TV Recap: “Fleishman is in Trouble” Episode 5 – “Vantablack”

Toby Fleishman’s upside-down version of New York City flips right-side up at the beginning of episode 5 of Fleishman is in Trouble, finding him uncharacteristically at an underground club on Statten Island watching supermodels fight, having placed a bet on which one would win. How did he get here? That’s what Libby Epstein’s narration asks as we flash back to where we left Toby last time. Here is a recap of “Vantablack.”

   

After Toby (Jesse Eisenberg) cried out all his tears in his office, he went home to an empty apartment. “I hate this place,” he announced to the ether, feeling empty, overheated, and alone. The things that used to bring Toby joy no longer felt fulfilling, such as hooking up with women from his dating app or dining out. So he went to his favorite place in the city, the Museum of Natural History, to check out the new Vantablack exhibit. He was going to wait until his kids were back from camp, but this was an emergency. “It is the closest you can get to a physical manifestation of the void,” Libby Epstein (Lizzy Caplan) explains about the brand-name super-black coating that is practically invisible to the naked eye. Rather than feeling awed or inspired, Toby was freaked out by it and went back to his apartment to wish for July to end.

Toby got a break from his despair during the work week when his days were so busy he didn’t have time to think about it. His nights, however, were another story. After trying to arrange going out for drinks with his residents, who were all busy, Toby called Seth Morris (Adam Brody) to find that he was out with his colleagues, cheering up Brian (Yaron Lotan) who just got dumped. Seth invited Toby to join and he soon found himself on a series of truncated adventures – playing Topgolf, going to a club to watch a recreation of the Britney/Justin dance-off, and finally ending up where we found Toby at the top of the episode, in an underground club on Staten Island placing bets on which of the two supermodels will win a fist fight. Mid-fight, Seth tells the bros they have to move on to their next thing – a sensory deprivation meal in the dark (but not as dark as Vantablack).

Dawn breaks as Toby and Seth find themselves walking alone back to their respective apartments. Toby asks his friend if this is what every night out with his boys is like, but Seth is distracted by a bakery loading a truck full of baguettes. He buys two from the man and hands one to Toby, biting into his as Toby heads home. “I’m sorry, I can’t actually eat this,” Toby apologizes once out of Seth’s earshot, handing it back to the baker. Toby goes to the city’s edge to watch the sunrise and his desperate loneliness suddenly returns. “He still had so much love and nowhere to put it,” Libby explains. So Toby pulls out his phone, fires off a “you up?” text, and we next find him with Nahid (Mozhan Marnò) in her apartment talking about his wild night. She asks him to lay on her bed face down and, using massage oils, begins to write messages for Toby to try and decipher with her fingertips on his back. Toby won’t remember what she wrote, but he will never forget how special it made him feel to have someone do something nice just for him.

The nice moment is ruined by Toby asking Nahid if they can go out for breakfast. She decides to open up and share her complicated situation. Nahid is technically married and her husband is a newscaster on a conservative network. She is Iranian and Jewish and was a virgin when they got married, but she soon found herself being made to feel weird for wanting sex from a man who didn’t. One day, she came home to find her husband receiving oral from his male assistant and they made an arrangement wherein they live apart and Nahid’s husband finances her lifestyle under the agreement that she appears as his arm candy at special events, putting up an image that they are a happy, loving couple. Toby asks if she will ever be happy never being free and she questions how free he actually is. He mentions that he’s fully divorced. “Being divorced doesn’t make you any less married,” Nahid says. She has to get somewhere and so Toby, too, must return to the sweltering heat of New York City in July.

As Toby walks, he passes a mobile pet adoption truck, making eyes with an adorable puppy in the window. “This is what he needed,” Libby’s narration explains, “someone loyal, someone to bring the family back together and replace what they lost. What he lost.”

