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The Rehearsal begins as a kind-of self-help reality show: Host Nathan Fielder will go to great lengths to help each individual participant practice doing something difficult until they feel confident enough to pull it off in real life. The first hint that it’s more than that is exactly how far Fielder goes. In the premiere episode, for instance, he constructs an exact replica of the bar where participant Kor Skeete hopes to confess to his trivia team that he lied about having a master’s degree. Fielder’s deadpan persona makes it hard to tell: Does he know this is a little much, or is this just his slightly unhinged vision for how such a rehearsal should be conducted? From there, the first season spirals out into helping a woman practice for having a child until Fielder is suddenly contemplating fatherhood on his own and forming an intense bond with one of the boys playing his practice son. There’s also an entire episode in which he trains actors in the “Fielder method” to prepare them for the elaborate improvs he must devise to help himself and his subjects rehearse their lives. The second season goes even further, concentrating on using rehearsal to conquer the breakdowns in pilot communication that compromise airline safety, in the process creating a singing competition show, meddling in the dating lives of more than one copilot, and re-enacting pilot hero Sully Sullenberger’s entire life, among other high-stakes endeavors.
Critics and a certain kind of fan loved The Rehearsal for its disorienting level of innovation. No one even knew how to categorize it, and that was exactly the point of this postmodern pastiche masterpiece. The Columbia Journalism Review ran a piece headlined, “Is Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal a Work of Journalism?” The Bulwark’s Sonny Bunch encapsulated the contradictions on contradictions in a review last year: “Rarely has a work of televisual art so flummoxed me as Nathan Fielder’s show The Rehearsal, the second season of which just wrapped up. Both a parody of reality shows and comedy-news shows, and a heartfelt examination of the ever-widening bifurcation between our self-perception and the way we choose to identify to others in the world—a split that, ironically, merges fake and real into something like a unifying whole—The Rehearsal is simultaneously steeped in detached irony and deeply genuine.”
Or, as Fielder himself said in season 1, “It’s easy to assume that others think the worst of you. But when you assume what others think, maybe all you’re doing is turning them into a character that only exists in your mind.” In other words, maybe this is the TV series that most encapsulates our modern times, when the difference between reality and fiction is nearly impossible to distinguish—and, perhaps, beside the point.
Where to Watch: HBO Max
‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2 Trailer
Dive Deeper
Starred Review: Alienating, awkward, anxiety-inducing: why ‘The Rehearsal’ is TV’s most fascinating show
“What do couples counseling, a reality-singing competition, three cloned Yorkies, the content moderation of Paramount+ Germany and aviation safety all have in common?” Adrian Horton writes for The Guardian. “Virtually nothing, except the interest of television mastermind Nathan Fielder, who braids such disparate concepts together in the galaxy-brained second season of The Rehearsal.”
Where to Read: The Guardian
Further Listening: What It Was Like to Win ‘Wings of Voice’ on Nathan Fielder’s ‘The Rehearsal’
Decoding TV interviews Isabella Henao, who won Wings of Voice, the singing competition within The Rehearsal season 2, offering interesting insider perspective on one of the series’ many interrelated layers of “reality.” “Never once were we made a joke of,” Henao says, noting that there were several legitimate rounds of competition, performances, and meticulous costume fittings. “Even on the show, Wings of Voice wasn’t a joke.”
Where to Listen: YouTube
Further Viewing: ‘Nathan for You’
In this progenitor to The Rehearsal, which ran from 2013 to 2017, Fielder advises small businesses, suggesting outrageous solutions in a parody of management consultants and aggressive consumer advocacy segments on local news. As in The Rehearsal, some of the humor derives from Fielder’s deadpan awkwardness and his subjects’ willingness to go along with almost anything on camera. His escapades include trying to boost the popularity of a petting zoo by making one of its pigs into a (real) celebrity, opening a (totally real) coffee shop called Dumb Starbucks, and launching a winter clothing brand called Summit Ice dedicated to Holocaust education. (The latter shows up as the subject of a season 2 Rehearsal episode after its removal from Paramount+ in Germany.)
Where to Watch: HBO Max
Fielder’s Peabody Conversation about ‘The Rehearsal’
“Sometimes when you create an environment that’s fake but it feels identical to a real space, I’ve experienced it at times where I’ll actually forget that I’m in the fake environment … That mix of something feeling real but also knowing it’s safe because it’s not maybe allows you to explore different parts of yourself that you wouldn’t.”
Where to Watch: PeabodyAwards.com