“Fleishman Is In Trouble” doesn’t have any the-butler-did-it style twists. Instead, it forces the viewer to adopt another perspective. One of its two major shifts comes in Episode 7 (“Me-Time”) when the audience learns that Rachel is doing way worse than anyone — including Toby. Until this episode, Rachel had been depicted as the villain, but when Libby runs into Rachel, who’s been AWOL for weeks, she remembers an important lesson from her magazine writing days — there’s always another side to the story.
In flashbacks, we see that Rachel’s icy, hyper-confident persona is exactly that; a mask she wears to hide the fact that she’s really a middle-class nobody in need of affirmation. Her trauma began when she lost her parents and worsened when a botched birthing plan left her with severe postpartum depression. She isn’t blameless in the dissolution of her marriage, but when we see Rachel as a whole person and not just from Toby’s oversimplified vantage point, it’s much easier to have sympathy for her. In fact, it becomes clear Toby wasn’t adequately there for her when she needed him.
Her fling with Sam Rothberg (Josh Stamberg) is merely a distraction from her mental illness. Their wellness retreat weekend propels her into a full nervous breakdown, during which time she loses weeks of her life to mania, not to mention her career. The immediate fallout is devastating, but thanks to Libby, Rachel is about to get the help she needs and deserves.
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