Nathan Fielder is the undisputed king of cringe comedy, and The Rehearsal is a masterpiece of awkward chaos that plays as both an extension and expansion of his heralded Comedy Central series Nathan for You. Like that cult hit, Fielder’s brilliant six-part HBO debut (July 15) is an attempt by the 39-year-old star to help strangers via strategic partnerships. The difference is that, rather than functioning as a weirdo business consultant, he’s now more akin to a life coach, striving to prepare his subjects for uncomfortable confrontations—as well as their sought-after professional, marital, and parental futures—by staging elaborate rehearsals. What arises from this is some of the most mind-bending madness ever seen on television: think a non-fiction Synecdoche, New York in which Fielder and his compatriots plunge down a hallucinatory rabbit hole of mirror images and mimicry until the lines between the real and the unreal hopelessly blur.
Fielder fundamentally wants to understand others and, through them, himself. That impulse drives The Rehearsal, whose nominal aim is to empower individuals by so expertly predicting upcoming situations and dynamics that they can confidently ace tomorrow’s big moments. It’s a stab at using rigorous and meticulous training to eliminate the element of chance in day-to-day experiences, and it turns out to be even wilder and more amusing than it sounds. Fielder’s modus operandi involves not only devising bizarre scenarios but then doubling and tripling down on them until it’s hard to remember what the starting point even was. That skill is in stellar effect in this endeavor, which explores aspirations and fears by deep-diving into a vortex of artificial impersonation where life’s performative aspects are highlighted, its reactive possibilities are examined, and its uncertainties are challenged—all in an effort to eliminate the anxiety and pain that comes from dealing with circumstances out of one’s control.
Designed by its maker to wrestle with his own insecure and uneasy feelings about the world and his place in it, The Rehearsal is, at its core, heady stuff; Fielder is investigating all sorts of serious neuroses through his ploys. Nonetheless, no matter the intellectual and personal nature of his HBO series, Fielder’s stunts are anything but ponderous. With the stilted disposition and synthetic speaking manner that is his trademark—think a robot programmed to masquerade as a human being—Fielder sets out on his new quest with deadpan enthusiasm and executes it with a level of droll dedication that’s outright nuts. In the penultimate episode, he explains, “Do you know sketch comedy?… You have to escalate the sketch,” and perhaps no modern funnyman has a greater knack for doing just that. Fielder takes things so far that it’s difficult to imagine how he concocted this lunacy and impossible to stop laughing at the bravado of his peculiar showmanship.
[Spoilers follow]
As the kids like to say, Fielder truly and ridiculously commits to the bit in The Rehearsal, which begins with him placing a vague ad on Craigslist (“TV Opportunity: Is there something you’re avoiding?”) and then meeting his respondent, a 50-year-old New York City teacher named Kor who loves Jeopardy! and tells Fielder, in person, that he’s been living a lie, since for the past decade-plus he’s let his fellow bar-trivia teammates erroneously believe that he has a master’s degree. This secret is eating Kor up inside, and Fielder’s plan is to get him ready to disclose the truth about his deception to one ill-tempered acquaintance by diligently rehearsing his admission. As proof that his technique works, Fielder confesses that their own initial meet-and-greet hasn’t been spontaneous; in the first of many reveals that make one think the star is both a gonzo genius and an unhinged wacko in need of serious therapy, Fielder divulges that, prior to their maiden get-together, he created an exact replica of Kor’s apartment, and hired an actor to play Kor, so he could run through every possible variation of their encounter beforehand in order to maximize its success.
Fielder employs an identical tack for Kor—except on a grander scale, replete with a life-size, fully operational reproduction of Brooklyn’s Alligator Lounge, where Kor hopes to meet his friend and come clean about the fact that “my educational system is a front.” Their ensuing work together is borderline-fantastical, and Kor hits the nail on the head when he refers to Fielder as a Willy Wonka figure, bringing dreams to life in a way that’s equal parts enchanting and demented. The real crux of the show, however, only becomes clear once they’ve embarked upon their joint mission, since Fielder’s goal is to negate life’s unpredictability and yet he finds himself repeatedly thrown for a loop by Kor’s unexpected priorities, whims, and responses—which, in turn, only compels him to work harder to hone his rehearsals and realize his everything-can-be-anticipated ends.
This pattern repeats itself in infinitely more delirious fashion once The Rehearsal moves past its premiere to focus on Angela, a recovering addict and devout Christian whose desire for tranquil domesticity—with a husband and son in an Oregon farmhouse—becomes Nathan’s guiding preoccupation. To say more about that undertaking would be to spoil the innumerable surprises the show has in store for unsuspecting viewers. Still, it’s not ruining anything to say that Nathan’s own participation in this enterprise increases dramatically—and hilariously—as time goes on, such that his own feelings about marriage, fatherhood and faith become prime topics for exploration, along with his more general belief that knowledge can be attained through doggedly walking in strangers’ shoes, as well as eating their food, wearing their clothes, and sleeping in their beds.
By the time its fifth episode concludes, The Rehearsal has transformed into a sprawling, multifaceted inquiry into the highly particular questions and concerns that spawned it in the first place. The show is like a magic trick orchestrated by an eccentric nebbish who’s convinced that, with just a little bit more practice, he can perfect the myriad interactions and unforeseen events that dominate and define our realities. Whether that’s possible remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt that Fielder has mastered his own inimitable brand of comedy-of-discomfort.
