Imagine the situation: A man, separated a few months ago, wakes up in the morning to find that his two children, who should arrive a few hours later, are asleep in their beds. The mother left them at dawn and now tells her by phone that she is going to a yoga retreat, that she will be back on Sunday, that she had to bring everything forward.
It sounds like a classic altercation between a couple who have been divorced for a short time and still have disagreements and small fights over the schedules and the children’s day in each house.
But not. With that image and that scene, Toby Fleishman’s life is regarding to be turned upside down because on Sunday his ex-wife, Rachel, doesn’t show up. She doesn’t show up, she doesn’t answer the phone, nothing.
Don’t imagine a police plot. There are no murders here, no conspiracies. It’s just – just? – that Rachel doesn’t come back.
The series is called “Toby’s New Life” and it’s on Star+. Starring Jesse Eisenberg (the one from “The Illusionists” and “Social Network”) and Claire Danes (the one from “Homeland”), it is a ball that is unwrapping little by little. Narrated by a voice-over, which we realize halfway through the first chapter is that of Libby, Toby’s best friend, the plot wanders between the edges of humor and drama, along that thin thread in which the story of a marriage that began happily ends up being a path that forks, full of resentments, reproaches, differences.
The series starts off funny. Toby has just been divorced, following a fifteen-year marriage in which he gradually felt abandoned and belittled by his wife, and now he is trying to “make up” time with dating apps.
He’s a physician, a hepatologist, in New York City. He is a well-known doctor, but not someone who is especially interested in moving up and making a career, but rather in being a good doctor. And that seems to be the point of the first disagreement with Rachel, an ambitious woman, a representative of theater artists who dreams of everything the rich in New York dream of: exclusive schools, an apartment on the Upper East Side, a weekend house week in the Hamptons. Nothing might be further from what Toby wants.
In fact, Toby seems hellbent on teaching his kids that money isn’t everything; that the world is very bad because the poor cannot see the sunset in the cities because of the buildings, and the spectacle has been reserved only for the rich can enjoy them in places as exclusive as the Hamptons, which he and his children clearly hate adore.
Toby lives in a tiny apartment compared to the one they shared as a family, so the boys find no fun in those few environments. Especially Hannah, the girl, a teenager herself, who blames Toby for the prolonged absence of his mother; that she is ashamed of his unkempt appearance, that he hates each of the healthy foods that her father proposes and his refusal to buy her a cell phone.
story of a marriage
It starts off funny, but slowly turns serious. Although it is told by Libby, who clearly prefers Toby over Rachel, there is a whole chapter (the third) dedicated to the moment of pregnancy and first delivery, which is shocking. Rachel has suffered and it is not clear if anyone accompanied her or understood.
The series does not advance linearly on Toby’s problem of the moment but goes back in time. It goes to the beginning of the relationship, to those moments that were pure foam of happiness, to the agreements, and returns to the present of confusion. He goes back, to understand what each one of them wanted and expected, and returns to the present, with the fears and concerns that suddenly assault, without warning, in the middle of a park and that are capable of taking away the air, and filling with anguish. .
Because what is interesting regarding the series is that although it has Toby in the title, it is neither the victimization nor the rancor of an abandoned man. It is rather his attempt, often clumsy, to understand how he got there, to that point where everything is turned upside down.
“Toby’s New Life” is one of those series that is in no hurry to show all the cards on the table. It’s rather slow, with the cadence of Libby’s beautiful voice guiding us through the story; a fragile and delicate story, made with the remains of a life together.
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