Fleishman is in Trouble

Based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut novel, the Disney+Hotstar series makes viewers think about how women are transformed in male-centric narratives even ...

As in the novel, the shift however does arrive a little too late and upsets the parity. More so because spending time with Toby becomes a chore as opposed to doing the same with Rachel. Through camerawork and editing, the show emulates the spatio-temporal disorienation of a woman ordering takeout after takeout of beef lo mein and sinking deeper and deeper into a downward spiral of depression. Caplan delivers her lines with a great sense of timing, well-attuned with the ironies of the text, in a rare instance of a voice-over not having a grating effect. “Trojan horse yourself into a man, and people would give a shit about you.” But the success of the novel should have made a case for an equal, if not greater, emphasis on Rachel’s perspective as Toby’s. As Libby describes in the series, “She understood that it wasn’t her lack of money and proximity that made her an outsider. Through flashbacks, the series take us on a non-linear tour of Toby and Rachel’s marriage from beginning to end. That is until Rachel’s ambition and Toby’s lack thereof became an irreconcilable difference which he believed granted him the mantle of the aggrieved party in a blatant case of rerouted victimhood. Having worked as a profile writer for GQ and The New York Times, Brodesser-Akner recognises the significance of balancing how she sees a subject with how a subject sees him/herself. At one point in the series, a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint that sits on his nightstand attests to the masculine neuroses that ail him. The same weight of perspective she brought to stories about Gwyneth Paltrow, Britney Spears, and Justin Bieber’s church, she brings to a story about adults grappling with societal expectations, class anxieties and a declining sense of self as they enter middle age. Rachel is a high-flying theatre agent with a razor-sharp blonde bob who started from humble beginnings and worked her way to the top — a role tailor-made for Claire Danes if there ever was one.