![]() ![]() ![]() But all of these details feel superficial. One subplot involves a bris, and there’s pointed talk of how preppy icon Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx. Early in their relationship, Ike throws 40-year-old Marty a second bar mitzvah-populated, of course, by Ike’s own acquaintances-to celebrate his progress. Perhaps what’s most dispiriting is the way the show’s writers, consciously or not, attempt to counterbalance the broadness of the characters with the specificity of the New York Jewish community in which they’re immersed. And the story is so vague with respect to Ike’s background that we never really understand why his monstrous behavior comes as such a surprise to his supportive, seemingly intelligent wife, Bonnie (Casey Wilson, making the best of thin material). ![]() Ike have an impromptu dance party while painting the Hamptons house above canned silliness. Ferrell and Rudd have chemistry, but even they can’t elevate a scene in which Marty and Dr. The tone it establishes is comedic without actually being funny. That both men are living in the shadows of their fathers should complicate their relationship in fascinating ways, yet-in a particularly odd choice for a show that hinges on human psychology- Shrink shies away from complexity. To his credit, Rudd manages to give some emotional depth to a sort of ’80s Gatsby character-a man obsessed with accumulating money, celebrity and status to prove his own worth. In the midst of a messy divorce, Phyllis is always grousing about her ex and her kids if she tends to fight Marty’s battles for him, it’s partially because she doesn’t seem to know how not to be combative. Marty is somehow more of a neurotic, catastrophizing Woody Allen type than Ferrell was when he played a surrogate for the director in Allen’s own Melinda and Melinda. It’s rarely a good sign when characters based on real people strain believability, and despite the best efforts of capable actors, the Markowitz siblings come off as caricatures. Sadly, the whole falls well short of the sum of its parts. The combination of the podcast’s popularity and a star-packed cast that reunites Anchorman duo Ferrell and Rudd, in episodes directed by Michael Showalter ( The Big Sick) and Jesse Peretz ( Our Idiot Brother), has made it one of the young streaming service’s most-anticipated series to date. Now the story-which spans from the early 1980s through the present and has seen some new developments in the past couple of years-has been fictionalized in this eight-episode Apple TV+ dramedy of the same name, premiering Nov. It sounds far-fetched, but it really happened, as recounted in the 2019 Wondery podcast The Shrink Next Door. ![]()
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