Binge-r #265: The Shrink Next Door + My Name
Doctor-Patient Privilege: Paul Rudd (Ike) and Will Ferrell (Marty) in The Shrink Next Door
THE SHRINK NEXT DOOR
Streaming Service: Apple TV+
Availability: All seven episodes now streaming
Less a grim black comedy than a troubling modern fable, Paul Rudd and Will Ferrell’s double act is a disquieting examination of therapist privilege and uncomfortable extremes that lures you in with an airy tone and a where-will-this-end? approach that comes to feel like a knotted rope. Based on the award-winning 2019 podcast of the same name, Apple TV+’s new series is based on real life events that here follow Martin ‘Marty’ Markowitz (Ferrell), a timid New Yorker businessman who becomes the pawn of his therapist, Dr Isaac ‘Ike’ Herschkopf (Rudd). Beginning in 1982, with typically suggestive flash forwards to an uncertain outcome in 2010, the show has a wide-ranging eye, taking on themes and cultural tradition that it aligns without always connecting their significance.
“I’m not going to let anyone use you!” declares Ike after his first session with Marty, which is both a tall order and an obvious trap. The latter is an incredibly timid native New Yorker, prone to panic attacks if confronted by his ex-girlfriend or a pushy client at the old school fabric business he inherited from his parents. It’s his sister and long-time protector, Phyllis (Kathryn Hahn), who insists Marty see a professional. “Rabbi Goldberg recommended him,” she says, and the show is steeped in the Jewish-American experience, even if it doesn’t get past the cultural dressing and impeccable kvetching. Ike is cheery and unconventional, connecting his own past to Marty’s and seeing a chance to leverage his patient and “friend” for his own benefit. Comparisons to a cult are soon apparent, as Ike takes over Marty’s life in the guise of empowering him. The shock is how thorough the takeover proves to be.
The podcast was an investigation fronted by business journalist Joe Nocera, who was a neighbour of the two men, but the show’s British creator Georgia Pritchett (Veep, Succession) and director Michael Showalter (Search Party) fasten the focus on their two stars. Their physical disproportion is delicious, with the smaller Ike towering over Marty, but Ferrell’s character is so vulnerable that the awkward humour of his failings starts to fall short. Rudd fares better, with a creepy charisma that allows for jarring negative bursts that suggest a lifetime of slights ruthlessly oppressed. Watch for Casey Wilson as Ike’s wife, Bonnie, who begins to doubt his actions. As a double act, poised between laughs and tragedy, the leads are first-rate, but as much as I enjoyed The Shrink Next Door it felt like it didn’t quite get to the core of this tale. The story is wild, but the motivations don’t always stick.
Shot By Both Sides: Han So-hee (Yoon Ji-woo) in My Name
MY NAME S1 (Netflix, all eight episodes now streaming): While Squid Game [full review here] is the breakthrough show, South Korea has long been a valuable creative hub for Netflix – there’s still, for example, no better period zombie drama than Kingdom [full review here]. While it rather clearly borrows the plot of Infernal Affairs/The Departed, this crime thriller about a young woman, Yoon Ji-woo (Han So-hee), who in a quest for revenge joins the drug syndicate her murdered father served, has a vivid, corrosive visual energy, twisty plotting, and thumping fight scenes. Ordered by her duplicitous boss to infiltrate the police force, where she’s soon investigating her gang and avoiding mole hunts, Ji-woo is a fierce protagonist whose obsessiveness overwhelms the implausible to allow for an enjoyable if bloody narrative for fans of the underworld drama and coming of age genres. As ever, please make sure you use the subtitles and not the English language dubbing.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Blake Lively and rising star director Reed Morano combine for the sparsely evocative espionage procedural The Rhythm Section (2020, 110 minutes), a revenge tale punctuated by intimate action sequences and Jude Law; The Harder They Fall (2021, 139 minutes) is a stylish and joyfully assembled western from a Black perspective, with the likes of Idris Elba and Regina King strutting their spurs and delivering juicy monologues.
New on SBS on Demand: Tilda Swinton can deliver any role she takes on, but there’s something to be said for her playing against type – Swinton’s remarkable as a Milanese society wife whose immaculate façade is fractured by a love affair with a younger man in Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love (2009, 115 minutes), an arresting drama about ritual and the upheaval of unexpected passion.
New on Stan: Iconic in its brutality and prescient with its take on masculinity as a group of businessmen on a rafting trip tangle with less than friendly locals in rural Georgia, John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972, 109 minutes) is the original nightmarish survival thriller; Hilary Swank and director Tommy Lee Jones star in the initially unsentimental western The Homesman (2014, 123 minutes), which examines the forlorn plight of frontier women.
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