Fleishman Is A "Nice" Guy

Upper East Side Perspectives

Happy New Year! New year old me! I just want to say a big thank you to all you bad people who stood beside me and my bad taste and New York antics.

Quick note, starting next week you’ll see more locks on these essays but do not fret I will always have an accessible really bad taste essay for all my friends here.

I stepped out of the house for just a bit during the holiday break, but I really used this time to binge television shows before the spring semester. I got into Fleishman Is In Trouble. A review? Well, you start laughing then you… oh no, I’m crying. That would be my true review of the show.

You know, what I’m about to dive into should be 'hashtag ad’ sponsored by Hulu but I’m doing this for the people. With little to no spoilers. The mini-series is also a book. I don’t have time to read that book, but when television shows are adapted from books, book readers always say with an irritatingly grand voice “ The book is better.”

The premise of the show is a New York City couple who are going through a divorce they’re co-parenting and it begins with the husband’s perspective of what went wrong ( Dr. Fleishman). And ends with the wife’s perspective ( Rachel Fleishman). Narrated by Dr. Fleishman’s friend Libby we also see her life and what she is dealing with.

While watching this show, I related to separation and co-parenting I related to the fear of forgetting who you are when you become a parent and having to choose between your dreams and growing up.

Now I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t intellectualize deconstruct and turn this into an essay!

This upper east side couple, dealing with class, their upbringing, their need to one-up each other, and an ex-husband who is unprepared for parenting on a whim, because Rachel is missing.

Claire Danes in “Fleishman Is in Trouble” Screenshot FX

Dr. Fleishman is the perfect portrayal of every nice guy I’ve ever talked to, befriended, slept with, worked with, and reassured. If you never reassured a nice guy that he’s nice you’re lucky and I hate you.

The nice guy will kiss the ground you walk on, sounds great right? If you are under the weather with a bad cold and have been working all day, and you walk in the door dragging yourself to the sofa and plop down and moan in agony. He will rush to put on the best organic peppermint tea that was 7 dollars, not for a box but he paid for a loose tea bag for that price in a curated gentrified neighborhood that he won’t move into because he knows the harm gentrification causes, but does all his grocery shopping there instead of the C-town next door. He steeps this amazing tea warms up the soup he made earlier and serves it to you. You’re so preoccupied with being in pain you don’t even want to eat, you don’t want the overpriced peppermint tea, and you just fall asleep.

The soup gets cold, the peppermint tea has lost its kick of flavor that you only get from the first couple of sips. Damn it you fell asleep. The next day he’s acting weird, you sense it he denies it. He will tell everyone what he did for you that night and how it wasn’t appreciated he goes on about this and gets the reassurance and validation from everyone else that will tell him he’s nice.

You say sorry for passing out. Even though I know, this sort of niceness is conditional. It only works if the niceness is acknowledged.

Nice people believe being nice will triumph over anything that others are feeling about them. Their niceness feels great until it’s used to punish you. To remind you that you’re not as nice.

I was annoyed with how nice Dr. Fleishman was, how much he resents his wife for her not seeing how nice he is, how down to earth he is, and how he thinks he’s better than her because of his relationship with money versus hers. He’s a doctor because he “cares” not for the money. And Rachel is a dry-witted, insult-throwing, money-over-everything distant mother you’re supposed to hate her. You’re supposed to pick a side.

Okay there’s so much more I’m not telling you, the nice guy thing yeah it irked me but there is more misery in that show that I relate to that I didn’t want to admit to myself and I guess I’m doing that, now, here.

There is something that truly does change you as you get older, share a house with a romantic partner, become a parent, become a parent…becoming a parent.

I relate to Rachel, I remember when I went missing how I couldn’t move, how I had this beautiful baby and wondered if this feeling was normal.? Am I supposed to hate something I created? How I almost died 5 days after giving birth. I had severe blood loss due to having a retained placenta then examined by a male doctor that you don’t know… examined harshly. They never show this stuff in the baby books with the white mother holding her baby smiling down at him cradling him with such gentleness, every fucking picture in those baby books was pleasant and warm. Why didn’t anyone tell me that you change, that your youth ends right there? That you lose body autonomy when having a baby. That the definition of self-ownership dismantles. I asked myself what happened? Fighting through a nasty depression with an infant and going through the list of things that I use to be before parenting. What happened I can’t go back to being whatever I thought was freer.

Blaming everyone, blaming everything because with every fight you hope that by the end of it, it will bring you back to something familiar it will create a path that will lead you to where the old you exist and she’s younger with a career and a baby that you are in love with, but the nice guy doesn’t want to fight he’s making your peppermint tea! Yes of course I’ve been with a nice guy, but I didn’t share his perspective. Did I leave that out? Oh, right, the nice guy who was with a closeted lesbian who was angry who was hurting who was dying who was violent, and an addict. I guess I should’ve mentioned that.

Fleishman Is In Trouble is a mess of many thoughts, revelations, perspectives, and stories that can’t all be fleshed here, and whoever relates to it will pick the one part of the mess they connected with more, the part that triggers them that hurts them that makes them the victim. Like what I did about the nice guy bit. Also maybe the show doesn’t relate to a viewer it’s just a good show. And it’s allowed to be that.

Witnessing the characters enter the full of self-actualization, and when that self-actualization happened, to me, it was one that I wasn’t prepared for because mothering was messy, I had to mother a baby and myself and a partner. And they were in their own fight and I was in mine and that left no room for the other to see anything but ourselves. It’s human.

The story of the Fleishmans is very human.

And I still don’t like nice guys or peppermint tea.

-C