The city of New York is present in numerous films and series due to its enormous capacity to house multiple independent microcosms that allow generating all kinds of stories such as ‘Fleishman is in trouble’, a costumbrista drama centered on the figure of a New York Jewish doctor with problems existential to get over your divorce.
The king of this genre has undoubtedly been Woody Allen and his numerous visions of New York City and its neurotic inhabitants. With this clear influence, its creator, Taffy Brodesser-Acker, has managed to visually capture the voice of her first novel, helped by a cast of heavyweights and in a quite original story that has been one of the surprises of late 2022. .
Fleishman is in trouble
Platform
Disney+ (E)Nationality
USASeason
Nov 2022-Dec 2022episodes
8 of 55 minutescreator
Taffy Brodesser-Ackerprotagonists
Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Lizzy Caplan
The plot: ‘Fleishman is in trouble’ initially has a somewhat strange and even disconcerting structure since the story is narrated by Libby, a youthful friend of Toby Fleishman, who is still an external element to the divorced couple with whom he has barely had contact in recent years.
That voice of Libby is going to be our guide in the presentation of the two members of the marriage, Toby and Rachel, but passed through her own personal sieve as a rather subjective narrator.
His point of view focuses mainly on the tribulations of Dr. Fleishman on three fronts, the family focused on the sudden disappearance of his wife, leaving him in the care of their two young children. On the personal side we have his furtive love affairs and his process of recovering youthful friendships, while finally we have the professional field with his aspirations for promotion within the hospital where he works, showing an ambition that had been dormant until now.
The interactions between these three realms and the problems they generate for the troubled Dr. Fleishman are the main thread of the closed miniseries. The biased and self-interested narration does not hesitate to cast the absent Rachel as the villain and one-dimensional villain of the relationship, putting her work as a reputed and hyper-busy theater agent before any hint of maternal instincts, presenting her as a bad mother and treatment. very unpleasant.
Fleishman makes up for the absence of his wife by reuniting with his two best friends, Libby and Seth, frustrated at not having fulfilled their youthful dreams, with poor Libby stuck in a low-level journalist job and hardly recognized for many years. years, and Seth as a financial broker who begins to feel how the young puppies of his firm want to devour him.
By initially focusing on these three characters, they leave the missing Rachel as a marginal character with hardly any screen presence, until the light comes on in the penultimate episode, the best of the entire series, by showing us the story from Rachel’s perspective. that will blow up all our previous perceptions.
The creator: Taffy Brodesser-Acker is a columnist for the New York Times, specializing in celebrity profiles, who published her first novel, ‘Fleishman is in trouble’, in 2019, giving free rein to all her fears about divorce, by suffering it in her parents and many of her friends, she being the only one who had escaped from that plague.
The main condition for the author to sell the rights to the book was that she be the television scriptwriter, since it was such a personal work that she would be envious and jealous of anyone who could appropriate her particular literary vision.
Leading characters: Jesse Eisenberg began to stand out in the movie ‘The Social Network’ as Mark Zuckerberg, but I have not been enthusiastic as Toby Fleishman since I have found him a bit soft without transmitting too much energy in a rather complex and complicated role.
The penultimate episode clears up all our doubts about what a great actress like Claire Danes was doing in such an apparently insignificant and secondary role, giving one of her impressive performances that we’ve been accustomed to since ‘Homeland’.