Toby finds Seth and Libby in the park, interrupting a conversation in which Seth likens Libby’s renewed habit of smoking to an article he read about people who have affairs doing so in an effort to restore themselves to the person they were before they got married. “The kids have wanted a dog for a long time,” Toby says, introducing his friends to Bubbles, a name Hannah came up with for her dream dog when she was 3. Toby apologizes to Libby for being a jerk to her the last time they hung out. Seth shares that he’s depressed, having been fired and realizing that all of his friends in his field are 15 years younger than him. He feels like he will have to break up with Vanessa since he’s been hiding his lack of job from her, feeling sorry for himself for putting on a suit each day in case he gets called for a job interview. Libby notices the time and says she has to leave to catch a flight. “Where are you going?”, Seth asks. Libby responds, but the audio is bleeped out and a censor bar covers her mouth so we can’t read her lips. “Oh, I love it there,” he smiles earnestly. As Libby walks away, she explains the censorship: “The multi-national mass media and entertainment conglomerate that features several amusement parks as its profit center would rather I didn’t mention it by name.”

Libby arrives home to find that her husband Adam (Josh Radnor) is standing outside an SUV ready to drive them to the airport, their kids and luggage already loaded up. She apologizes profusely, running into the house to grab a few things and joining her husband in the van. She apologizes again. “That’s okay,” Adam sighs, “at least you got the restaurant reservations.” Libby forgot to make restaurant reservations.

 “The multi-national mass media and entertainment conglomerate that features several amusement parks as its profit center would rather I not depict scenes from this vacation,” Libby says. “So instead of telling you about my trip to there, I will use this time to tell you about my trip to here, meaning how I got to this place in my life.” Libby’s sights had always been set on becoming a writer at a specific men’s magazine whose marquee writer was Arthur Sylvan (Christian Slater), author of her favorite book – Decoupling and a Pulitzer-nominated story called The Hearts is a Lonely Diner. After college, she got a job there and worked her way up from editorial assistant to news assistant before being allowed to write fluff pieces while male writers got juicier assignments. In one of several vignettes, Libby attended a conversation between Jake Tapper (played by himself) and Arthur Sylvan, during which Tapper brought up many of the criticisms of Decoupling that had seen the book fall out of public favor, despite continuing to be reprinted with edits. After the session, Libby eagerly lines up to meet Arthur and have her copy of Decoupling signed. When she told Arthur that she works at his magazine, he comments that he’s never seen her there before. He ignores her comments about how inspired she was by his writing, interrupting her to ask her name, only to make her book’s autograph out to “Liddy.”

Time marched forward for Libby and before she knew it, she’d been at the magazine for fifteen years. During a party for Arthur Sylvan at a bar, her editor Glenn (Joe Tuttle) proposed a few story options to her, including a profile of a young starlet or a piece on NFL cheerleader coaches. They’re interrupted by Steiner (Andrew David Bridges), who congratulates Libby on the story she just wrote about Instagram. Glenn tells Libby that Steiner just returned from Cuba where he was doing a story on Castro. Libby gets frustrated with Glenn, pointing out that Steiner has been at the magazine for six months and got a big story already. Glenn defends his decision, saying that Steiner joined the magazine from GQ and had an established voice. “I have a voice,” she defended herself. When she got home that night, she re-read Decoupling before going to bed in tears. Adam woke up and tried to comfort her as Libby laments that she should show it to her boss by leaving the magazine and writing a novel.

That was two years ago. Libby returns from her family vacation to [CENSORED]. As the SUV drives them home, we see that her kids, Miles (Oscar Bennett) and Sasha (Lucinda Lee Dawson Gray) are wearing their souvenirs – mouse ears. “Here’s the secret to my vacation,” Libby shares. “While we were in lines and on rides and taking pictures, I wasn’t really with my family. I wasn’t in Florida. I wasn’t on an airplane. I wasn’t at a themed restaurant begging a hostess for a reservation everyone in the world knew to make weeks before but not me. I wasn’t even at home unloading the car.” She stands there dazed as Adam unloads the luggage, getting frustrated and saying, “I don’t know what to do with you.” Libby snaps back to reality and helps unload a bag. “I was with Toby,” she concludes.

Toby wakes up and steps out of bed, finding the floor wet with a Bubbles puddle. He picks up the dog and takes him outside for a potty break, interrupted by a phone call from the camp his children are at. Something is wrong. He needs to come right away. The counselor won’t say what happened over the phone. “You need to clean up that dog [poop],” a man says, pointing out the steaming pile on the curb. Toby doesn’t have a bag. He scoops up Bubbles and rushes back into the building. Toby freaks out about his kids as Seth and Vanessa (Frances Li) arrive to puppy sit. “Children are resilient,” Vanessa comforts him.

