“The Rehearsal” Season 2 Sticks the Landing
By J. Nagle
From the first season of The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder has consistently shown his fearlessness of blending reality with the uncanny and unconventional. However, in the second season of the comedian’s HBO docu-dramedy, Fielder discovers and explores his own fears in regards to a critical flaw he believes he has discovered in America’s aviation industry, making great use of the show’s budget where applicable.
In something of a freak coincidence, the April trailer announcing this “storyline” from the show lined up with a series of fatal aviation accidents in the United States, despite the season’s lengthy production timeline that extends well before most of the recent accidents publicized by the media this year. While the first season of The Rehearsal had a tendency to focus more on issues pertaining to the private lives of individuals, this new season demonstrates a broader focus on how investigating miscommunications between airplane pilots could save the lives of countless people aboard. In the first episode, Nathan makes it very clear to both former NTSB member John Goglia and the audience that HBO has given him the reach, financially and legally, to invest in this objective as much as is needed. In just six episodes, we see Fielder undergo a complete transformation of self and career in an attempt to change the entire process of piloting industry-wide, no matter what it takes.
While his style of helping countless individuals began life on Paramount’s Comedy Central network with Nathan For You, HBO is where Fielder finds his footing when tackling issues from a more cinematic and artistic perspective. No matter how trustworthy, eccentric, bland, or mundane any given person seems in the grand scheme of The Rehearsal, Nathan’s direction demonstrates this unique understanding of the human form that he fittingly explains the calculation of in its finale, as well as through subsequent episodes hinting at this. Fielder seems to take a “butterfly effect” approach to staging events and opportunities prior to their reality, where every single factor plays a part and even the slightest deviation from the reality of the situation could bring the whole experience into jeopardy on both ends.
It would be a disservice to just call The Rehearsal a work of comedy. With how many moving pieces and how much research is done just for a single episode of the series, it’s incredible that Nathan Fielder seems to have crafted a world of his own that, in reality, is simply the same to which we live in. The new season’s highs are breathtaking, and even its lows feel deliberately designed to land in the uncanny field that Fielder continues to excel at.
Season 2 of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal is now streaming on Max.