The show may be titled Fleishman is in Trouble, but after the 7th episode, “Me-Time,” it’s clear that “The Fleishmans are in Trouble” would’ve worked just as well. Libby happened upon a dazed and confused Rachel in Central Park at the end of the previous episode. Why didn’t Rachel return to pick up her kids? You’re about to find out in this recap of the penultimate episode.
(Linda Kallerus/FX)
Libby Epstein (Lizzy Caplan) approaches Rachel Fleishman (Claire Danes), who sits on a park bench holding an uneaten bagel and looking confused. “Rachel, what happened?” Libby asks. “What do you mean?”, Rachel responds. Libby is confused as she asks why Rachel disappeared and didn’t pick up her kids. Rachel mumbles that she lost her phone and can’t seem to remember how many days are in July. Libby offers to call Toby and Rachel asks her not to, saying she needs some protein and will feel better after she eats. Libby quickly texts her husband Adam that she will be delayed further and will explain everything when she gets home. She then offers to take Rachel home. “Yeah, it would be good to catch up,” Rachel says.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” Rachel apologizes for the messy state of her deluxe apartment at The Golden. The windows are covered in newspaper, there are empty takeaway bags littering the floor. Rachel offers Libby coffee and, although she declines the offer, attempts to make some anyway, dropping the coffee maker on the kitchen floor. Rachel dodges Libby’s questions by offering her tea instead. “I feel like I don’t know where my toaster is, but I do have some bread,” she offers before b wreaking down in tears. Libby escorts Rachel to the living room couch and sits her down, promising to keep secrets if Rachel just needs someone to talk to. “I got dumped,” Rachel cries. “By who?”, Libby asks confused. “Everyone,” Rachel answers.
What follows is Rachel’s story, which was given to Libby out of order and has been reassembled chronologically. “Rachel was busier than she’d ever been,” Libby explains, taking us back to a year prior, before Toby asked her for a divorce. She was in her office fielding multiple phone calls when she got a call from Sam Rothberg (Josh Stamberg), whose nephew wanted to get into acting and he wanted to know if Rachel would meet with him. “She said yes because she always said yes,” Libby explains. One month later, a large bouquet of red roses arrive at the office for Rachel, personally delivered by Sam Rothberg, who had to thank Rachel himself for helping his nephew break into the business. “You’re amazing,” he complimented her, in awe of her speed and efficiency, which prompted her to joke about how Toby says if she ran a hospital, it would be the only profitable one. Sam sits down on Rachel’s couch and brings up a job opening at his pharmaceutical company, offering it to Toby. “He’s got this whole thing about patient interface,” Rachel told him, adding that Toby would never accept the offer. “I’m going to ask him” Sam replies, inviting Rachel to join him for a drink. “Was it weird that her best school mom friend’s husband was in her office?”, Libby asks. “Was it weird that he wanted to go out with her? Yes, yes it was.”
(Linda Kallerus/FX)
Rachel and Miriam Rothberg (Jenny Powers) became friends six years prior at a mommy-and-me class. Rachel had a hard time making friends, and Miriam was her fast pass to get her kids into the best schools. Miriam is the daughter of a pharmaceutical magnate, and she was fascinated by Rachel’s work as a theater agent. We see one of their conversations on a stroll through central park, where Miriam told Rachel that she needs some time for herself outside of work and being a mother. She invites Rachel to go see a show, encouraging her to skip work for the rest of the day. “And suddenly Rachel and Miriam were friends… and then Miriam’s friends were Rachel’s friends.” Rachel was in with the in-crowd of New York City mothers.
Orphaned at a young age, Rachel was raised by her grandmother, who enrolled her in Catholic school even though she was Jewish. She was instantly an outsider there, feeling like she spoke with an accent everyone else didn’t understand. Until she met Toby (Jesse Eisenberg), who didn’t treat her like a foreigner. On her first visit to California with Toby to meet his parents, his father (Seth Barrish) asked about Rachel’s parents and unearthed her sad childhood. “I still feel like an orphan,” Toby’s mother (Anne L. Nathan) cried at the dinner table after sharing that it’s been a year since her mother passed away. As Toby’s father drastically changes the subject, Rachel excused herself to go cry in the bathroom. “I’m great,” she lied to Toby through the door when he came to check on her.
