TV maker Nathan Fielder himself becomes the target of the spot with his megalomaniac project

In The Rehearsal Comedian and TV creator Nathan Fielder is constantly walking around with a laptop, which he has strapped to his waist like a baby carrier. It’s a pose that’s both recognizable and laughable: Fielder here is the nerdy anthropologist who walks through recreated cafes and restaurants, studying his “volunteers” and trying to summarize their conversations in tables and flowcharts. He is the supervisor of social experiments in which participants who struggle with a difficult conversation in their lives can practice for the real conversation with the help of actors.

The Rehearsal is the big surprise on TV this summer. It’s a bizarre mix of comedy and reality show, in which Canadian comedian and TV maker Nathan Fielder (39) explores his obsession for social interaction and the way in which you can or cannot prepare for it. In the first episode, Fielder says in a monotonous voice in the voiceover: ‘I’m not good at first meeting people. I’ve been told that my personality makes people uncomfortable.’

What follows is a meeting with Kor, a teacher from Brooklyn, New York, whom Fielder got to know by posting an ad on Craigslist, the US version of Marktplaats. The cryptic question was, “Is there anything you’re avoiding?”, and Kor responded. He wants to confess a lie about his education level to the group of friends with whom he has been playing pub quizzes for years. Nathan Fielder lends a helping hand and recreates the bar where the pub quiz takes place in detail in a warehouse. He will also extensively rehearse with Kor how to confess to his girlfriend Tricia that he lied to her.

These kinds of conversations or events that people struggle with in their lives are more common in The Rehearsal. In episode 2, we meet Angela, a 44-year-old convinced Christian who doubts whether or not she wants a child. No expense is spared when Fielder arranges for her an idyllic home in the Oregon woods, where Angela can practice parenting. Countless child actors are hired, from 0 to 18 years. According to the labor law, the young children are only allowed to act for four hours a day and are therefore dragged in and out of the house through the window of the children’s room. And then a father figure must also be sought. As Angela’s potential candidates lose weight one by one, host Fielder—”I don’t have kids and I’m 38″—craftyly worms herself into the experiment. He takes on the role of test father and moves in with Angela with his two cats.

The Rehearsal is exactly as strange and experimental as it sounds in the preceding paragraphs. A debate has already erupted in the media about what Fielder is doing and how ethical it is or isn’t. What does Fielder want with his social experiments? “You’re like Willy Wonka from the chocolate factory,” says Kor in the first episode. Fielder startled: ‘Wait, wasn’t he the bad guy in the story?’ Kor clarifies: “Well, he had questionable features. But he makes dreams come true. And you do that for me now too.’ Fielder isn’t convinced yet: “But didn’t children die in his factory?” Willy Wonka or not, a majority of audiences and critics think The Rehearsal primarily fascinating television. This is TV you want, no, must talk about.

The reality series is the big break of comedian Nathan Fielder, who grew up in a Jewish family in the Canadian city of Vancouver. As a child Nathan was fascinated by comedy, but also magic and magic. First, however, he did a business degree at the University of Victoria. After graduating, he did not enter the corporate world, but the comedy and television world. His first success was the series Nathan for You on Comedy Central (2013-2017), in which he aims to help small entrepreneurs save their businesses. He keeps telling me how he studied at one of Canada’s ‘best business schools’, but then comes up with pitches and ideas that are preposterous.

For example, there is a much-discussed episode in which Fielder comes up with a new concept for the owner of a not-so-successful coffee shop, Dumb Starbucks. He opens a coffee shop in Los Angeles, which is very similar in design to the well-known chain, but with the word dumb (‘stupid’) prefixed. You can order a ‘Dumb Chai Latte’, music is played by ‘Dumb Norah Jones’. Fielder made headlines with his cheeky stunt and people thought they were dealing with an art project by Banksy. In another episode, he advises unsuccessful real estate agent Sue to advertise himself as the ‘ghost broker’. Research shows that a large proportion of Americans believe that ghosts haunt homes. That is why Sue is urged to start selling houses that are ‘one hundred percent ghost-free’.

Nathan Fielder’s programs are sometimes reminiscent of Sacha Baron Cohen, another comedian who ventures out into the real world and portrays people who make striking statements. Sacha Baron Cohen takes on the role of grotesque characters such as the Kazakhstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev, thereby luring politicians in particular. Nathan Fielder knows Baron Cohen and worked as a director on his latest TV series Who’s America?, but is less politically oriented in its own programs. What the two do both do is show the extreme worldviews people sometimes hold. It’s an interesting way of making comedy that thrives in today’s times of fake news and conspiracy theories, where many people have come to believe in their own truth.

Also in The Rehearsal this is addressed. For example, practice mother Angela definitely doesn’t want to celebrate Halloween, because she is convinced that it is the ‘holiday of Satanism’. Angela: “It’s the day when devil worshipers make sacrifices.” Fielder reacts with a stern gaze: ‘Sacrifices? Where does that happen? I thought you were just going door-to-door asking for candy.’ Angela: ‘You can’t see it because it takes place underground. Google it.’

Because Fielder has been given a large budget for The Rehearsal and with that built all huge sets, his series is also reminiscent of films like The Truman Show (1998), in which main character Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is unknowingly the main character of a reality show. The comparison is also necessary with the work of screenwriter and filmmaker Charlie Kaufman, especially his directorial debut. Synecdoche, New York from 2008. In this film, theater maker Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) rents a gigantic warehouse in New York, where he has his own life reconstructed and hires actors to play the people around him (and himself).

Of The Rehearsal does Nathan Fielder now have some sort of reality TV version of Synecdoche, New York created. While you wonder whether it is unfair to involve unsuspecting Americans in such an experiment, Fielder gradually becomes the target of ridicule in the program itself. That does not excuse him from criticism, but it does make the viewing experience easier: Fielder does not exactly leave his own idiosyncrasies out of the picture. In an interview with New York Magazine said Fielder in early July, “I am convinced that I myself am the most pathetic figure in anything I make.” Over the course of six episodes of The Rehearsal see that this is indeed the case. In the end, you mainly laugh at the socially deficient Nathan Fielder, who becomes entangled in his own megalomaniac, unrealistic project. In addition, he seems to be seriously wrestling with the question of how he views fatherhood. His Jewish identity will also play a greater role. It gives The Rehearsal – despite the extremely artificial circumstances – there is also something of emotion and even authenticity with it.