Alienant, clumsy, inducing anxiety: why rehearsal is the most fascinating program on television | Nathan Fielder

WHat do counseling couples, a reality chantery competition, three cloned Yorkies, moderation of the content of Paramount + Germany and air security all have in common? Virtually nothing, with the exception of the interest of the television brain Nathan Fielder, which braid so disparate concepts together in the second season of rehearsal in galaxy.

In only four episodes, the genre -elaborate simulations show – essentially, extremely realistic in the name of the preparation of people with uncomfortable situations – has provided some of the most convincing, bizarre and definitively, accompanied commercial television scenes, accompanied by 20 actors reflecting each movement. Fielder, sporting his harness with standard cell phone computers, looking in a “shipwrecked” cockpit, pretending to be flames. The view of the Lizard Lounge – an exact replica of the Brooklyn’s Alligator Lounge, where Fielder was a bar last month – inside an exact replica of an Airport of George Bush in Houston. And in a scene that was shocking transgressive even for an author of the documentary comedy who built a career on the extent of the external limits of reality TV, the sight of a field player, shaved, equipped with rubber and layers, breastfeeding the daddy’s attempt in life in the 1950s. Sullenberger (Tom Hanks Biopic, crashing in Hudson).

If you have not seen the rehearsal or you are not acclimatized to the brand of ultra-marginal experimental comedy of Fielder, it probably seems deeply off-putting, tedious and / or insane. And it is – the comedy of Fielder, which could be described more precisely as social experiences of Rube Goldberg, pursued at such absurd ends and with an impassive narration of producing laughter, is deliberately alienating. Zigging where the others would go to ZAG, hanging on that others would slip in front, building arched jokes with longtime gains in the path of television dramas of old prestige, it is television by surveying the human condition – how people think, why they behave in a way, how they react to difficult times to watch.

And yet, it is television to appoint, a truly singular meditation on artifice and authenticity, performance and sincerity, which has only improved with its second season. The first outing of the rehearsal, which was broadcast in 2022, introduced the public to the particular strand of neuroticism and the apparent negotiation power of Fielder in HBO; During six episodes, he built numerous simulations to approximate a real potential experience, mainly oriented around the deliberation of a woman on the opportunity to have a child or not (in one of the more dictations of the program and rightly, Fielder played father to a real all-little). The genius of Fielder lies as much in the episodic structure as in the execution of his character of producer without effect – the rehearsal marked a graduation, in a way, of the commercial diets of his central series Series Nathan for you to become Le Penn and the TV Fan has said it, letting the camera dwelling long enough to reveal that someone is the most strange life.

With the second season of six episodes, Fielder has increased the scale and the challenges of its magic tips, while more questioning production, hypotheses and experiences that enter into the production of reality TV, in the service of an apparently noble and topical objective: aviation security. The field player theorizes that the case n ° 1 sub-study of plane accidents is a human error aggravated by a ventilation of communication in the cockpit. Copilotes, for any reason, do not correct the pilots when they make a mistake. Based on the number of real reactive of the Fielder team, with compulsory virtual explosions, via Flight Simulator in the first episode, this seems to be a reasonable hypothesis. But to prove it, Fielder is embarking on a series of characteristic and involved experiences, to recreate the living conditions of a 2011 dog for his clone – to better test nature – to encourage a co -pilot to confront problems with his girlfriend during a simulated flight.

There is a certain pleasure of hyper-skill to see these scenarios playing, to see the imagination of someone given so many financial and legal track. But the series is the most satisfactory, for this television fan, as a great deconstruction of reality TV rules through a developed role-playing game. The fourth episode disseminates the hypotheses of a series behind the hiring actors to say certain lines of dialogue or carry out certain scenarios, questioning the logic behind any suspension of disbelief. And one of the many side quests of the series includes the elaborate staging of a singing competition on the theme of aviation on the experience of Fielder as a 23 -year -old junior producer for the Canadian idol – the northern spin -off of American Idol – where he was responsible for rejecting the singers of hope who did not present “star potential”. Meditation on what makes personnel potential screen better in an enviable task is both fascinating and practical; Theoretically, the co -pilot judges – selected because they all share the quality of not having died in a plane crash – which practices rejection would be better prepared to resist the obstinate captains.

Wings of Voice has, like all the work of defender, attracted criticism of psychological manipulation and false representation. On Monday, the participant Lana Love broke an NDA program to say that she lost $ 10,000 and that she was deceived by the producers of the show by thinking that she was part of a real song competition program and not, as Fielder calls her, “a singing competition as part of another television show that has nothing to do with the song”. A level of manipulation is baked in the vision of the world dexerian and the school of actor, although I would say that at this stage, his methods are easily googled and the subject of ultimate criticism of the show. Season two of the rehearsal is, in my opinion, the least and ethical of the production of Fielder (and that includes its dramatic turn on the HGTV satire the curse). The overall illusion of the show works because it serves a more pointed global objective than the original objective of “better understanding the human condition” – it is impossible to say how serious the player is to change the training requirements of federal aviation around the flight simulations to encourage the best cockpit communications, but it seems serious enough on this subject to devote six costly television episodes to the case, pilots have better therapy.

And with a sneaky and misleading heart. In the most recent episode, broadcast on Sunday, Fielder helps a shy co-pilot named Colin to improve his romantic life nonexistent by practicing a first appointment, with a twist. Having looked at enough documentaries of nature to know that some animals work well in the packs, Fielder recruits a dozen actors to hover around Colin, imitating each movement and speech, the idea being that it is easier to do things when you do not do it by yourself. It is very possible that the optimistic and social optimistic colin will also be an undeclared actor. Fielder, of course, has his own motivations as a master puppeteer; The image of Colin sipping coffee resonating by a choir other faces makes excellent television. But it also made me tear up, this surreal hame and distinctly a player of defender of the inevitable loneliness of being alive, the universal discomfort of social awkwardness and personal insecurity. It fails, of course. The show claims to believe that all human behavior can be taught, that all emotions can be simulated and therefore controlled. The magician and the public know that life does not work in this way, but what a wonder to claim otherwise.