first couple of installments, but one whose tone and themes are never fully convincing. That uncertainty is reflected even in the episodes’ running times, which range from 35 minutes to a draggy 50 minutes. Mainly what held my interest in The Shrink Next Door was the myriad reasons it doesn’t quite work.

“The Shrink Next Door” conveys such a bizarre true story that it’s never boring (even though it’s surprisingly unfunny given the comedic talent involved), but it’s such a tragic, depressing tale that it’s a hard show to live with for eight episodes. Viewers may need therapy after watching.

There are aspects of The Shrink Next Door that are much too easy to get used to, as the show feels content to repeatedly hit certain notes. But on the whole, the series’ inability to decide whether to play things straight or lean into the Ferrell and Rudd reunion makes it hard to get used to anything that’s happening.

Mixing tragedy, comedy, and drama is an extremely difficult balance to achieve, something that, for example, fellow Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso managed to do deftly in its first season. Unfortunately, despite tremendous theatrical performances from all involved, it’s an equilibrium The Shrink Next Door fails to reach.

“The Shrink Next Door” simply lacks the vibrant give-and-take that its subject matter suggests. Its characters feel unknowable, a problem for a show that concerns the emotional and intellectual tug-of-war in the therapist’s office.

The premise sounds so simple and fruitful. But despite all the talent involved, the result is confusing, landing in a no-man’s-land between comedy, drama and thriller.

Because Rudd's Herschkopf is so reliably repugnant and Ferrell's Marty so utterly hopeless, as a viewer you eventually feel trapped as well. There's no way out, no exit, just eight long hours spent with two famous actors who seem to know nothing of the people they're supposed to be.

It doesn’t help that any dramatic tension is undercut by the first episode, which essentially gives away the entire plot. “The Shrink Next Door” is the dramatic equivalent of watching someone pull the wings off a fly.