Fleishman Is In Trouble: What seems to be the bother?
Episodes 1-4
This is the first of a two-part blog series about Fleishman is in Trouble, the 2023 FX mini series. Be warned: since the plot will be discussed, there are spoilers ahead!
Fleishman Is In Trouble Official Trailer | Disney+
Directors for Episodes 1 - 4: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, Alice Wu, Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Writers: Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Michael Goldbach
Fleishman Is In Trouble was recently recommended to me by a friend and it was also ranked at number 11 in The Guardian’s 50 best TV shows of 2023 so after finishing Succession and Season 2 of The Bear (both top-tier telly), I needed something to fill that gap - and Fleishman was the show that I took a chance on to do that. And it has, at least for the first four episodes.
Here are some of my thoughts, questions and predictions after getting through half of this mini-series based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s best-selling novel…
What first impressed me was the core cast. Jesse Eisenberg plays the eponymous Toby Fleishman, a doctor, father and recent divorcee. He carries that typical frenetic, on-the-edge, awkward Eisenberg energy in this role, which is fitting for a man trying to balance the many demands of his medical career, two children, difficult ex-wife and social life while living in New York.
One thing that’s emphasised about Toby is how other people respond to him. He is a dedicated and specialist doctor in his field as a hepatologist, and yet when people outside of the healthcare sector hear what he does, the response is usually a patronising, “Good for you!” I’m not sure if this is an attitude of the wealthy in America, or perhaps people more generally, but I found the disrespect levelled at him for doing an admirable job really jarring.
Beyond his work, Toby spends any time he has to himself on dating apps to see what the world has to offer post-marriage. It turns out, there are a lot of interested women and he goes through some sort of mid-life sexual awakening when he has this realisation. Good for him!
Claire Danes plays Rachel Fleishman, a complex woman who has been painted in a somewhat negative light so far. She appears to be wholly focused on her career as the director of an agency, she is absent as a mother and the demise of her marriage to Toby has been almost completely pinned on her (though it’s worth mentioning that we are being told the story by Toby’s friend Libby.- more on her next). The first two episodes in particular made Rachel out to be an over-ambitious monster with a cold heart, but by episode 3 we are shown glimpses of her life with Toby through a series of flashbacks - the meetcute, dating in NYC, long walks in the park - before it all turned upside down.
There is some really important and incredibly intimate coverage of traumatic childbirth and postpartum depression through this character, which goes some way in helping us to see where Rachel is coming from in the latter years of their marriage. It is deeply saddening to see a medical professional carry out a procedure without a woman’s consent - on this occasion, a doctor ruptured Rachel’s membrane to force her waters to break, and chose to do so without telling her, and notably did so once Toby had left the room meaning that she had nobody there to advocate for her. This was one part of a distressing labour, and we see the profound effects that it has on Rachel long after leaving the hospital, in her relationship with herself, Toby and child. Once you know about this experience, it might start to change your opinion of her or to help begin seeing why she seems so detached.
Although angering and upsetting to watch, it is a taboo topic that affects hundreds of thousands of women (in fact, at least 1 in 3 women1 find some aspect of their birth traumatic), so seeing it on a show like this feels strangely refreshing. There are a couple of links at the end of this article about birth trauma and rights for those who might need them or want to learn more.
Lizzy Caplan plays Libby Epstein, a close friend of Toby’s. They lost contact for years (which Libby blames on Rachel, who she believes doesn’t like her) after meeting at college. As mentioned earlier, Libby is omnipresent in the show because she narrates each episode, but she also seems to be a person that Toby can go to for emotional support at any given moment. She’s a good friend to him, temporarily dropping out of her aerobics class to take his call, or inviting him along to a family day at the pool, for example.
Her situation is stable. She lives in the suburbs with her children and husband, who doesn’t say a lot but looks permanently miffed. She seems content to a degree, although there have been moments where it looks like she is longing for something other than the comfortable life that she’s built with her family. Maybe she just needs a bit of fun.
Adam Brody plays Seth Morris, who is the other college friend of Toby and Libby. Their little trio has an unlikely dynamic but it works when the three of them are together - they seem like the sort of friends who have taken different paths in life (despite remaining geographically close) but when they’re together, it’s like they just pick up where they last started.
Seth is a party partner and provides ‘practical’ support to Toby when he needs to take his mind off his missing ex-wife - by taking him to a secret Laundromat-come-club, for example. He has very few responsibilities and fewer inhibitions. We like him; he brightens up the place.
Finally, there are plenty of secondary characters who all play a part in allowing us to see how the Fleishmans interact, how they respond to stress and how they adapt to different situations. At work, Toby is in a position of authority, training student doctors who look up to him and taking direct responsibility for patients, but at home we see that he struggles to have a single positive conversation with his 12 year old daughter, Hannah. In their social circle of Manhattan parents, there is a clear rift between the rest of the parents (most of whom made their wealth from big-pharma, or other such unethical means) and Toby. Meanwhile, Rachel craves to fit in with them, their lifestyle and their values, in complete opposition to her husband. She is seeking betterment and belonging, but he resists. The people aren’t particularly portrayed in a positive light, and you definitely wouldn’t want to be friends with them, but it’s still hard to see the very public disagreements take place and to watch as two people drift further away from what they once used to be.
What questions do I have at the half way point of the show? The obvious questions to ask would be about Rachel - is she missing, dead or intentionally hiding? What’s her side of the story? I’m perhaps too conscious of the unreliable narrator so just how skewed is the storytelling? Or is Libby just telling us how she sees it? The big question is: why is Toby Fleishman in trouble (and is the Fleishman in the title even about him - could it be referring to Rachel?)? Did he do something to land himself in trouble, or is the title just a reference to the trouble he finds himself in circumstantially?
What hopes do I have at the half way point of the show? I would like to see Rachel return and my hope is that there will be some form of redemption arc for her character. As a general comment, I hope they maintain the pace of the show going forward - it has a real feeling of momentum behind it and I’m enjoying how things are unravelling.
Other thoughts: The title sequence is very short and is just the title of the show layered over an upside down shot of the city. I would love to know whether it is like this because Toby Fleishman’s world has been turned upside down due to the tumultuous events in his personal life, or whether the narrative is going to ‘flip’ at some point to reveal something new.
You can stream Fleishman is in Trouble on Disney Plus now.
Resources:
Birthrights - human rights during pregnancy and maternity
Make Birth Better - birth trauma support for parents
Birth trauma: the mediating effects of perceived support: https://www.britishjournalofmidwifery.com/content/other/birth-trauma-the-mediating-effects-of-perceived-support