Entertainment
This 93% Rotten Tomatoes Gem Is ‘Shrinking’s Perfect Replacement Until Season 3 Arrives
After a year-long wait, Shrinking will officially be returning for its third season at the end of January. The show’s second season ended with Paul (Harrison Ford) opening up to his loved ones about experiencing tolerance withdrawal from his Parkinson’s medication, and Jimmy (Jason Segel) stepping up to help Louis (Brett Goldstein) during a mental health crisis. Gaby (Jessica Williams) is now in a serious relationship with Derrick 2 (Damon Wayans Jr.), and Brian (Michael Urie) and Charlie (Devin Kawaoka) have adopted a baby. The characters have all come so far in their journeys, but there is still more story to tell when the series returns.
Fans of the sharply funny Apple TV dramedy still have to wait a little longer for the next season to see where the characters’ journeys will go from here, but Hulu has an excellent replacement to watch in the meantime: its 2015 family dramedy series, Casual. For Shrinking fans looking for a hilarious series to watch in the next few months that also has some more emotional and painful storylines throughout, Casual is the perfect choice.
What Is ‘Casual’ About?
Casual follows adult siblings Alex Cole (Tommy Dewey) and Valerie Meyers (Michaela Watkins), as well as Valerie’s teenage daughter, Laura (Tara Lynne Barr). Valerie’s husband, Drew (Zak Orth), has just left her for a much younger woman. Needing a new place to live, Valerie and Laura temporarily move in with Alex, the wealthy co-founder of a dating website called Snooger. Alex is also committed to living the single life and only dating casually, so he’s lonely, and he welcomes the company of his sister and niece. The series shows the three of them adjusting to inhabiting the same space while dealing with their own obstacles in their personal and professional lives. Alex gets used to having Valerie and Laura around very quickly, while Valerie is more hesitant about living with her brother instead of getting a house of her own after her divorce.
Valerie is a therapist who has to fight to hold her tongue when listening to her patients’ alarming problems, while Alex finds himself losing faith in his own website after a number of bad dates. Meanwhile, Laura is passionate about photography and has a crush on her photography teacher (Patrick Heusinger), but she otherwise doesn’t really care about school, and struggles with complicated friendships and relationships. Valerie is just coming out of a committed relationship after multiple decades, so she explores casual dating and hookups for the first time. Alex, on the other hand, has only previously really an interest in hookups, but he starts to consider the possibility of looking for a committed relationship for the first time since college. Each episode of Casual shows the central trio making some wild mistakes and causing hilariously preventable problems for themselves and those around them, making for a very entertaining comedy series.
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Like ‘Shrinking,’ ‘Casual’ Is a Dysfunctional Yet Touching Family-Centered Dramedy
Like Shrinking, Casual is a family-centered show with an edgier twist. Casual‘s main characters are flawed, and they are often not even trying to change for the better. They engage in self-destructive behaviors, and they often sabotage their friendships and romantic relationships when they are going too well. At the center of the show is Valerie and Alex’s codependent bond. Their parents, Dawn (Frances Conroy) and Charles (Fred Melamed), were very unconventional in raising them. They believed in a freer and less structured lifestyle, often left their children to travel, and just generally didn’t prioritize Valerie and Alex. Because of this, Valerie had to raise Alex. She grew up early and sacrificed a lot for him, and neither of them really knows how to get and stay close to someone else, besides Laura.
Casual has a very clever and outlandish sense of humor. In the second episode, Alex decides that he likes Valerie’s one-night stand, Leon (Nyasha Hatendi), so he secretly becomes best friends with him. Throughout the first season, some other silly antics include Alex trying to replace Valerie with a puppy, and Valerie bringing spoons as a gift to a hookup (Dean Geyer) after he ghosts her. That said, the show also handles its more serious storylines with care. It shows Laura struggling to find a place where she feels like she belongs, Valerie feeling regretful about all the years of her life that she spent taking care of Alex, Laura, and Drew, and Alex worrying that he isn’t capable of a stable, committed relationship. Through it all, Valerie, Alex, and Laura may fight like nobody’s business, but they understand and accept each other in a way that nobody else does.
Shrinking and Casual both balance an exploration of deeper themes with sillier storylines that utilize their funny and unique supporting characters. Valerie has more boundaries with her patients than Jimmy does, but both shows have some very funny and bizarre therapy scenes. Whereas Shrinking shows its characters moving forward and growing as people, Casual just gets more chaotic and immature with each season. The result is absolutely hilarious, unforgettable, and occasionally truly heartbreaking. The wait for another season of Shrinking will be tough for devoted fans of the show, but Casual has four seasons that make for an excellent binge-watch in the meantime.
Casual is available to stream on Hulu.
- Release Date
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2015 – 2018-00-00
- Network
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Hulu
- Directors
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Fred Savage, Michael Weaver, Tricia Brock, Marielle Heller, Gillian Robespierre, Hannah Fidell
- Writers
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Zander Lehmann, Tess Morris, Nick Jones Jr., Harris Danow
