Shrinking’s Season 2 finale, “The Last Thanksgiving,” is the type of indescribable TV episode where we can find something new with every viewing. There are numerous emotionally compelling moments throughout that serve as a light during these trying times, and perhaps none more evident than when Jimmy meets Louis at the train station.
There’s no poetic way to write about the significance of this scene and how it’ll undoubtedly ensure that, if nothing else, at least one viewer will feel a little less alone. Maybe—hopefully—someone watching will realize that no matter their mistakes, life is too precious to give in to all the loud voices in our heads that say this loneliness and all the aches are permanent.
Brilliantly directed by Bill Lawrence and with exceptionally raw performances from both Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel, the scene speaks even during the beats where there’s no dialogue. Jimmy’s act alone is everything, and as viewers, we don’t need weighty conversation to understand the changes that are happening in the stillness.
I’ve written about the scene in my review of the episode, but what I can’t help but elaborate on is how powerful it is—as though the healing emotions leap off the screen and blanket themselves around me. And it’s not so much that I relate to the characters because their heartaches are so vastly different from my own, but perhaps it’s knowing that at some point, many of us have wondered how the world would be better off without us. While people are laughing in one place, someone somewhere is breaking down, and the episode’s means of showing this by alternating from the dinner at Gaby’s to Louis’ loneliness makes for such a profoundly poignant montage. Additionally, maybe it’s the desire to believe in the fact that people will show up right when we need it most. It’s most certainly because it’s obvious that every person involved in the making of this episode (writers, directors, cast and crew members) put their heart and soul into the creative process.
The fact that it happens on Thanksgiving, at night, in a somewhat secluded train station where most people are traveling also says plenty. Jimmy meeting Louis at the train station is also the type of scene that doesn’t require a full-blown conversation because we know. We get it now. In the same way that Paul shows up for Jimmy in “The Drugs Don’t Work,” Jimmy’s decision to meet Louis tells us that he’s learning. He’s opening his heart and trying to forgive himself, which is so fitting that he sits beside the one man who understands guilt just as intimately. I would’ve loved to see the moment where Jimmy decides he’s going to meet Louis, but I’m almost glad it’s left to our imagination. Because there’s something so evocative about how the show lodges our hearts in our throats and then instantly eases us the moment we hear the words, “Hey, man,” cut through Hollow Coves’ “Coastline.”
It’s how Jimmy answers Louis’ question honestly about what he’s doing here, then sits on the bench and pats the seat beside him. It’s how the tension still marinates a tiny bit before they even speak again. How their postures change, and how we could visibly see light return. “What a sh!tty couple of years,” indeed. No one gets it the way the two of them do. They’re silently telling each other everything the other needs to hear. While having one conversation aloud, Segel and Goldstein’s performances also fill in the blanks and deliver the unsaid words cloaked between the lines. When Jimmy says that he’s mostly here for himself, it’s likely what allows Louis to see that he also deserves the chance to forgive himself, to be happy, and to start over again because his life matters despite the horrific mistake he’s made. That’s why the game also works because when Louis says he knows the guy on the other end of the tracks and calls him an assassin, Jimmy gets it.
So, placing his arm around Louis’ shoulder tells him that everything will be okay. This isn’t just for Louis; it’s for Jimmy, too. In different ways, they’ve both paid the price with the trauma they’ve endured and the memories that’ll never leave them. Louis is always going to see Tia in Alice and Jimmy and everyone who loves her, but he can also understand that she was the type of woman who’d also show up at a train station to sit beside someone when they could use a friend.
Jimmy’s gesture and how both their postures and expressions change while a train passes them by is a captivating showcase of what happens when people show up for others. The words that stretch between them and the comfort that materializes are evocative in how they showcase both the goodness and inherent complexities in human beings. The way Finx’s “Looking Too Closely” enhances the scene and even how the credits roll right at the perfect spot makes for something entirely special, raw, and profoundly healing.
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