Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder's latest HBO show “The Rehearsal” will make you question whether he needs jail time, therapy or an Emmy Award.
The show is a spiritual successor to his 2013-17 Comedy Central TV series “Nathan For You.”
“The Rehearsal” follows Fielder helping ordinary people with their problems by reenacting difficult conversations or life experiences, according to the show’s HBO webpage.
It involves a full construction crew, a recreation of real-life places and a legion of actors all using Fielder’s “method,” which you would have to see how insane it is for yourself.
The situations are carefully crafted with Fielder meticulously planning every step to ensure everything goes “right.” In the first episode, he helps Kor Skeete, a trivia-obsessed New Yorker who lied to his friends about having a master’s degree.
Fielder introduces the “rehearsal” concept by practicing his first interactions with Skeete and hires an actor to play him so Fielder can anticipate his next moves.
As I watched that transpire, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and asked myself, “Is this really happening?” and “Did he really just hire an actor to play the man he was trying to help to rehearse their first meeting?”
The levels to that almost felt like I was in a dream sequence from Christopher Nolan’s 2009 film “Inception.”
Fielder then bonds with Skeete by shooting blanks out of guns at clay pigeons to bring them closer by finding bond over both being terrible shooters.
The two then go swimming at the communal pool and talk about their failed marriages while a carefully planted actor swims by to make sure the scene felt “realistic.” I was still very confused as to why this was needed, but I couldn’t stop laughing.
After their bonding activities, Fielder hires a fake friend that Skeete would practice admitting his lie to, and if you think it stops there, you’d be very wrong. Fielder rented out an entire warehouse to build a replica of the bar Skeete and his friends frequent for trivia night, so Skeete would feel in the moment.
I thought it was pretty funny that Fielder essentially created the show as his own elaborate therapy session with what seems like a massive budget from one of TV’s premier networks.
It makes you wonder, if the show wasn’t already approved and HBO did not have a production deal with Fielder in the first place, would this have ever been made?
Warner Bros. Pictures, the production company that owns HBO and HBO Max, have started a massive cost-saving plan, canceling movies including “Batgirl,” which was already completed, and overhauling the streaming service to create a merger with the Discovery Channel, according to a Tuesday Consequence Film article.
Consequence Film is a website dedicated to the film industry, according to its website.
More than $20 billion has been lost in trying to save $3 billion for Warner Bros. Pictures, according to the same Consequence Film article.
That makes “The Rehearsal’s” budget spending all the more comical.
As the rehearsal for Skeete continued, I began feeling less uncomfortable and felt as though I was rooting for him to make it through this difficult conversation. It started to remind me of all the difficult conversations I’ve had to face and wondered what it would be like if I was able to rehearse it with an HBO budget.
Fielder also faces the issue of making sure Skeete would succeed in trivia because he told Fielder it would be very hard to get through the conversation without winning.
Fielder poses as a social media influencer to go to the actual trivia bar to get the answers for that night to post online for “people to follow at home” as an excuse.
In reality, he finds the answers to the questions and plants actors around places he and Skeete would walk, like a policeman blocking the scene of the crime. The policeman says to the duo, “It’s times like this I curse the Chinese for inventing gunpowder,” a subtle way of making sure Skeete has the answers for when the time comes.
The show is so meticulously thought out that I legitimately wish I could see the levels to people’s inner workings that Fielder explores. He tries to guess everyone’s next move, but as the show answers later on, that is next to impossible.
Regardless, Fielder still succeeds in accurately predicting what people can do in difficult situations. It can be hard to get to the next step, as Skeete shows when he’s faced with the situation of talking to his actual friend about his deception.
When Skeete goes along with what’s been rehearsed, Fielder captures Skeete’s anxiety and we see him frozen in time, nervous and not knowing what to do next even though he’s been through multiple rehearsals in the show. His fear in his actual friend’s reaction is realized.
However, Skeete pushes through and admits to his friend that he lied to her and the rest of the group about his master’s degree, and not only that, has a full conversation about why and they get to talking about how hard it is to present a certain image to everyone.
His friend was more than understanding and they came out of the situation with a stronger relationship.
Fielder, feeling successful, was happy with the results but also had to come to terms with his deception with Skeete because he faked the results of the trivia night.
We see Fielder outside with Skeete on a bench, where he admits his deception to him, but that in itself is a deception because before you can blink, you realize that that’s not the real Skeete but the actor Skeete from the beginning of the show.
That seamless transition tripped me the fuck out and I didn’t even realize it was the real Skeete until actor Skeete started berating Fielder for his lie.
We are transitioned back from this to the real Skeete and Fielder chooses not to tell him about his own deception. As “Pure Imagination” by Gene Wilder plays us out of the episode, Fielder calls Skeete “a great person,” while we are left to absorb what just happened.
I want everyone to go into the subsequent episodes blind because even with the first one, you are set up for the ultimate deception with the rest of the series.
Fielder forces you to contend with knowing yourself, to see yourself reflected in others and explore the consequences of your interactions with others.
All episodes of “The Rehearsal” are now streaming on HBO Max with the first episode free for all viewers to enjoy, or not enjoy, on its website.
