The Rehearsal - Nathan Fielder - HBO

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He's still got it

I was scream laughing at [show hidden text]

― Kompakt Total Landscaping (Will M.), Saturday, July 16, 2022 3:20 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Spoiler tagging because I think I'd be more mad about this show getting spoiled than any twisty scifi whatever type show

― Kompakt Total Landscaping (Will M.), Saturday, July 16, 2022 3:22 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this was amazing & this gave me anxiety

― johnny crunch, Saturday, July 16, 2022 8:00 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

what a joy.

there is nothing like this show

― sean gramophone, Saturday, July 16, 2022 9:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I was in heaven watching this

― Clay, Saturday, July 16, 2022 9:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ok i will be the guy who asks

[show hidden text]

[show hidden text]

― the life of a rebo band is always intense (emsworth), Saturday, July 16, 2022 10:57 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i feel like with "exploitation" i really want to be able to understand the harm being done: a harm beyond being embarrassed after the fact about something you understood and agreed to

i don't think these people are mocked; i think they seem human and complicated. i agree that it "uses" other people to achieve its ends, but there's a matter of degree here, and with this first episode it doesn't feel abusive. an improv show that invites a volunteer on stage (and then does something silly with them) isn't necessarily "exploitation" - although it can still be mean or embarrass about the volunteer.

if trish was mistreated over the course of this production - if she felt deceived, etc - then she'd be right to be angry and fielder would be obliged to respond to this. but with a lot of art i think that's the extent of the moral obligation: to try not to do harm; to face those who feel harm was done, if that's the case, and respond in good faith to their complaints. but you don't have a moral obligation to "avoid any circumstance where someone might feel bad."

i say this as a novelist who has used real people in his work

― sean gramophone, Saturday, July 16, 2022 11:05 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

if there is a novel about a jerk, and it becomes known that the character was inspired by a real person, the author may have a responsibility to deal with that real person face to face. but they don't have an obligation not to write that book.

― sean gramophone, Saturday, July 16, 2022 11:07 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

bad nathan friend

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Saturday, July 16, 2022 11:22 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Xp thanks for this response Sean G, that’s really interesting - esp “avoid any circumstance where people might feel bad”, which I must admit I try to do myself! there’s something about the power imbalance between someone with access to massive budget and broadcast distribution apparatus - and people who don’t! that makes me wary. i think people often enter into relationships with media without really understanding the implications of what it means to surrender their story to an edit process.

your example of writing novels is interesting, would you agree tho that maybe there is a difference when someone is presented in a certain way in a heavily constructed “reality” show?

[show hidden text]

― the life of a rebo band is always intense (emsworth), Saturday, July 16, 2022 11:43 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I’m not a tv insider but I always take it as a given that any time I see someone’s face & hear their voice in a show like this (i.e. not the news) they have agreed in writing and been paid at least a nominal sum

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Sunday, July 17, 2022 12:45 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was more wondering if they showed her the cut before she signed! btw of course i do think she actually comes across really well when it counts - but definitely interested in these considerations around agency and representation.

― the life of a rebo band is always intense (emsworth), Sunday, July 17, 2022 1:14 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://thriftyboy.org

yes, the "stories" look hilarious but don't miss the iStock watermarks on all the preview photos

― Murgatroid, Sunday, July 17, 2022 9:53 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was staggeringly impressive, i couldn't believe they spend the money on the bar set.

― akm, Sunday, July 17, 2022 11:19 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

johnny crunch, Sunday, 17 July 2022 16:50 (three years ago)

sorry that the hidden text links dont carry over, i rehearsed how starting this would go and didnt account for that

johnny crunch, Sunday, 17 July 2022 16:54 (three years ago)

well, we really need a rehearsal board for you to try threads like this

this was great, so excited to see more. the very end was pretty shocking to me, but maybe predictable in hindsight that he would get so upset

Vinnie, Monday, 18 July 2022 00:07 (three years ago)

wasn’t that a rehearsal with the other guy, and then we didn’t see the actual guy getting told?

just sayin, Monday, 18 July 2022 00:19 (three years ago)

Yeah that was the actor. I don’t think the real guy would care that much. I was wondering if he was gonna figure out during trivia what was happening but I don’t think he did. Either way the scene where he’s unknowingly being fed the answers was as funny as anything NFY did, pretty much worth the whole episode

frogbs, Monday, 18 July 2022 00:23 (three years ago)

Also lmao @ him not knowing what Nathan For You was, and Nathan going “oh, I thought you were supposed to be a TV trivia guy”

frogbs, Monday, 18 July 2022 00:24 (three years ago)

Yeah my original Hidden text was the cop cursing the day the Chinese invented gunpowder, that line ruined me

