So I'm caught up in the shrinking season 2 and Brett Goldstein's character has officially broken every part of my heart

The following article contains SPOILERS for Shrink Season 2. If you still need to catch up on the series, be sure to check out the six episodes that aired (and more to come) with a Apple TV+ subscription.

Shrink Season 2 has been released as part of the TV program 2024and for once I finally caught up in time to keep watching every week – and I’m pretty sure Brett Goldstein’s character broke me… in a good way.

Let me start by saying that I am the biggest supporter of this show. I’ve been a fan of Shrink since it first came out and really love it. When I found out Brett Goldstein, one of the show’s co-creators, would be a character in season 2 I was excited. But never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to be who it is.

If you need to take a break Shrink, look away! But if you get sucked into this, keep reading.

From left to right: Harrison Ford looks somber as he holds an ore and Jason Segel sits next to him, looking up and smiling.

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

So overall, Shrinking Season 2 is just as good as Season 1

I always worry when a great drama series is renewed because sometimes the show starts to lack quality as it progresses. There are plenty I could point out, but honestly: Shrink Season 2 is just as good as the first season, if not better.

The whole Shrink form feels like family now, and they work well together, with really interesting stories and moments that still make me sob sometimes and laugh the next. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cried in the six episodes that have been released – and I’m sure this will only increase.

But do you want to know what an important source of this is? Goldstein’s character, which we’ll get to now.

Louis is in a police car in Shrinking.

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

I didn’t know who Goldstein’s character would be, but I never expected who it would be

I’m sure if you’re up to date with Apple TV+, you know Brett Goldstein. He has appeared in several films, but people mainly know him from his time in film Ted Lasso form and now as co-creator of Shrink alongside Bill Lawrence And Jason Segel.

But now he is also part of the Shrink cast, and I want you to take a guess as to who he’s playing – and you won’t understand, because I really didn’t.

Goldstein plays the man who killed Jimmy’s wife and Alice’s mother: a drunk driver named Louis. Off literally everyone he could have played, I never reasonably expected that. I thought he might just be one of Jimmy’s customers. The sob I let out could be heard from apartment to apartment.

But that’s besides the point. Now we have Goldstein as Louis, but where can they take his story? How could they make the person who killed Jimmy’s wife sympathetic? Well, they pull it away.

Louis is sitting in a coffee shop in Shrinking.

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

It’s tragic what he did, but the show does a great job of making you think about the other side of things

I want to put it out there and say that what happened to Tia (Jimmy’s wife and Alice’s mother) is terrible. Obviously don’t drink and drive, otherwise it could lead to something like this. It’s a terrible decision to make, and I’m sure we all feel some way about it.

But I will say that Shrink really takes you to the other side of what’s going on with the people who causes the tragedy. Sometimes, yeah, it’s just a horrible, reckless person who makes really horrible decisions and doesn’t care about anything else.

However, there are other times, like Louis, when their lives are “bleak,” as Brian said. We don’t know what exactly Louis was going through that made him drink and get in his car. To us, he’s just the man who hit Tia, the man who caused so much pain.

However, it really makes you think about the amount of pain and suffering that someone has to go through, causing them to make horrible, horrible decisions, and we don’t know anything about that. And from the moment you meet Louis, you can tell that he is to go through it. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, even after what he did.

Alice sits outside Louis' house in Shrinking.

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

Furthermore, his character shows the capacity for forgiveness in so many ways

This is what made me cry, especially in episode 6: the idea of forgiveness.

Forgiveness in therapy is something that (as someone who has done therapy) is difficult to obtain. Trying to forgive the people who have wronged you the most in your life is a huge test of strength, but something that can rarely be done. And personally, Louis was right: Alice had every right never to forgive him, even though he felt so sorry that he thought about her mother every day, that he was going through something terrible.

But then she says it: “I forgive you.” She wants to be the kind of person who does that because her mother would do that too. CinemaBlend’s Riley Utley, even spoke to the actress behind Alice, Lukita Maxwellabout the moment and that Alice tries to be compassionate despite everything:

I mean, she says it at the end of it; it’s something her mother would have done. I think she’s a young woman trying to figure out who she is in this world and who she is on the other side of this great sadness that has affected her life right now and will forever. And she wants to be the kind of person who would forgive someone and be able to move through life with compassion and understanding.

That is the kind of writing that really makes you pause when you look at it. It leaves you sitting on the couch wondering if there is someone in your life who you could forgive to help yourself move on. That’s what Brett Goldstein’s character brought – forgiveness. I literally can’t stop sobbing about it.

It’s just so beautiful to learn how to forgive and be compassionate in one episode of yelling and screaming at the man – that’s an amazing message and one that this world needs it badly.

Louis speaks to Jimmy in Shrinking.

(Image credit: Apple TV+)

I’m not sure what will happen with him in the future, but I sincerely hope I see him and Jimmy talking too

I don’t know what will happen to Louis next. A lot has already arrived Shrink that we have seen – that big confrontation in the coffee shopJimmy yelled at him and more. Who knows what the next episodes will bring?

But all I can really ask for is to see him and Jimmy talk the way Alice and he did. I’m not sure Jimmy will be as emotionally transparent as Alice and immediately forgive him, or even listen to him as much. However, it would be good to see them have a conversation, even if it’s just a conversation where Jimmy doesn’t shout.

Spreading that message of forgiveness is so important, and while I’m sure this show could have done this in a plethora of ways, Goldstein’s character was the absolute best solution they could have chosen. For that, I thank Apple TV+. I don’t think I’ll ever be the same. That’s why this show is one of them best Apple TV+ shows – because by the time you’re done watching, you’ll really think differently about it.