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Predicting how an episode of the HBO present The Rehearsal will finish is sort of unattainable. The pseudo-docuseries, through which the comic Nathan Fielder phases elaborate workout routines to assist—or fairly, “assist”—peculiar folks 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 apply having a troublesome dialog just for the main focus to shift to Fielder rehearsing his personal confessions. One other noticed Fielder open an appearing studio; by the episode’s ultimate scene, he’s the one performing, pretending to boost 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 method to clear up what he believes is the first purpose for airplane crashes: miscommunication. Every episode is supposed to contribute to Fielder’s principle that if captains and their co-pilots may simply get alongside, flying would yield fewer accidents. He comes off as genuinely impassioned by the topic, accumulating reams of accident experiences, 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 more durable to be taken critically by airline-safety officers.
The grave stakes of his chosen matter most likely 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 just tangentially related to his said objective of serving to pilots—making clear that, as soon as once more, he’s the precise topic of the rehearsals he’s conducting. Now, nonetheless, 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, similar to a poo-flavored providing for a struggling frozen-yogurt store, to save lots of actual small companies. A query nags at him all through The Rehearsal, regardless of all of the management he has because the present’s creator, director, co-writer, and star: Can a famous troll ever help folks with out mocking them? The pursuit of a solution leads to a heady, typically 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 nearly instantly. He reads Sully’s memoir, highlighting sentences he finds related to his mission of making cockpit synergy. A piece through which Sully describes how his journey to saving the lives of 155 folks 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 may develop a few of the captain’s traits.
The enterprise, Fielder posits, ought to make him a greater advocate for airline security. What occurs after this revelation, although—a few of 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 turn 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 might have been listening to Evanescence’s “Carry 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 suppose like Sully truly proves to be oddly transferring 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 all the time explored whether or not Fielder’s experiment to good 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 concept that offers the present a fascinatingly severe streak. Generally, in his efforts to grasp pilot psychology, he stumbles upon self-realizations: In Episode 2, he casts pilots as judges of a pretend American Idol–esque singing competitors; it’s a lesson in sincere self-expression that’s each a hilarious means to make use of HBO’s price range and a way for Fielder to problem himself to apply authenticity alongside them. Additional into the season, he notes that The Rehearsal acquired criticism for its previous therapy of kid performers, who had been forged 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 ultimately admits that he’s unsure whether or not what he’s doing is critical for anybody in any respect. “I can operate simply positive with out rehearsing,” Fielder insists.
Nonetheless, he can’t fairly break the behavior of enjoying an intense sport of faux. The Rehearsal appears to argue that every 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 all the things to take care of the severity of actual life. The present implies that he’s removed from alone with regards to creating such coping mechanisms; The Rehearsal’s second season, although, is essentially a deep dive into one man’s existential disaster, wrapped in a research of catastrophe prevention. If that sounds bleak, even tasteless, take a look at it this fashion as a substitute: Fielder isn’t not like the pilots he’s finding out, struggling to articulate himself below duress. By design, his workout routines pressure him to confront his flaws and uncover an inside confidence. He seems decided, to paraphrase Evanescence, to save lots of himself from the nothing he’s turn into.
