The TV adaptation of the novel “Fleishman Is in Trouble” begins with the mildest and least interesting of the simultaneous midlife crises plaguing the show’s three main characters. On a cloudless summer day in Manhattan, Toby Fleishman Jesse Eisenberg), a recent divorcé, wakes up in his sparsely furnished apartment, alarmed that he is suddenly, somehow, no longer living with Rachel,” his wife of fi teen years. His angry confusion that Rachel Claire Danes) has dropped off their preteen children at his place, in the middle of the night with little warning, briefly distracts him from his general dismay that his offspring have become products of the Upper East Side: his daughter Meara Mahoney Gross) screeches that the clothes her mother packed for her are more suitable for the Hamptons than for camp, and even his sweetly soft son Maxim Swinton) asks for golf lessons. Toby is overwhelmed, but he is also a wealthy, trim doctor in his early forties. A nonentity to women during his youth, he is so consumed by the endless prospects on a dating app that it takes him several days to realize that Rachel has disappeared.
This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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