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.