“You have to understand, Rachel never had a family,” Libby explains as we observe a montage of Rachel and Toby building their life together. And then they were about to be parents. We see the horrific events of Hannah’s birth, this time from Rachel’s point of view. Rachel’s doctor isn’t available. Toby’s colleagues come to the door bearing gifts. He steps outside to talk to them. And then Dr. Romalino (Vincenzo Amato), saying he was just going to check things out, produces a probe and uses it to forcefully break Rachel’s water. It hurts! She screams! And then, in a drugged fugue, Rachel is paralyzed, watching her insides being removed like shadow puppets through a blue cloth that obstructs her view. “Any power she ever thought she had was suddenly gone,” Libby explains as Rachel sees Toby leaning over her, telling her it’s over. “It was the worst day of her life.” Toby tries to hand baby Hannah to Rachel. “I still can’t feel my legs,” she declines. “It’s not safe. What if I have to run?” Toby looks confused as Rachel gives in, reaching out her arms to hold her newborn baby. “Rachel looked down and knew that the baby knew what she was thinking,” Libby shares. “She knew she would never forgive her.” Rachel sobs as a nurse wheels her out of the hospital, baby Hannah in her arms. “This was Rachel’s introduction to motherhood.”
(Linda Kallerus/FX)
Rachel holds her baby as she watches Toby leave for work out of her apartment window. Time becomes meaningless, with Rachel seemingly in the same position with Hannah as the sun rises and sets repeatedly through the window. “How was your day?”, Toby asks when he returns from work, eliciting sobs from Rachel. He gives her a flier about postpartum depression. “I don’t feel sad, just crazy like I’m a car stuck in a gear,” she tells him. So Toby suggests that Rachel reconnect with the women from her prenatal yoga class. She was included on an email chain after the class ended, but couldn’t bring herself to reach out when all of their births seemed so idyllic compared to hers. Still, she sends an email on her Blackberry and instantly gets declines with excuses, including one of the mothers saying she’s in the Hamptons. But when she went to walk Hannah in Central Park, she bumped into them. “The rejection nearly knocked her over.” Back in the apartment, Hannah would consistently take an afternoon nap, during which Rachel would get on her knees and cry. “She called that her me-time, but she was being funny.”
A group postpartum therapy session was offered at Toby’s hospital, and Rachel eventually went, passing Hannah to Toby in the waiting room. On the wall is an ad for a survivor support group, which feels more like what Rachel needs. “Welcome, dear,” the sweet counselor (Maryann Towne) says to Rachel as she enters. Rachel sits and listens as the other women recount their own rape experiences. When it becomes Rachel’s turn to speak, all she can do is break down, sobbing and heaving. She is instantly surrounded by the support of these women who are able to empathize with her like nobody else. She goes to Toby’s office after the meeting to pick up Hannah, and he asks how it went. “I can not do any more talking,” she smiles. “Now there’s my wife,” he smiles back.
“For a while, the world seemed to have some light in it again,” Libby explains, a light that was quickly snuffed out in the hospital elevator. While on her way up to another group therapy session, Rachel ended up alone in the elevator with Dr. Romalino. She wanted to say something but ended up cowering in the corner the whole way up. “What was it that he’d seen in her that would make him think that she would tolerate that? How had he looked at her, at Rachel, and thought, now there’s someone I can victimize?” Rachel arrives at the floor of her meeting safely, but decides to return to the ground floor and leave. “She wasn’t a victim,” Libby says, “She was Rachel [freaking] Fleishman!” Rachel goes home, puts on her business jacket, discovers that it still fits, and pulls out her Blackberry. Cut to Rachel meeting with Alejandra Lopez (Juani Feliz), the talented playwright she discovered, poaching her away from her employer to start her own company.
Presidentrix! is an instant Broadway smash and the rest is herstory. Fleishman & Co. is off and running and requires all of Rachel’s attention. We see Toby reach a boiling point when Rachel comes home late on the first night of Passover. Toby had tried to reach his wife multiple times that day and she didn’t have time to call him back. He becomes even angrier when she says he should call her assistant if he needs to reach her. “You don’t have to call a nurse to get me on the phone,” Toby snaps. Rachel mentions that she can’t be away from work for the full week to visit Toby’s family, asking to trim the trip down to just the seders. “You’re like a 1950s dad,” Toby scolds Rachel, “You come in, pat the kids on the head, and then you’re gone.” The fight turns to money, with Toby accusing Rachel of being greedy. “I choose safety over everything, I choose acceptance for our kids over everything,” she defends herself, adding that Toby never had to worry about either thing growing up. She brings up how she wants the kids to have opportunities to make the right kind of friends that can help secure their futures, which makes Toby scoff, saying that friends are made organically and he feels like Rachel is networking their children.
“The system was run by mothers, for mothers,” Libby shares about the world of setting up playdates and keeping peace with other mothers. It was a pressure that Rachel was under that Toby was oblivious to. We see the party at Paniquil, the Rothberg’s second home, and Rachel is with the wives while Toby is off with the husbands. Rachel is the only career woman in the bunch, smiling and nodding her head in compliance as the other wives refer to motherhood as the toughest job of all. “Having an actual job and being a mother is the hardest job in the world,” Libby’s narration says. “You don’t have to say it, it’s just obvious.” Rachel feels like these friends will be gone in a minute if she goes against the grain.
