Hot TV Takes, Bombs and Misogyny!
Nicole and Sasheer come with some spicy TV opinions (SOMEONE needs to leave 90 Day Fiancé!), The Last of Us gives me nightmares, and I say Fleishman and Paul T. Goldman are both in trouble!
Fleishman is in Trouble, Paul T. Goldman and How We Sympathize with Men Who Hate Women
WARNING! THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW! Scroll down to Nicole and Sasheer’s beautiful faces to skip them!
I finally watched Fleishman is in Trouble! If you listened to today’s pod, you know Nicole talks about it a bit, but I finally finished the whole show! Like everyone else, I also finished Paul T. Goldman last weekend which forced some interesting parallels between the two shows for me. Toby and Paul are two men who hate women so much, they’d rather create ridiculous fantasies than deal with the tragedy of their lives. Women don’t exist as actual people. In both shows, women are either a potential sex partner, a current sex partner they see as a goddess or a villain (i.e., they no longer want to sleep with him.)
Misogyny, both blatant and internalized, are clear themes and both shows, but I haven’t seen people really engaging with this. There’s speculation on what the show will do to Paul’s life. People feel bad for Paul because he’s still lonely at the end of the show. But Paul’s loneliness is a product of his own crimes. He ruined his relationship with his son. He alienated his first wife. This is a man who sex trafficked a woman via mail order bride. He ruined his second wife’s reputation and sent nudes of her to her parents! It is okay if this man is lonely, these are the consequences of his actions.
But will Paul ever see that? Probably not. In both of these narratives, the men at the center are never truly held accountable. They aren’t forced to reckon with the damage they’ve done or the women they hurt. They aren’t asked to re-think their relationships with women. In the case of Paul, the show can only be a success for him. Even when it tries to be critical of him and finally shows us the other side of Paul’s story, it doesn’t matter. Paul is a man who can’t see beyond himself to see the people around him. He only ever wanted to see his story on the big screen, to confirm the notion in his head that his story is special and deserving. That he’s not just a guy who got played by a woman who cheated on him, it’s something more interesting than that. It’s deeper than that. It’s not.
Fleishman is in Trouble does the same. As Lizzy Caplan’s character tries to discover herself, she serves to tell us Toby’s story. This makes sense. Libby is a character full of internalized misogyny. She’s of that generation where feminism got twisted into meaning “I’m not like other girls, boys like me!” Libby can hang with the guys at the men’s magazine she works at and she can read the misogynist rape-y male author in a “cool way” other girls don’t get. When Toby turns Rachel into the villain of his life (which, btw, happens after she’s assaulted while giving birth, not when she has a breakdown and leaves him with the kids), Libby is happy to be on his side. She amps him up and encourages him to see just how basic and horrible every mom or working woman is but her.
And goodness, Toby himself is a man whose ex-wife goes missing and he never once considers that she may be in need of help. When his friends eventually bring this up (like…5 episodes in…), he tells a story about a time Rachel got roofied and came home late. Toby was happy, because it meant there was a reason for Rachel’s behavior and she wasn’t just being mean to him. Apparently, the lesson he did not take from that story is “women are often targeted for violence and maybe something bad has happened to this woman if you have not heard from her in weeks.”
Toby’s issues with women permeate every aspect of his life. At work, he pushes whatever fantasy he wants on a female patient who’s in a coma. He imagines that she’s smart and worthy of living life (oh and also she wants to fuck him in his fantasies). When Toby sees photos of the woman’s actual life: she’s just some chick who got wrecked at a bachelorette party and loves male strippers, his sympathy for her disappears. He instantly becomes cold to her family and only later realizes he shouldn’t be so mean to…her husband. The woman in a coma? The actual life that will no longer be able to thrive, grow and explore? Who cares? Toby mostly thinks this will be a huge bummer for her husband.
Because, well, Rachel’s disappearance is a bummer for him. It never rises to the occasion of an actual tragedy. It’s just a thing that gets in the way of him fucking women who uplift his self-esteem. It’s a thing that’s forcing him to be an actual parent, a thing he is very bad at doing, by the way! Even with his kids: Toby seems to take a special interest in honing his son’s hobbies and caring for his fears. Toby’s daughter is clearly upset her mom has disappeared, she’s desperate for acceptance and she sees her father giving attention to women who show up naked to his door.
When she eventually sends a nude to a boy at her summer camp, it’s easy to see what led her to do this. Toby stands up for his daughter, but he never sits down and talks to her about how the way he treats women might rub off on how she sees herself. There’s never any attempt to use this as a learning moment for her or Toby. In contrast, when Toby’s 9-year old son gets interested in sex and spends hours online looking at porn, Toby understands that this is worthy of parental guidance and a one-on-one conversation. His son’s growing understanding of sexuality is important and something to be guided. His daughter’s is best left a mystery, because that’s what women should be: little enigmas you get to project onto.
