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Of course, abusive relationships can take hold for any number of reasons, and are often impossible to escape because of that entrenchment, but that’s not the only unsatisfactory piece of the series. That the show ultimately spends more time investigating Herschkopf’s subconscious motives than Markowitz’s leaves our hapless protagonist even emptier than when we first meet him. These, unfortunately, prove far more interesting than the television series’ attempts to flesh out its characters’ psychological co-dependencies with time-hopping fictional backstories and suggested daddy issues. That’s the question at the center of The Shrink Next Door’s original podcast, too, but because it’s centered around a journalistic investigation headed by New York Times reporter-turned-Bloomberg-columnist Joe Nocera, listeners are presented with a multitude of points of view, speculations, and contestations directly from the mouth of Marty Markowitz and those around him, as they attempt to piece together the objective story-and a litany of incendiary emails from Isaac Herschkopf to boot.

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The rate at which Ike snugly shuffles Marty under his wing and hurries him away from almost any of his outside connections is baffling, and the series can’t deliver a satisfactory answer as to why a man with a successful business, close family ties, and no previous history of anything other than general anxiety would fall under the spell of an emotionally and financially manipulative authority figure. He scripts Marty’s most tremulous interactions, and promises that he’s going to take care of him, that he’s going to protect him-even as we see the glint in Ike’s eyes as he realizes the uneven ratio of Marty’s diminished self-assurance to his overwhelming business and familial wealth.

Using unconventional and 100% unethical methods that give him far too much familiarity, and allow him to rack up charges at his discretion, Ike gains Marty’s total confidence. Ike is able to sniff out his insecurities and clamp on to Marty’s worn jacket, Marty is in fact less than stable. As evidenced by how quickly and securely Dr. Reluctant and dithering, Marty shows up to the session with an obvious inability to admit to any of his issues, and a deep discomfort with the concept that he could be anything other than fine. After one such collapse behind the curtains, Phyllis convinces Marty to take just one session with a rabbi-recommended therapist. He’s unable to get through a single assertion without stammering, can’t stand up to his aggressive ex-girlfriend or a grumpy long-time customer, and would rather hide behind a curtain and let his iron-willed sister Phyllis (a permed, cartoonish Kathryn Hahn) take the reins in any confrontation. Inheriting his family’s fabric business after the death of his mother and father, Marty is a soft-spoken, thick-lensed man with the tenaciousness of a cardboard cutout. The first episode, “The Consultation,” attempts to lay the groundwork for these questions simply, by first establishing a somewhat murky, curiosity-piquing “night-of” incident involving both Ike and Marty in 2010, and then rewinding back to 1982 when their relationship began. What’s more intriguing is the how and the why, and whether the potential brightness of such a star-studded cast is able to successfully inhabit very real characters at their lowest points.

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It’s not so important that we already know Ike takes over Marty’s entire life under the guise of psychological philanthropy, blowing his family, finances, and free will out from under him.

The Shrink Next Door, developed by Succession writers-room veteran Georgia Pritchett, wants its premise to be obvious, and relies on a clear appetite for schadenfreude and an appreciation of comedic-actors-turned-Emmy-bait. If you’ve read even a one-line synopsis of this true crime podcast-cum-television hook, it’s not hard to connect the ivy-which might be pretty at first, but will literally collapse a building’s foundation-to the narrative trajectory of its true Brian Wilson/Eugene Landy-esque story of therapeutic malpractice.

The sinister but curious score hammers it home: things are about to get very, very ugly. Isaac “Ike” Herschkopf (a sometimes devious, mostly presentational Paul Rudd) and his insidious grip on the unassuming, panic attack-prone Martin “Marty” Moskowitz (Will Ferrell). The metaphor is fairly obvious, but it’s the kind of introduction that might make you sit up and point at the screen. In the episode title cards for AppleTV+’s newest miniseries The Shrink Next Door, animated vines slither like snakes, choking and burying a variety of props and scenery pulled from within the episode.

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