We revisit the fight Toby and Rachel had after Sam Rothberg offered Toby a lucrative job, one he accused Rachel of conspiring about behind his back. Rachel breaks down when Toby tells her that the marriage isn’t working. It was just the beginning, with Rachel’s abandonment issues resurfacing each time Toby proposes getting divorced. During one couple’s counseling session, Rachel arrived late, which gave Toby a license to instantly validate all of his criticisms of her to their therapist. “Rachel and Toby tried to fix it, but the thing wasn’t broken,” Libby explains,
It was gone. And then, it was over.”
(Linda Kallerus/FX)
“She was shocked to find out that when it actually happened, it was fine,” Libby continues as we see Rachel’s first weekend alone at The Golden without the kids. Those feelings were aided by the fact that months before, Rachel had begun an affair with Sam Rothberg. He continually came to her office to see her, using conversations about his nephew at first, but always inviting her out for a drink. “It was supposed to be temporary,” Libby continues, with Rachel’s newfound solace opening the door for Sam to come to her anytime he wanted. Sam told Rachel that he loved that she worked. He wanted to hear all of her office gossip. And then, one night while drinking wine on Rachel’s couch, Sam leaned in and said “I’m only happy when I’m with you.” Rachel told Sam that she is working on a movie deal for Presidentrix! and that she’s considering opening an L.A. office, which would give them space to be a couple without their exes nearby. “I love you,” Sam told her. “Sam accepted her,” Libby explains. “He was impressed with her. She began to wonder if she didn’t have to choose between love and acceptance.”
The biggest downside to the divorce was trying to co-parent with Toby. We see Toby as Rachel calls him to tell him she wants to open an L.A. office that would see her getting a second home and living there for part of the year. When he threatens to sue her if she moves the kids there, the conversation turns ugly. Toby belittles her, saying that the kids wouldn’t even notice if she was gone. “It was the meanest thing anyone had ever said to her, and he had said some mean things,” Libby shares. Rachel hung up on Toby, sitting on her bed and starting to cry when Sam calls. “I have great news,” he says, revealing that a spot opened up at the last minute at the Everglades Wellness Center, a perfect getaway since he’s been getting into yoga and his wife won’t question his trip. The timing isn’t great for Rachel, she’s in the middle of finalizing the movie deal, but Sam is persistent and argues that she can work the deal from her phone.
Hannah (Meara Mahoney Gross) and Solly (Maxim Swinton) are groggy as Rachel enters Toby’s apartment in the middle of the night to put them to sleep in their beds. She peeks into Toby’s bedroom, watching her ex-husband sleep, before she departs. Rachel seems dazed as Sam checks them in at Everglades. They waste no time, jumping right into bed. Sam relaxes and vapes as he asks Rachel if she’s okay. “Yeah, work stuff,” she says. Sam opens a tin of edibles and offers Rachel one. “I can’t do that stuff,” she says, adding that something like that gave her bad hallucinations when she was prescribed it after Hannah’s birth.
A massage therapist (Francine Davita) tells Rachel to take deep breaths, something Rachel seems unable to do. She suggests something else, and we next see Rachel sitting upright in a sunlit room full of acoustic sound foam panels. A therapist (Dennis Ooi) tells Rachel to visualize all of her anxiety and stress as little particles that attach themselves to her screams, releasing them by letting them out. She is timid at first, but eventually loosens up and lets out a scream so long and loud that, despite being told the room is soundproof, it seems to be audible outside of Everglades. “One of her screams was for Hannah, who had Rachel’s disease of the desire for love and acceptance,” Libby reveals. “One was for Solly, who thought he was allowed to be himself in this world and didn’t realize there would be consequences for it, no matter what Mr. Rogers said. She screamed for her mother, who was perhaps her last chance at being a normal person. She screamed for Toby, who promised he would never leave, and spent their years together threatening to leave her, and then finally did.” Breathless, Rachel seems to have let out a great deal of stress, her eyes misty.
Sam looks at Rachel with disgust as she sits across from him scarfing down a salad as if she hasn’t eaten in days. That night, he lays in bed vaping while Rachel paces the floor, restless and breathless. “What is it with you?”, he asks. “I don’t know, I can’t seem to calm down,” Rachel shares. Sam’s solution is to offer her some Ambien, bragging about the perks of working in pharmaceuticals. Rachel had read stories about people doing crazy things after taking Ambien and refused the offer. Laying down next to Sam, Rachel seems on the verge of a panic attack as she cries herself to sleep.
