Fleishman Is In Trouble

Just watched the first two episodes after seeing the Golden Globes nomination list. I'm loving it so far. Anybody else?

No, thanks. I hate excessive use of voice-overs in movies and TVs.

[quote]Only two episodes are available right now, but I don't like shows that use constant voice over narration, and this one uses it almost more than real dialogue. Why not just rent the audio book then? The narration is better than the dialogue, so maybe I should. People of a certain age will remember a show called Thirty-something, and this is the modern 40-something version with more sex. The only real problem these people have are totally self created; they are wealthy, privileged and successful, everything in life is at their fingertips, but we should care that they are sad right now because....well, I don't know why.

[quote] they are wealthy, privileged and successful, everything in life is at their fingertips, but we should care that they are sad right now because....well, I don't know why

The new narrative: if you make a good living, you don’t have any problems in your life. And if you do, nobody should give a shit.

I remember hearing about the book.

He is so hard to watch. Or listen to. His facial expression is the same in any movie he is in. And Claire Danes fucked Billy Crudup while his girlfriend was heavily pregnant, not a fan of that hoe.

Yes, Jesse always has that Tucker Carlson constipation look on his face.

[quote]Yes, Jesse always has that Tucker Carlson constipation look on his face.

I was going to say this too.

Jesse Eisenberg could play an angry Prince Harry if he were 8 inches taller.

Made it 15 minutes into the first episode and turned it off. I just can’t take another show about the problems of straight, wealthy white people in Manhattan. I mean, there’s a gag in the first 10 minutes about how Fleishman is made to feel financially inferior because he’s a … doctor. Cool, no thanks. I put on the first episode of “Reservation Dogs” instead and found it compelling, strange and funny.

There is absolutely nothing more wretched than a Woody Allen imitation. FIT even borrows Woody’s font.

I know it's asking a lot to watch it through to the end for the pay-off but I think the last two episodes are some of the best TV I've seen in ages. It flips itself upside and makes it clear why it's been structured the way it has been only in its end, and I loved it. Lizzy Caplan is incredible.

Oooh. All the episodes are available today. Binge, baby, binge. I loved the book, and have always liked Jesse and Claire.

I loved this, the last episode with Lizzy talking about lost youth and aging was great. Even rich white people get older and long for their lost choices. R9 Res dogs is fucking excellent, it made me cry many times and the main kid is hot.

Yes, Lizzy Caplan was the best thing in it. I really enjoyed it.

No shade on those who liked it. I like the actors involved too. A few years ago I would’ve gone right for a show like this. More than anything my own tastes are changing, I think.

Party Down is coming back, Lizzy fans!

I was intrigued by the disappearance of the wife in the first episode, but began enjoying it less and less with each passing episode. The central plot device makes no sense. It requires everyone who knows the wife (including her husband— yes, ex-husband, but she is the mother of his two kids) to show absolutely no interest in the fact that someone has apparently disappeared from the face of the earth with no trace.

And the final explanation, and the lesson we are all to draw from this sad tale, is almost a parody of 1st world problems. No, thank you.

Eight hours I will not get back.

I only use real butter

Loved it.

This holds no appeal to me, for the same reasons offered by r9, though I like Lizzy Caplan a lot, so she tempts me a bit.

Also want to echo that Reservation Dogs is fantastic, one of the best shows currently in production.

Just watched the first episode and am loving it!

Very New York.

I know someone who looks and talks JUST like the main guy, which is freaky

Lizzie Kaplan is so good in everything. From this (she's the reason to watch) to Party Down, Masters of Sex, Mean Girls.

Girl has the goods.

I finally finished it. While it's compelling, I have zero empathy for any of the characters except for the children. There's so much whining and navel-gazing but very little accountability or appreciation for what they do have. I do like the idea of taking and issue and looking at it from multiple points of view.

R3 PRETTY MUCH

I was good to go until the last 20 minutes or so.

The conversation between Toby and Libby at the party, while well acted, came off as just trite writing.

"I'm going to write a book about this" just falls flat to me. She might as well have said, "and it's going to be called 'Fleishman is in Trouble and then it's going to be made into a miniseries on Hulu starring Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes." It was a sloppy tie up to what was, until then, a very challenging and well-done show.

What the show gets right is how slutty straight man and women are.

Similar to the show, I have a friend who got divorced a few years back. He’s very average looking but has fucked so many women over that time that he thinks he’s some god. It’s hilarious.

