On Shrinking, emotional damage is processed with sarcasm and group dinners. Season 3 has been orbiting one giant inevitability, Paul’s retirement as his Parkinson’s worsens, while everyone else quietly unravels in side plots that feel deceptively manageable. Episode 5, titled Hold Your Horsies, decides stability is overrated.

What begins as routine therapy, breakfast chatter, and spreadsheet requests slowly mutates into romantic confusion, commitment panic, and a kiss that absolutely complicates the group dynamic.

While the season seemed comfortable marinating in familiar arcs, this episode slips in a development that tilts Jimmy’s love life and rattles Paul’s carefully curated goodbye.

Jimmy spends much of the Shrinking episode attempting to be useful. Paul asks him to create a referral spreadsheet as part of winding down his practice, and Jimmy clings to the task like a student desperate for extra credit before graduation. Shadowing Paul feels less professional and more existential. Alice is leaving for college. Paul is leaving the office. Stability is packing boxes.

When Paul, Jimmy, and Brian head to pick up Meg, the vibe is functional family logistics. Meg’s arrival carries weight though. She reveals she came to convince Paul to move to Connecticut with her, and shockingly, he agreed. The news lands like a soft punch. Paul is not just retiring. He is relocating his gravity.

The storage unit trip between Jimmy and Meg becomes the emotional hinge. Amid dusty boxes and family photos, Jimmy opens up about a woman who is sweet, weird in her own ways, and makes him laugh. He frames romance like a stalled engine. Once one emotional hurdle is cleared, something steady could grow. Meg listens, then later thanks him with a kiss that does not feel sibling-coded in the slightest.

It almost reads as Meg helping him remove that so-called hurdle. A test kiss. A proof of concept. Nobody knows the answer. Jimmy had wished for one easy romantic kiss to reset his system. Instead, he gets one layered with grief, timing, and the awkward reality that she is Paul’s daughter. When he returns for a second kiss, the line between emotional assistance and genuine spark blurs further.

‘Shrinking’ Season 3 Episode 3 Gives Jimmy a Father, a Baby, and a Lot of Heart

While Jimmy stumbles into romantic ambiguity inside a storage unit, another adult in the group spirals over a single word that suggests forever.

Gaby continues to shine professionally. She sees tangible progress in the patient she once went out of her way to help. That spark ignites a bigger dream. Opening her own trauma center becomes less fantasy and more blueprint. Derrick, supportive and alarmingly enthusiastic, takes that dream seriously. Too seriously.

Their agreement to avoid marriage and baby conversations until 2027, affectionately branded “Hold your horsies,” feels strategic. Gaby’s divorce left emotional scar tissue. Commitment triggers alarms. So when Derrick casually uses “we” while discussing a potential property for her future center, Gaby spirals. One pronoun morphs into a life sentence in her imagination.

Cue the group intervention energy. She seeks validation from everyone, oscillating between excitement and panic. Ultimately, she chooses Derrick. Not with fireworks, but with intention. She admits she does not know whether a choice is right or wrong until she makes it. The trauma center remains undecided, but the relationship survives the existential audit. For Gaby, that is progress.

As Gaby confronts adulthood with shared pronouns, the younger duo wrestles with identity, safety, and whether stepping outside routine might shift their chemistry.

Breakfast scenes place Sean and his girlfriend at the table with Jimmy and Alice, radiating surface-level normalcy. Beneath it, both Alice and Sean are quietly recalibrating. Alice confesses to Gaby that she feels she is boring. College looms. Life feels beige. Agreeing to attend a party becomes less about socializing and more about proving she still has spark.

Sean, meanwhile, is comfortable. Too comfortable. Routine has become armor. His girlfriend pushes him to attend the party. He resists, hiding behind work and familiarity. Paul calls him out, stating that "nothing is scarier than someone you care about yanking you out of your comfort zone." It lands.

Alice and Sean share a crucial conversation. She admits that when he first moved in, she tried to kiss him. Not because she was romantically consumed, but because she was unhappy and searching for a distraction. It reframes their history. There is honesty now. No secret longing. No dramatic confession. Just two people acknowledging past confusion.

Sean eventually arrives at the party. Alice stays by him first. Then they both step in fully. They dance. They laugh. For now, romance is not the agenda. Yet the comfort between them feels sturdier than before. It could grow into something later. Or it could remain beautifully platonic. The episode deliberately keeps it undefined, perhaps saving the answer for the coming episodes or quietly planting seeds for the next season.

Harrison Ford Reflects on Retirement and Why 'Shrinking' Feels Like the Right Ending

What are your thoughts on Jimmy and Meg’s complicated kiss and whether Sean and Alice are headed toward romance? Let us know in the comments.