We see this in Toby’s relationship with a “married” woman. Toby has occasional hook-ups with a woman who is in a contracted marriage. Her “husband” is a famous rightwing talk show host who’s in the closet. She acts as his beard for money and security. It works for them. Whatever. What’s important is that she’s totally up front about this with Toby. She makes her boundaries, desires and needs clear. Does Toby hear any of this? No! Toby decides that he wants something normal and pushes her to break her “no dates” rule for him. It’s not that Toby wants this woman or truly loves her, it’s just that HE wants stability because his life is a mess. It has nothing to do with her and it never did. She sticks to her guns and lets him leave without a fight.
When Fleishman is in Trouble ends, you don’t know if Rachel got help. You don’t know if she managed to get her life back together or how she’ll make things up to her kids. We get that closure for Libby, but Rachel remains a void. Like Paul T. Goldman’s wife, she’s somehow at the center of all this but not really there at all. Toby all but told the mother of his children to fuck off when he found out she was having a life-threatening mental breakdown and no one is ever like “Hey man, you’re kind of being a dick.” Instead, like Libby, most people rushed to sympathize with him.
And to be clear: I liked both of these shows! I think these are interesting points the shows WANT to make. We’re supposed to see these things and talk about them. These characters aren’t supposed to be perfect, but I do wonder why the conversation around them is focused on pity when accountability is right there and it’s way more interesting. I think Paul T. Goldman is a must watch (even if it is harder to watch because it’s all real) and Fleishman is in Trouble is some premium white people drama you can enjoy while sipping on a malbec over the weekend. Those white people have so much malaise over the homes they own and healthy families they have, it’s one of my favorite genres.
Ohhhh, this episode brings me so much joy. I’ve been a one person street team for Home Economics and Grand Crew’s season two debut is truly my only reason for living at the moment! So, I got everyone’s favorite best friends together to talk TV hot takes and favorite career moments. From working with T. Grace to Jason Mantzoukas’ on-set egg etiquette for Nailed It!—We TALK ABOUT IT! my producer only had one note for this one: “I cut out a lot of the incest stuff.” You wanna know what that’s about!
TV Quick Takes:
I am obviously obsessed with the woman in the intro of The Last of Us S1E2. I want to give her an Emmy just for this moment. The word “bomb” has been redefined for me now. It no longer means failure, now it means stepping into a show for exactly 6-minutes, delivering the performance of a lifetime and then going home. She’s a queen. I am starting her campaign.
Anyway, I love The Last of Us. A TV show hasn’t made me actually scream in years. But when ol’ boy came flying over that table in the museum? I ran into another room. I love a good horror drama and I’m all in.
Darcey and Stacey is back for a brand new season. One of them got their buccal fat removed so you can tell them apart now if that’s what was keeping you from watching.
Extreme Sisters is also back! I am obsessed with this very creepy show about sisters who want to do everything in unison. Two of them date the same guy and get their haircut the exact same way. You can tell everyone is turning it up for the cameras, so it’s mostly harmless drama.
Capt. Sandy did the right thing on Below Deck this week (fired Camille) and Capt. Lee tried to yell at her about it on Twitter! He asked Capt. Sandy to do him a favor, now he’s mad at the way she’s doing the favor? Anyway, he quote tweeted me and I respect Capt. Lee, but I stand by MY captain. Below Deck Adventure is still boring.
The last Velma episode all but confirmed they’re going to focus on her attraction to Fred and I thought that would make people mad.
The Night Court reboot is making me laugh. It feels like it’s 2003 again when I watch it!
AMERICAN AUTO IS BACK! HELLO?! I have to tell you because NBC forgets to promote one of their funniest sitcoms. I loved the season two premiere, go watch it on Hulu.
My Hulu started playing My Name is Earl from the beginning and good news: that show still holds up! Hilarious as hell!
This new season of Ghosts has been killing it, right? I love everything with Freddie.
The final part of the 90 Day Fiancé Tell All finally aired! We’re done! The Other Way is coming back and we are free! Also, I’ll be doing weekly coverage right here for paid subscribers!
The L Word: Generation Q finale…they gave us the Bette and Tina wedding that someone deserved, I guess. Maybe the one that Jenny’s killer deserved.
What Else?
If you’re in LA, I have a show tonight at The Yard Theater! Get a ticket!
The actress in The Last Of Us cold open is Christine Hakim who's the Meryl Streep of Indonesia (her fans were very excited they cast actors from Indonesia to play Indonesians - apparently that doesn't happen a lot). And give her an Emmy right now...
Thrilled American Auto is back!
Have you seen the UK Ghosts? I loved it but I've held off watching the US remake because I'm a bit wary of UK->US remakes (possibly residual IT Crowd trauma, the US pilot of that made me want to leap off a building). Interested in your opinion on the comparison, if you've seen both.