I recently watched HBO’s The Rehearsal, a docu-series created by Nathan Fielder. Fielder is famous for Nathan For You, a comedy show in which he attempted to “aid” small businesses with outlandish and impractical advice. The Rehearsal inspired me to go back and watch Nathan For You again, and despite getting some great laughs out of it, I found some of the awkward and uncomfortable moments to be almost unbearable this time through.
Fielder often walks the line between genuine human moments and cruelty, and it’s sometimes hard to tell if someone is humiliating themselves on national television because of entertainment biz manipulation or because of their own vanity. Maybe it’s both. Anyway, what you get from Nathan For You is an interesting exploration of what people are willing to do when a camera is pointed at them. It’s clear that the camera, coupled with the desire to avoid confrontation, causes people to go along with ideas that they should probably refuse outright.
The Rehearsal draws from the concept of Nathan For You but is more personal in scope. The idea is that Nathan will help a person prepare for a challenging event or encounter in their life through over-the-top recreations; building detailed sets, hiring actors, and rehearsing – over and over again. In the first episode, Nathan works with a Brooklyn teacher to prepare to reveal a horrible secret to his trivia group.
The show explores an episodic style at first, but quickly focuses in on a single rehearsal: helping a woman to prepare for motherhood by setting her up in an Oregon farmhouse and swapping out child actors every few weeks. As the show progresses, Nathan draws himself more and more into the show, blurring the lines between the artificial world of the rehearsal and his own real-life desire for family, love/marriage, parenthood, etc. Or so he would have us believe.
I’ve seen a number of people try to delve into Nathan’s psyche in the series, suggesting that as time goes on, he reveals his true self more and more. Here’s my take. I don’t think the lines are as blurred as they seem. Fielder realizes that bringing in elements from his personal life makes people more emotionally invested in the show. As happens with many celebrities, especially with the popularity of podcasts and vlogs, people start to feel like they know him personally. I think that most of what you see in this show, even when Nathan seems to be at his most genuine, is character Nathan, not real Nathan. The guy is far too clever and self-aware to show his hand like that. He’s been playing with the idea of an endearing, awkward loneliness since his Nathan For You days, and he’s honed it into an art form in The Rehearsal. But I could be wrong. What do you think?
Anyway, I recommend the show. And Nathan For You as well.
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