Nathan Fielder’s Second Installment of His Awe-Inspiring Psycho-Comedy Is Incredible and Unlike Any TV You’ve Ever Seen

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For “Nathan For You” alone, the deadest of deadpan comedians, Nathan Fielder, deserved to be enshrined in TV history for a show unlike any other, a bizarre hybrid of prank comedy as he spun elaborate and convoluted plots to help small businesses. But then came the first season of “The Rehearsal,” and now he belongs on TV showrunner Mount Rushmore.

 

In the first season of “The Rehearsal,” Fielder’s hilarious and simultaneously bafflingly complex and layered psychological comedy that saw him staging vast and intricate trial runs for anxiety-inducing social scenarios. Whether it’s a fear of being a parent or an uncomfortable confrontation with a sibling, Fielder utilized a seemingly bottomless budget to recreate the exact (and I mean exact) scenario the person would be dealing with, whether that’s building an entire bar down to the tears in old chair’s upholstery, or asking his actors in these scenarios to live the lives of the people they’re playing to the point of actually living in their homes. One episode has him teaching a class on his “acting” method, but when he finds one student isn’t invested, he begins to study and live the life of that student, and meantime has someone play him so they recreate scenes where he’s interacted with the student to see what went wrong. It’s indescribable how much of a mindfuck “The Rehearsal,” and the second season is no exception, and may actually be better than its predecessor. 

 

Because what the second season of this gonzo head trip does is explore a single plot line and “rehearsal” all the way through, rather than piece together storyline later in the season. And that storyline is wild — Fielder seeks to find a solution for plane crashes. 

 

To go too far in depth as to how he uses rehearsals to do this would ruin the truly unbelievable surprises Fielder throws in the season. There’s the reconstruction of an entire airport hanger, cloned dogs, the chorus of an Evanescence song proving a major revelation, a major production studio portrayed as the Third Reich, and Fielder living the entire life of a famous man from birth to adulthood. It is insane. And that is just the tip of the insanity iceberg. To watch “The Rehearsal” is to go somewhere you’d never imagine going watching television. 

 

And it’s not all out of sheer audacity or shock value or laughs, which is maybe the biggest strength of the show. Fielder, whether it was in “Nathan For You,” the first season of “The Rehearsal,” or his only foray into straight fiction, the amazing cringe fest “The Curse” on Paramount Plus, is always in pursuit of some legitimate philosophical and psychological payoff and examination. The laughs and outlandish schemes serve a grand purpose, and the same can be said of season two. With the second season of “The Rehearsal,” Fielder taps into some wildly vulnerable territory, dissecting how fearful people are of expressing themselves, being vulnerable, and legitimately communicating and bonding with each other, and how sometimes the only way we can is by not in fact being ourselves, but playing the part expected of us.

 

It’s some heady, profound stuff, but also laugh out loud hilarious, and ambitious television no matter the genre. This is one for the ages, folks.