Toby rents a car to drive to Cam Marah to pick up his kids, turning on the radio and changing Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” to Calum Scott’s cover of “Dancing on My Own” by Robyn. Meeting with the counselor (Peter Grosz), Toby is told that Hannah broke a camp rule by taking a suggestive photo of herself and sending it to a boy, who then showed it to other campers. He won’t give Toby any additional details about the photo, telling him he can talk to his daughter about it on their drive home. Toby asks what will happen to the boy who shared the photo. Nothing. His parents are in Switzerland. “How nice for them,” Toby chides.

Toby enters a bunk to find Hannah (Meara Mahoney Gross) crying as she packs her bags. He hugs her and says “I know there is so little I can say to make this better,” adding that it won’t always feel as bad as it does now. They go to get Solly (Maxim Swinton) who is upset to be leaving camp early. At the car, Solly announces he forgot something and runs back to his bunk. Toby notices Hannah looking away from a group of boys nearby. Toby connects the dots, telling Hannah to get in the car as he marches over to the boys and recognizes Zach (Tobin Cleary) from one of Hannah’s hangouts in the Hamptons. Toby verbally berates the boy and storms away before the counselor can stop him.

While taking a break at a rest stop, Toby asks if they are going to his apartment or their mom’s place. Toby decides it’s time for a talk, asking his kids to sit on a park bench. “Your mother has decided to not be in our life so much,” he says. “She’s not on a business trip. She dropped you off that day and she doesn’t appear to be coming back to pick you up.” Hannah begins to sob as Toby apologizes for lying to them. Toby answered all their questions, giving answers that felt like deja vu from when he and Rachel told them they were getting a divorce. The drive back to the city begins eerily quiet, but then Solly starts singing “Fight Song” and Hannah joins in. It makes Toby smile.

The kids are still singing “Fight Song” as they walk through the hallway to Toby’s apartment door. As Toby jingles the keys, they hear a dog barking on the other side of the door. The kids squeal with excitement as they meet their new pet. You named it Bubbles, didn’t you?”, Hannah asks with glee. “Whose a good girl?”, Hannah and Solly ask the dog, unaway that Bubbles is a boy. Vanessa cooks a spaghetti dinner while Toby and Seth relax drinking wine. Hannah and Solly are ecstatic to be eating spaghetti at their dad’s place and as the group gathers around the table, the excitedly pile pasta on their plate as Toby covers his with salad. Toby marvels at the roller coaster of emotions the day has brought, feeling comfort in this happy scene at dinner. But soon, the table is cleared, his friends are gone, and Toby is left as a single parent to deal with what happened at camp. He goes to the kids room to find both Hannah and Solly asleep. Toby whispers to Hannah that he needs to run an errand, giving her phone back and asking her to call him if she needs anything.

“Long time no see, Dr. Fleishman,” The Golden’s doorman (Charles Everett) greets Toby as he enters the lobby. He asks if Rachel is home and the doorman confirms that she is, offering to call up for her. “No, she’s expecting me,” Toby says. He steps off the elevator at her floor and approaches the door, staring at it. He sits on the bench outside Rachel’s door and realizes that no amount of confrontation will make this situation better. He leaves without attempting to speak to his ex-wife, the missing mother of his children.

The weekend arrives and Toby ventures out into the city with his kids, officially a family of three. He takes them to the Museum of Natural History, excited to share the Vantablack exhibit with Solly, who loves science. Toby is now eager and optimistic as they disappear into the void-like exhibit. But within seconds of entering, Solly panics and takes off, running away. Toby and Hannah catch up with him outside the museum at a fountain, sitting with him. “Dancing on My Own” is playing.

That’s it for this week. We will find Toby, Libby, and Seth again on Hulu on December 15th in the 6th episode of FX’s Fleishman is in Trouble, titled “This Is My Enjoyment." Until then, here is the official episode description.

Toby tries to move on. Karen Cooper’s case comes to a head. Toby, Seth and Libby attend a reunion party. Libby reflects on her past.