I really liked the series especially the early episodes where Claire Danes’ appearances were tantamount to the shark in Jaws. She was great in this and I really admired Jesse Eisenberg’s work in it as well. The entire cast was great, right down to the Fleischman kids.

I’m not sure I bought into the final episode but at least it was well constructed. But it was a cop out, as if even the writer of “the book” was championing her own salvation through writing…without actually providing a satisfying ending to her “book”. The story was already opened out as a meta commentary, it didn’t need further distancing. While The Fleischman’s were drawn as very real characters, in the end it was implied that was only down to one woman’s writing talent…which is implied in every piece of good writing.

I liked enough of what proceeded it to go, oh, okay. But I can’t say it was completely satisfied. It made the whole thing kind of feel like I’d joined the clever kids for lunch one day…only to find they’re not as clever as they think they are. Also, Adam Brody and his character deserved more screen time - especially if it was just a book.

Reservation Dogs S1 is great. S2 returns to the same well too often and felt kind of inert, like they didn’t know where to go with it. Love all the characters and will definitely watch S3. Still dying over S1 jokes about the meat pies or whatever. “Girl with a stomach ache wants to know if anyone wants to buy her meat pies, anyone interested….no?” (Paraphrased, obvs.) I died

[quote]Eight hours I will not get back.

And it shows.

Whatever you think of the show, it gets the UES very right. Someone unthread mentioned him whining about only being a doctor. In some UES circles, doctor is indeed considered a working class profession. That private school world is dominated by the finance profession and some of them truly do scoff at a six figure income.

Also, with Claire’s character disappearing an no one really caring or even noticing? Totally believable for the UES in summer. Everyone scatters over the summer with only some trickling in and out of the city. It’s very transient in the summertime.

I used to be that on my toast every morning.

R9 I think that was the point, being a doctor is/should be more than enough. It’s something that’s mentioned a few times….what is enough. At that point in the series they are telling the story from his vantage point, and part of what makes his wife the villain is her pursuit of status and that what he has to offer will never be good enough for her. That’s how he sees it anyway,

The writing is great.

It does what the Sex and the City reboot and the Neil Patrick Harris show Uncoupled tried but does it without wacko or zany plot lines.

The acting is great. Eisenberg gets young NY Jewish doctor exactly right—with the stuttered phrasing.

I watched it and liked it, even though I get the the criticisms.

I wish we’d gotten as many nude scenes with Adam Brody as we had with Jesse Eisenberg. Brody belongs in that “got hotter when they got older” thread. He didn’t do much for me in his The OC days, but man, is he hot now.

I really liked the show..my kind of television. Danes and Kaplan were fantastic.

I got in with a circle of wealthy New Yorkers and broke away after two years.

They had no problems. So getting the right caterer for a birthday party, a delay in delivery of a shirt, and other trivialities assumed large importance. They had no concept of how normal people live. I had to explain that office managers and paralegals did not get pensions and that many of the baristas and retail workers they encountered had college degrees. ("No one I know with a college degree ever had to take a job like that. Did they all flunk classes?")

There really is not much that is interesting in these people or this life. So I bagged out of the show after 20 minutes.

I recall a documentary about rich kids and yes, they were all concerned about extraordinarily trivial things. I recall a younger Ivanka Trump coming off the best among the kids featured. Who knew she’d become such a grifter?

The last two episodes have outsized impact on everything else. In other words, if you're 4 eps in, mildly entertained but about to give up, keep going.

If you're wondering why Claire Danes would take such a nasty, one dimensional role - Keep watching.

If you're wondering why Lizzy Caplan's character narrates and if its just a style choice, keep watching.

There's no sixth sense type twist coming. But the world gets turned on its head in those episodes which is why we have so many upside down shots early on.

I watched four episodes and had a strong sense of deja vu. Bland melodrama that is just barely interesting enough to keep watching, vanilla sexual encounters passed off as edgy and of course lifestyle porn. This show is just Desperate Housewives. This show is shit and anyone who likes it is simple.

R38, it gets better. I really enjoyed where it went.

The show never gets great but it gets better.

Episode 7 retells the story from Clare Danes' character's point of view. She is the best thing in the series but in that episode she is amazing.

Just watched the Claire episode

SPOILER ALERT

Claire Danes always does mental breakdown stunningly. I’ve never had one but felt that this is exactly what it must be like.

