Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow and I'm Catherine hileco. As parents and parenting writers, we can't help but see everything through a parenting lens. But as our kids have become adults, we find ourselves more interested in getting caught up on movies and streaming than I'm going over the same parenting topics over and over.
So since we're pretty sure we can find parenting wisdom anywhere, we're going to talk about what we're watching, what we thought about it, and maybe what we can learn from it, if only what not to do. Watch and listen along, and let's all make like we're doing something important for our families. Each Wednesday we bring you our thoughts on a newer entertainment property, and for this week of December ninth, we're discussing the sixth episode of the current season of Shrinking.
It is called in a Lonely Place, which did give us pause last week when we realized that was so we get We got a lot of, you know, some kind of breakthroughs in this episode.
We did yes and you know, parenting wise, there was a whole thing of Paul and Jimmy reaching out to Seawan's dad Tim and sort of approaching them as like, hey, we also fed up as par as fathers, right, so don't feel too bad, and sort of brought him around, and he went to Seawan and admitted that he didn't know what to do, so he did a poor job. Yeah, so it looks like they are going to be mending their relationship. So heay, fathers, he just takes two goofballs
in a canoe to bring bring you around. And Sean had as as we at the end of last week's episode, had gotten himself beaten up. But I guess the fact that he didn't fight back is a step forward, right, Yeah, they didn't really just wanted to get hurt. He didn't hurt anybody.
Yeah, they didn't really make much of that, but I felt like it was a thing like, yeah, he wasn't lashing out, He was inviting.
Lashing out only at himself, right right. Oh, and then we had this funny but yeah right scene of him high on drugs greeting the whole rest of the cast. I mean to visit him in the in one Big Gang and he's like saying dragged out things to each of them, including revealing the fact that Alice tried to kiss him. Yes, and you know, so that was okay, have your fun.
Well, yeah, it's like a sitcom requirement.
Right, that was very sick. This show is sometimes very sitcummy and then sometimes very dramedy ish, and there was more of the latter in some of this than I would like. I would like Liz and Derek to just be the happy, fun married couple who are sort of stabily at the middle of this, and that is that is going in the wrong direction right at the moment.
So but I do think that they did a pretty good job of setting up how sometimes I mean I would say once I don't know if it's sometimes one spouse is hurting but not able to express it in the way that the other spouse can understand, right, and so they overlook the signals even though I mean, yes, show the way you said, had Brian say, sometimes you can see people when people are in trouble. It's right on their face. Cut a limb right in there with
their rocks. We get it. You might want to show that to Derek, however, right, and how like have I mean, Derek has been such a fun, happy everything rolls off his back sort of character, which is real fun to spend time with, but you do start to see how maybe if you were married to that person and occasionally not in the super fun mood, it might be a problem. So we've seen where they were going since with this, since last week with Josh Hopkins, and they keep going there,
and it's I mean, they're setting it up. Well. I think I still don't want it, but they're setting it up well, Dan, yes, so you know, just look at her pictures. Yeah, he's really not interested in the pictures. And then Connor is uh I wrote down with Connors say, because I feel like my kids could say this to me sometimes my whole life, You've been up my ass and now when I need you, you can't even be there
for me. But they have never called me a king Kong b So I guess I'm still doing okay, oh boy parenting.
Well, you know, then you have Brian who professes to, you know, be worried about how bad apparent he's going to be. And he really kind of takes Alice under his wing on this one, extremely awkwardly and humorously.
But yes, he.
Kind of does the right thing.
Yeah, he really does. He does some good auditioning for the role of father. Yeah, in bringing you know, taking care of Lewis to some degree the drunk driver, and also taking care of Alice and bringing them together and what could have been really awkward and awful was really
very sweet. Yes, really really well done. Because you would think this could be really kind of icky of you know, forgiveness and all that stuff, but kind of just Brett Goldstey is giving such a nice performance of somebody who's just sort of accepting all of the responsibility and trying to make things better and asking questions and not forcing things, but just being very sweet. So that was a really nice scene in his house. I thought, very good for
all of them. Bryan is so awkward. He's like he's fighting against his instincts to be a goofball and trying to be right, like, you know, a responsible parental figure, and he does well, but he's radically crawling out of the skin to do right. Good luck with that Bardon thing, buddy, all right, it doesn't get better from her, No, It's going to be that way for like twenty one years at least.
Yeah, I mean that whole scene, Like, I think it was great that they had Brian you know, being super awkward because yes, like how do you know, like how does Alice know what to say? How does Lewis know what to say? Like it was such a difficult scene to write, I'm sure, like yeah, to come up with all that stuff.
So yeah, and to act to know just how to modulate it so that it seems real, right and not just a sitcom reprochement.
Right. And I thought that the Alice actor did extremely well too, Like you could just Liskeita Maxwell, I believe is Yeah, the changes in her face, you know, the very yes.
So able to remember her mom with joy and that sadness is kind of sweet. Yeah, and uh and you know and Brian helping with that to some degree to remembering her too, and you know you forget that it was he was good friends with her too, sure, so just lovely.
Yeah. And then we get introduced that Lewis had a partner, Yeah, and we don't know what happened to her, and I sort of feel like, I don't know, I think you don't have a picture around if somebody breaks up with you.
Yeah, So yeah, I have been watching a hints. Okay, I was being real good for a while, just watching what we were watching and then I just one day I had some time in my hands and it's like, I saw these new episodes to watch them. Yeah, I am biting my tongue anyway, but yes, that was I had forgotten that that was introduced in this episode. So yeah, it does make you wonder, and I agree, it's not if it had been a bad breakup, you would not
have the picture still up right. I was amused by the fact that like fatherlike son of Sean's dad was very amused every time Paul picked on. They have like that same smile, right, and you know, Paul so enjoys doing that, so give him that.
Then we had Gabby kind of, you know, making up with her sister and coming to terms with the fact that she needs to kind of step up.
But it was amusing that after she said that that I'm going to step up, and then, you know how, I think her sister asked how long do you need? And Gabby says twenty years? Twenty years, and I think they negotiated to negotiated to three months. But it's still, oh my goodness, still such a I mean, she's already her life is pretty full, and to take that on is difficult to know what to do about it. But you know, obviously the sister needs to be set free.
That's a that's a difficult and not fun topic to add. Although parenting related certainly, do you do with your parents? I personally flew to the other side of the guy from mine, loved them, didn't want to deal. But but I'd also did help my mother in law in my house, so yeah, but she was she was not my job. It was mostly to keep my husband from having to drive across town to go help.
Her, and then she could watch soap operas with your daughter.
That's right, that's right. And also like Mari Povich and stuff like Yes, I remember my daughter asking me one like lunchtime one summer, something about you know, mess a messy relationship of some sort, and like, where is this coming from? Oh, you're watching those shows with grandma. Oh kay, I got ith parenting?
Yep, well what's next for us?
There was just just on the parenting, on the parenting topic, just one more there was a somebody said, dads are tricky. They don't always come through the way you'd like them to, but they do eventually, which also of course true with moms. And there was also something about somebody being defensive of the father was being defensive because I knew you were right, and yeah, yeah, relatable, relatable, definitely for sure. Yeah.
So next week we'll see what some of the consequences are of some of these revelations and discussions.
And yes, we will meetings and there will be funny things and there will be not funny things, and that is just the show we've got.
That's right. So it's the seventh episode and it's called.
Get in the C A S E A C.
But we will see see you back here tomorrow for our weekly Roundabout round up.
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