Rachel awakes to the sound of the zipper of Sam’s duffel bag sliding closed. “I don’t get that much time to myself,” he huffs. “I was hoping this would be fun; You were supposed to be fun.” Rachel is confused, they were supposed to be there for two more days together. Sam walks out and abandons her. The irony is that Rachel, who has flopped back on the bed in resignation, is wearing a workout shirt that says “You can go home now.” Her world flips upside down. The reality of the situation weighs heavily on her. She’s divorced. She’s alone. She feels unlovable. “Who she was was unacceptable,” Libby continues as Rachel’s phone endlessly buzzes for her attention – work, the kids, Toby. “She couldn’t go to sleep while her phone was nearby,” Libby shares as we see a dazed Rachel stumble into the woods, get on her knees, and use her fingers to dig a hole and bury her cell phone.
“Mrs. Rothberg?”, the concierge (Katie Lee Hill) calls to Rachel as she walks through the lobby. Rachel is told that it’s past checkout time and a big group is coming in who will need her room. Rachel asks for a late checkout and she goes to the woods to try and find her phone. It’s a lost cause. She uses the front desk phone to call her assistant Simone (Maggie Horan), asking her to arrange a ride for her back to the city and asking her to order her a new phone.“Mrs. Fleishman, long time no see,” The Golden doorman (Charles Everett) says as he welcomes Rachel back to The Golden. She goes to her apartment and tries to get to sleep, but sleep won’t come. She remembers a roommate in college who always seemed content when she would cheat on her diet by ordering beef lo mein. Rachel calls up her local Chinese restaurant and places an order, accepting it from the doorman and digging into the carton only to find that she was disgusted by it. She puts the carton in the fridge, goes back to her bedroom, fails to fall asleep, and then remembers her old roommate's love of beef lo mein. She repeats this cycle over and over, losing track of the days and time. Adding to the mix, she tries some of Sam’s green gummy bears, which make her even more paranoid. She does eventually get to sleep, but it’s a restless one haunted by dreams of Hannah speaking only in Rachel’s office lingo, followed by one in which both Hannah and Solly are calling to Rachel from the foot of her bed, but she’s unable to get to them because her whole body is paralyzed.
“She had to get out of there,” Libby explains as we see Rachel stumble into Central Park, lay down on the grass, and finally fall asleep again. She is awoken by three familiar faces – Miriam Rothberg with her friends Roxanne (Ashley Austin Morris) and Cyndi (Joy Suprano), who stumbled into her and ask if she’s joining them for their cycle class. “I’m waiting on a call so I can’t,” she tells them. When Roxanne asks if Rachel’s okay, she says “Just taking some me-time,” a phrase that is enthusiastically responded to by the three women telling Rachel they’re proud of her. She rolls over and goes back to sleep.
Rachel goes to the front desk at The Golden to ask if her assistant sent over her new phone yet. “She delivered something for you a few weeks ago,” the doorman blinks in confusion. “What do you mean?”, Rachel asks, learning that she’s blacked out for several weeks. The first thing she does is rush to Toby’s apartment building, but fear prevents her from going inside. “She knew that whatever it was that he said, he would be right.” It would’ve been too much for Rachel to bear. She needed to start small. She goes to Alejandra’s apartment with bottled water and a wrapped sandwich as a peace offering, learning that her first client, the one that helped build her own business, returned to Rachel’s former employer when her agent disappeared, and she needed to close on a movie deal. “I’m so proud of what you achieved,” Rachel cries. “I’m very sorry I let you down.”
In search of food, Rachel bought a bagel and sat down on a park bench to eat it, but found herself staring into space. That’s when Libby found her. Rachel doesn’t know how her windows got covered up by newspaper. And when she gets up to get something from the fridge, she is confused by all of the shelves being full of beef lo mein. “I think you need some help, Rachel,” Libby tells her.
“I’d spent the whole summer listening to Toby’s story through his eyes alone,” Libby explains. She forgot the number one rule of journalism, to always consider the other side of the story. She helps Rachel into bed, promising to stay with her and protect her so she can sleep in peace. “You know, I always liked you,” Rachel tells Libby, adding “I just thought you didn’t like me.” Libby is speechless. She turns off the lamp on the nightstand and pulls out her phone, seeing a voie message from Toby. “Hey, I’m sorry about before, I hope you’re not mad,” the message says, “I’ve just been going through a lot lately.” Libby closes her phone, sitting on the edge of Rachel’s bed to let that last line sink in.
It all comes to an end next week when the eighth and final episode of FX’s Fleishman is in Trouble streams on Hulu. I’ll be back for one last detailed recap of “The Liver." Here is the brief, unhelpful, and almost rude description of the final episode.
Seth throws a party.
I hope to see you there.