Tim Baltz finds hilarity in his (final) streaming analysis of the battle show ‘Shrink’.

There’s a sweet and salty show streaming about a grieving therapist who doesn’t care about his professional ethics. closely involved in the lives of patients and seek advice from an older counselor who tells him that it is not his job to lead the patient to make better decisions

It’s called “Shrink” and was created in 2017 for NBC’s now defunct Seeso streaming service, which went into operation that same year. After being fired from one platform to another and sometimes completely orphaned. All eight episodes are now available to watch on Peacock.

When “Shrink” premiered Times critic Robert Lloyd said: It’s “hearted, emotionless, …At least I left feeling good.”

The intro above sounds very similar to “Shrinking,” a similarly named series on Apple TV+ that debuted in January with very similar themes. In that show, Jason Segel plays the therapist. which revolves after the death of his wife Invite the patient to live in his guest house. and visit Harrison’s old therapist ford for wisdom is the brainchild of Siegel and the team behind beloved Emmy Leader Ted Lasso.

The people who created “Shrink” are much less famous. and make much less money But comedian Tim Baltz, the film’s creator and star, doesn’t want to complain. He was just grateful that his funny baby, who had been pregnant for 6 years, was born again.

“Doing any show, any performance, is incredibly difficult,” says Baltz, who now plays the milk-maniac BJ in HBO’s “The Righteous Gemstones.” “So I look back at the events. those And I was amazed that it happened. of all the experiences I’ve had since.”

Baltz, 42, plays a variety of Midwestern music on the comedy improv podcast Comedy Bang! Bang!” But behind the head of cheese he performs so well lies the brain of an incredibly thoughtful man who speaks fluent French. His mother was a native and his aunt was a nun in Paris.

“Growing up between two cultures makes you too observant as a defense mechanism,” says Baltz, “and makes many cultural traditions seem arbitrary.”

He is on his way to pursuing a doctorate in French literature. but lost his 50-page thesis during the last week when “The universe intervenes and crashes my computer,” he laughs. “I’m like: ‘I’m going to improv for a year.’”

Baltz was already in love with improv comedy. By the age of 13, he took the train to Chicago and watched the likes of Jack McBrayer, Stephnie Weir and Seth Meyers on stage at Second City.

“Everybody played with the highest intelligence. And it felt like comedy and poetry,” he says. “I was fascinated by it.”

He performed Shakespeare plays as a teenager and staged plays in college. and he was impressed with Chicago improv’s unique theatricality but with a sense of humor. He attended iO Theater and toured with Second City.

“Shrink” is the organic fruit of it all.

Baltz and his co-creator Ted Tremper were inspired by the comical situation of medical school graduates who don’t fit into teaching hospitals. And one way to defer huge student repayments and keep their licenses. is to provide free treatment

Tremper has access to the garage. And they asked their comedic friends, including future “Saturday Night Live” star Aidy Bryant, to portray Baltz’s hapless therapist patient. He chose Second City “hen” Sue Gillan. is the character’s mentor, and one of his teachers, Rudia Wallace, is a hostile receptionist. They filmed 12 treatments over a few months with a borrowed digital camera for a total cost of about $200.

Baltz uploads episodes to Vimeo, where employees choose. The pilot was then produced and sent to the 2012 New York Television Festival where it won Best Comedy Introduction and Critics Awards. One-time “SNL” producer and longtime producer of Woody Allen, Jean Doumanian, handled it successfully. Baltz and Tremper moved to Los Angeles in 2013 to present their show to various networks.

“TV is at this interesting point,” says Baltz. “The Mumblecore wave has reached its peak. And many of those self-made indie tricks were applied to TV for the first time. And we were right from the start. There is a promise that you can make a really good TV. On an indie budget and free of glitz and glamor.”

They meet FX and AMC, but another cable channel, Pivot, offers them whole seasons. And what’s even cooler is that they leave a blank page for improv.

Tim Baltz leaves and TJ Jagodowski in a scene from “Shrink.”

(NBC International)

“New things are popping up and they are taking off. And you can’t say what’s going to stay,” says Baltz. “We were like, ‘Wow, are you going to order a 10-episode season? Unbelievable!’”

Pivot is known as the network for millennials. Home to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s “HitRecord on TV” It was run by former IFC president Evan Shapiro, but the channel failed and “Shrink” was stuck in development hell for over two years.

When Shapiro moved to NBC Universal, he invented a new comedy streaming service: the ill-fated Seeso. Besides hosting an entire library of classics like “SNL” and “Monty Python,” Seeso fostered original, outlandish ideas from young crowds. The starving talent girl who overlapped with the Upright Citizens Brigade and “Comedy Bang! Bang!”

Baltz was selected to star in “Bajillion Dollar Property$,” a real estate reality show that featured other “CBB” regulars such as Drew Tarver and Paul F. Tompkins. It’s “a very bizarre experiment aimed at middle-class budgets to give up-and-coming young creators a chance to do something without the pressures you often face in the network.”

“Shrink” finally got the green light as Seeso and Baltz rushed to write eight scripts in eight weeks. With a budget of just one additional writer and less than $600,000 per episode, they were filmed in Chicago with most of the cast returning from the original webseries — but “our location budget was small enough that I thought the characters (and the characters) would have to do it.” One of them works at a bank. and they were like, ‘We can’t reach the bank.’ We were going to shoot at Wrigley Field for a while. And they were like, ‘Yeah… we’re not going to do that.'”

Now Baltz sneered, “A really special experience. that blurs” and considers it a constructive blessing: “Money buys time. And time to buy the ability to solve problems the way you want. When you have less time for less money Your problem solving needs to be creative and fast. That was a very rewarding challenge. because we can get through it I wouldn’t change anything with (it).”

This series started off as an office sitcom. Filled with montages of ephemeral therapy, but gradually becoming more romantic and surreal. With strange dream scenes and dark turning points

Seeso gave Baltz most of the creative freedom and also ordered a second season.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “while waiting for the budget increase to be approved. A few weeks or months before we opened the writers room, we found out that NBC was pulling the plug off all platforms. Bittersweet, if only because we knew where the characters were headed and how the world would develop.”

The show’s difficult cycle of life and death foreshadows a new television order. Where streaming services sprang up like wild flowers and many died on the vine. In which the show is suddenly canceled or suspended, or even completely removed from the original platform, and at indies, talent is often passed on to famous stars.

“Who knew we were living in a more chaotic era? Who knows where we’re headed,” says Baltz, “but in a strange way. Our performance is just a little world of all that happened and will continue to happen. I learned every possible Hollywood lesson from this little show. It was determined to continue teaching me. And I’m really grateful for those things. Because that is the reality of business.”