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Predicting how an episode of the HBO present The Rehearsal will finish is sort of inconceivable. The pseudo-docuseries, during which the comic Nathan Fielder phases elaborate workouts to assist—or fairly, “assist”—extraordinary individuals put together for difficult interactions, tends to go down rabbit holes dictated by Fielder’s fixations. A Season 1 installment discovered him supporting a person who wished observe having a tough dialog just for the main target to shift to Fielder rehearsing his personal confessions. One other noticed Fielder open an performing studio; by the episode’s last scene, he’s the one performing, pretending to lift a 6-year-old boy.
The present’s second season has been even twistier. This time, Fielder has chosen to conduct each “rehearsal” as a technique to remedy what he believes is the first cause for airplane crashes: miscommunication. Every episode is supposed to contribute to Fielder’s principle that if captains and their co-pilots might simply get alongside, flying would yield fewer accidents. He comes off as genuinely impassioned by the topic, gathering reams of accident reviews, poring over black-box transcripts, and consulting with John Goglia, a former Nationwide Transportation Security Board member. However as Fielder notes within the season premiere, his historical past of being a mischief maker generates a “deficit of credibility”; he has to strive tougher to be taken severely by airline-safety officers.
The grave stakes of his chosen matter in all probability explains why Fielder is taking even larger swings this season. In Episode 3, which premiered Sunday evening, he re-creates the lifetime of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who efficiently landed a airplane in the midst of the Hudson River in 2009. Fielder’s endeavor is simply tangentially related to his acknowledged aim of serving to pilots—making clear that, as soon as once more, he’s the precise topic of the rehearsals he’s conducting. Now, nevertheless, Fielder is making an attempt to alter his popularity too. The comic is thought for being a no-holds-barred prankster; because the host of Comedy Central’s Nathan for You, he executed nonsensical plans, equivalent to a poo-flavored providing for a struggling frozen-yogurt store, to avoid wasting actual small companies. A query nags at him all through The Rehearsal, despite all of the management he has because the present’s creator, director, co-writer, and star: Can a famous troll ever help individuals with out mocking them? The pursuit of a solution ends in a heady, usually surreal interrogation of whether or not true sincerity is feasible, particularly for somebody identified for something however.
At first, Nathan seems deeply dedicated to serving to pilots—besides that his dedication veers into the absurd virtually instantly. He reads Sully’s memoir, highlighting sentences he finds related to his mission of making cockpit synergy. A bit during which Sully describes how his journey to saving the lives of 155 individuals started lengthy earlier than that consequential flight leads Fielder to an epiphany: If he can personally expertise key moments from Sully’s life, then he would possibly develop among the captain’s traits.
The enterprise, Fielder posits, ought to make him a greater advocate for airline security. What occurs after this revelation, although—among the funniest and most annoying tv I’ve ever seen, involving Fielder, a 41-year-old man, pretending to be an toddler whereas an infinite puppet dealt with by crew members performs Sully’s mom—has little to do with flying planes. However these foolish scenes quickly change into surprisingly poignant. Fielder’s try to fade into his portrayal of Sully is so seemingly earnest that the episode finally ends up mimicking a status biopic. As Fielder’s Sully “ages,” the rating turns into operatic; a gravelly voiced actor reads from Sully’s memoir, injecting a dose of gravitas. When Fielder finds proof that Sully could have been listening to Evanescence’s “Convey Me to Life” as he guided US Airways Flight 1549 to its water touchdown, he mines the music for a second of excessive drama: Fielder as Sully closes his eyes whereas the refrain performs and warning lights flash round him. The sequence is preposterous, but Fielder’s perception that he has come to assume like Sully truly proves to be oddly shifting as a substitute of simply odd—an instance of how committing to the bit could make an inane element really feel like actual intimacy.
The Rehearsal has at all times explored whether or not Fielder’s experiment to excellent actuality is a delusion, however Season 2 means that what he’s truly questioning is whether or not he can cease being seen as solely a clown, an thought that offers the present a fascinatingly critical streak. Typically, in his efforts to grasp pilot psychology, he stumbles upon self-realizations: In Episode 2, he casts pilots as judges of a faux American Idol–esque singing competitors; it’s a lesson in sincere self-expression that’s each a hilarious manner to make use of HBO’s finances and a method for Fielder to problem himself to observe authenticity alongside them. Additional into the season, he notes that The Rehearsal obtained criticism for its previous therapy of kid performers, who have been solid in emotionally demanding roles; the expertise has made him cautious of working with them once more, he explains, earlier than dismissing his issues and recruiting little one actors as soon as extra. He finally admits that he’s undecided whether or not what he’s doing is important for anybody in any respect. “I can operate simply advantageous with out rehearsing,” Fielder insists.
Nonetheless, he can’t fairly break the behavior of taking part in an intense sport of fake. The Rehearsal appears to argue that each one of Fielder’s weird trials have a easy conclusion: that somebody like Fielder—who’s dedicated to pushing the bounds of comedy and appears to experience showing as a caricature of himself in his reveals—should inject humor into every thing to deal with the severity of actual life. The present implies that he’s removed from alone in terms of creating such coping mechanisms; The Rehearsal’s second season, although, is essentially a deep dive into one man’s existential disaster, wrapped in a examine of catastrophe prevention. If that sounds bleak, even tasteless, have a look at it this fashion as a substitute: Fielder shouldn’t be in contrast to the pilots he’s learning, struggling to articulate himself beneath duress. By design, his workouts power him to confront his flaws and uncover an inside confidence. He seems decided, to paraphrase Evanescence, to avoid wasting himself from the nothing he’s change into.