What a sad moment for the character. She really broke my heart

Is this a Northern Exposure reboot?

Loved certain moments of the final episode. The scene with Fleishman and his daughter in the synagogue was extraordinary--it just showed the intense love between father and child.

I love the "You will never be younger than right now" montage.

Like R25 said, however, the conversation at the engagement party sort of got boring--it was too overwrought.

Otherwise, a really wonderful show.

Thought it was excellent though agree the ending felt like more than a bit of a cop-out.

They nailed all those people, from the rich husbands who are about a decade or two older than Eisenberg (who to quote many DLers, looks 10 years younger than he is) to the vapid JAPpy wives.

While I get the whole sense of "in my 20s I thought I could do anything and be anything and now all of a sudden I'm 40 and I've picked this one thing and now I can't do all those other things," it's not exactly a new idea-- Joan Didion covered it well in her essay "Goodbye To All That"

I wished there had been some awareness, even fleeting, that they all had it so much better than 99% of the people in the world.

New York magazine, predictably, has been having a field day with this show as the characters are their core audience.

Dull as dishwater. The sad life of the privileged--snore.

I’m watching, OP. I’m enjoying it so far.

Lizzy Caplan is excellent, as always.

But I found Claire Dane's A-C-T-I-N-G really tedious. She is always A-C-T-I-N-G, whereas Caplan was just being.

[quote]Claire Danes always does mental breakdown stunningly.

No, Claire Danes always does mental breakdowns relentlessly.

Adam Brody is so handsome. I want to do unspeakable things to him. That is all.

Good show.

Jesse is distractingly awful looking; I know this is superficial, but I can't stand looking at him.

[quote]I wished there had been some awareness, even fleeting, that they all had it so much better than 99% of the people in the world.

It's more realistic that they didn't, people rarely acknowledge their relative privilege vis a vis other people and times.

[quote]Jesse is distractingly awful looking

He really has lost whatever looks he had.

Agree R49 - Brody is hot AF - he aged well - and really was hoping for some scenes of him with his shirt off.

I would do unspeakable things to Adam Brody.

I found it gripping. Couldn’t stop watching it from one episode to the next. I really got involved with these people and their lives. Jesse was very good and Danes was like the adult version of her character from Igby Goes Down.

It's funny that Adam started off playing the dork on The OC.

But they even had it written into this show that the other characters think his main characteristic is being good-looking.

I was intrigued by the show, but never finished it. Claire Danes is such a shrill, irrepressible cunt with an old man's nose. I appreciated the male nudity, but wish Fleshyman had tried guys. Why wasn't Adam Brody gay? He was the most interesting part of the show that desperately needed some air. Something to spice the show up a little. I get that it was depicting rich, white, NYC Jews and their WASPy frenemies, but damn!

There were no WASPs on that show R58

All those rich women Claire Danes' character hung out with (and their husbands) were Jewish

Why do Claire Danes' characters always come off as cold, arrogant bitches? Every character she plays is like that. I'm sure she's perfectly nice IRL, but her characters are forever bitchy.

R60 Danes is a KNOWN cunt, so she is often cast as a such. Her husband is delicious, but the way they got together revels how much of a bitch she really is.

[quote] Jesse Eisenberg

He’s a tragic arrogant dickhead. No one likes him. I’ll never forget him bullying that girl interviewing him. He deserves to die in a grease fire.

[quote] Dull as dishwater.

Oh, dear.

R59 No, some were Jewish and some were WASPs. You clearly know nothing of the UES.

Why was it set in the summer of 2016? I kept waiting for some reveal about that but it never came.

It's been a while since I've seen it, but weren't there some minor references to the 2016 election? (Like anyone wants to be reminded of that).

I couldn't get through the first episode.

There were lots of Hillary signs in Libby’s New Jersey neighborhood. And one of the school moms says something about getting to keep their money if Trump is elected. I haven’t read the book so I guess it’s also the same time period.

It gives the story access to all the mid-to-late ‘90s scenes in earlier episodes.

[quote] I couldn't get through the first episode.

Fascinating. Please tell us more.

^ OK, it was a frau fest full of cliches and the voice-overs are grating. Additionally, it was ridiculous to believe that the ugly doctor who plays the lead is getting all these Tinder hits from women who are vastly more attractive than him.