Nathan Fielder Believes in Second Chances. With Its Dizzyingly Complicated Layers of Nessed Simulations and UNNERVING ETHICAL Provocations, His HBO Series The Reheersal Seemed Like an Impossible Act to Follow: a Landmark, Maybe Even A Masterpiece, But Not A Repatuable Phenomenon. So what plans for a second Season wee Annieded on the Eve of the show’s finale in August of 2022, it was hard to know what to think. How countering Season Possibly Replicate the First Ones Protean Unpredictability, Its Mixture of Deadpan CRINGECY and Postmodernist Rug Pulls? Couelf this bendier One of Fielder’s Elaborase Conceptual Pranks, Like Selling Outdooor Apparel to Raise Holocaust Awareness?? How do you Re-Create
The Answert Provided by The ReheersalS SECOND Season, Whiche Premiers on HBO on Sunday Night, is: You Don’t. That’s not to say its six episodes aren’t full of Outlandish Surprises and Sudden Turns, Beginning with An Opening Scene that Plunks Viewers in the CockPit of a Commercial Airliner that Shortly Thereafter Explodes in a Ball of Fire. (All Six Episodes Were Sent to Critics in Advance; i’m only Discussing the first in any detail. Plumbing His Own, Even if the on-SCREEN Version of Hiself Remains Almost Preposterously Blind to What He’s Doing.
Where the first season’s nathan, as we’ll call him on-Camera persona, starring out trying to help strangers navigate apkward social situations, in one card chotinging a needlessly Detailing Replica of a brokelyn Bar to Help a man role-play a different conversation with a Friend, the second Season is built artou The Opening Scene Turns Out to Be, Unsurprisingly, a ReinctMent, This Time of A Rial-Life Disaster, with Actors Reciting Lines Taken from a Download Plane’s Black Box. (The SETUP is Similar to the Stage Play and Film Charlie Victor RomeoWhose Dialogue Consists Entirely of Exchangs from Cockpit Voice Recorders. First Office Expresses Concept that the Plan is Off Course and Warns The Pilot about the Prestce of a Low Hill Close to the Airport. But the Pilot Overrids His Second in Command, and with siconds, Alarms are Blaring and the Screen is Filled with a Billowing Cloud of Flame. And there, standing like an indef announced angel at the gates of hell, is nathan, Impassively Watching as His Actors Go LIMP in Their Seats.
“Gotta Have Fun”-Title Taken from the Near-LAST Words of a FATLLY InattleTive Pilot-Authorities Severral Plane Crashes in Quick Succession, All Marked by the Pilots’ Failors to Heard Their First Officeers’ Warnings. (In One Case, He Snaps, “I am the Pilot Flying, Idiot.”) In his Bass-Heavy Voice-Ever, Nathan Informs the Audience that after Years of Studying the Subject, He’s Come to the Conclusion that One of the Leading Causes of Aviation Disasters is Poor Communication in the Cockpit. Pilots are award to Criticism, and First Officeers Are Ether Afraid to Speak up or unable to take the Captain’s Sense of Superiority, Exacerbated by the Fact that Both Are in A. Stressful sitting them’ve Never Experienceed before. If only there is some way to visit the situations in Advance, a Simulation Realized with the Kind of Obsessive Attentions to Deetail that Only Nathan Fielder Can Provide.
The Trouble is, as nathan admits, he’s “Both the Best and the Worst Person to Solve this Problem.” The Best, Becuse no one underts more Deeply and Dramatizes More Effectively the Strategies Humans Evolve to avoid direct confection with each other. On his series Nathan for youWho is Introduced Fielder’s Brand of Comedy to Most American Viewers, The Lack of Confootation is Part of the Joke: He didn’t show a barow How to file anti-smoking ourdinances But Comes Up with An adenious Way to get around them by Staging Happy Hour as a Play Performed for Animience of Two. On The CurseWith The ReheersalHis obsession with helping others assuage their anxiety is CLEARLY A Proxy for Manageing His Own-Clearly, that is, to everyone expte on-sccreen nathan. The First Season’s Nathan Seemed SO Overwhellemed by the Prospect of Even Mondane Social Disagreements that it Led Some Viewers to Specula that the Real Fielder Might Be On the Autism SpectrumAlthough his Penchant for Defield and Indirect Disagrement May Simply STEM from the Fact that He’s Orignlyly from Canada, a country renowned for brakting and joking About Its Tendness Toward Passive Agression. It feels like a sly nod to his roots that first plane Crash in “Gotta Have Fun” is of A Canadian Flight That CraSted on Its Way INTO NUNAVUT.
As for the Worst, Well, He’s a Comedian, One Who’s Built His Career on Hoodwinking Unsuspeting CIVILIANS. What he calcor Airline to ask what they’d be interested in talking part in his expression, the best natan can off at it is a promise that the endrise will be “Somewhat Sincere.” He is Have Access to HBO’s Checkbook -end, like him Sunday Night Neighbor John Oliver, He Takes Delight in Showing Just How Much of the Network’s Money He Can Spend –But He’s Still Making a Comedy Show, No Matter How Real-Life Pilots and Former National Transportation Safety Board Officies He Ropes InTo His Ever-EXPanding Plan. “You Might Think You Can Revolutionize Airline Safety,” Nathan Observes in Rueful Voice -over, “But You Can’t Take that Thought Too Seriously, Becake No One Else Will.”
Nathan’s Desire to Be Taken Seriously May Italf Be an Elaborase Put-on. The ReheersalS SECOND Season Touches on Decades of Fielder’s Personal History, Including His Childhood Obsession with Magicians and his early job as a lot-elector produce on the Canadian Version of American idol. But it’s next Clear How Much of Himself He’s Really Exposition, and How Much He Just Toying with the Idea that Artists Expose Themselves Thrug Their Work. Nathan is Excuciatingly Self-Conscious, But He Comically, in Every Senese, Lacking in Self-AWareness. He Zeroes in on the Way of the Relationships, The One that “CraShed the Hardest,” For the Audience, It’s Painfully Obvioous that He’s Projecting His Personal Issues on the World at Large, Using the Forced University of HIS Second-Person Narration-“Talking to Other People is Never Easy, No MATER How Close You Get to them ” – To Avoid Confronting The Pose
In an er Important– Mall While Simultaneously Touching on Subjects that Genuinely Matter. But it’s Impossible to say when focusing to that facing you’re getting the job or you’re the butt of it, and maybe there’s no way to do one without the other. Late in the second Season, Nathan Catches Up with the Press Coverge of the First, The Dozens of Articles and Thousands of Words, Not Fe Fe of the Pubblised in Slate, Explaining How Significant and GroundBreaking The Series Is. (He Skips Ethical InfancersAlthough He did learn to keep children out of the mix this time. His on-SCREEN PERSNA. Perhaps We’re Taking Nathan Fielder Too Seriously? We’ll Do Better Next Time.