Kompakt Total Landscaping (Will M.), Monday, 18 July 2022 02:07 (three years ago)

building the exact replica of the bar was insane. I'd watch a little documentary on that aspect alone

think it bodes well for what the HBO budget is gonna allow them to do

frogbs, Monday, 18 July 2022 03:40 (three years ago)

lol whoops. I guess the actor was too convincing

Vinnie, Monday, 18 July 2022 08:42 (three years ago)

Wife and I were wondering if there’s gonna be a twist in the last episode where everybody’s been an actor the whole time and everything we’ve seen has been a rehearsal for making the “actual” show

nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, 18 July 2022 12:50 (three years ago)

Haven't read anything about it yet but I imagine this was a particularly arduous show to finish after COVID. The Cheap Chick in the City blog posts Nathan looks at were all from 2019.

Chris L, Monday, 18 July 2022 12:59 (three years ago)

Both of the actors were fantastic at capturing their respective subjects.

NGL, this kinda got me emotional at points. It's an insane concept built for max laffs while also addressing some deeper shit. It's basically exposure therapy taken to the most ridiculous extreme.

When the Pain That You Feel is the Bite of an Eel, That's a Moray (Old Lunch), Monday, 18 July 2022 13:59 (three years ago)

feels like this show is gonna be “finding frances: the series,” and yeah, sign me up

in places all over the world, real stuff be happening (voodoo chili), Monday, 18 July 2022 14:37 (three years ago)

The character detail on just the few seconds of Thrifty Boy, with him snacking on packets of ketchup…

Chris L, Monday, 18 July 2022 14:40 (three years ago)

I would really like to see that insane flow chart they made

frogbs, Monday, 18 July 2022 15:09 (three years ago)

some Redditor was actually on Cash Cab with this guy a decade ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BADGSUbWfMk

they were part of a trivia team. and yes, he did tell him he had a Masters

(amusingly it seems Cash Cab is also fake - it's a real game show but they don't just pick people up off the street)

frogbs, Tuesday, 19 July 2022 14:58 (three years ago)

“His whole educational status has been a scam.” pic.twitter.com/Zgse9B8jCg

— Scout Tafoya (@Honors_Zombie) July 19, 2022

, Thursday, 21 July 2022 02:40 (three years ago)

(amusingly it seems Cash Cab is also fake - it's a real game show but they don't just pick people up off the street)

can confirm

symsymsym, Thursday, 21 July 2022 06:40 (three years ago)

https://www.vulture.com/article/nathan-fielder-the-rehearsal-alligator-lounge-visit.html

My friend Danny showed up, and I asked him what he thought of the episode. He said that in the first scene at the real Alligator Lounge, when it looks as if there are hidden cameras scoping it out, he recognized regulars in the crowd, including one of his friends. And here’s where the plot thickens: Danny said that in the climactic scene in which Kor and Tricia actually do bar trivia, he “didn’t recognize anyone. Even the bartender was different.” Danny said the trivia host in the episode wasn’t the usual guy who hosted in 2019, either. To be clear, Danny is a true Alligator Lounge regular. He knows the space; he knows the crowd. He believed that the confession scene, the one that was supposed to be the “real” moment after many, many staged ones, was more staged than the show let on. He also directed me to a post on the Instagram account of Trivial Dispute, the group that organizes these bar-trivia nights. Overlaid on a screengrab of the episode were the words “AS (SORT OF) SEEN ON THE REHEARSAL! ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTIONS!”

I reached out via Instagram to Adam Kesner, the man behind Trivial Dispute, which hosts a number of trivia nights in bars across New York throughout the week; the group has run the program at Alligator Lounge since 2007. Kesner usually writes the questions every week but confirmed that a different host and pre-written questions were provided by The Rehearsal’s production company for the final trivia night in the episode. “The only issue I had with the show was the subpar question quality,” said Kesner, who theorized that the questions were written to generate those funny “clue inception” beats rather than a challenging night of real-life bar trivia.

jaymc, Thursday, 21 July 2022 14:31 (three years ago)

layers within layers

Antifa Sandwich Artist (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 21 July 2022 15:09 (three years ago)

Starting to think "Nathan Fielder" is himself an elaborate ruse.

Antifa Sandwich Artist (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 21 July 2022 15:10 (three years ago)

I guess we could still get

a twist in the last episode where everybody’s been an actor the whole time and everything we’ve seen has been a rehearsal for making the “actual” show

Vinnie, Friday, 22 July 2022 00:26 (three years ago)

This was nuts

Early in the show the guy showed a photo of the whole trivia team, which looked like a typical,uh, size of one of those. Why would this night have been only the two of them?

maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 July 2022 02:24 (three years ago)

the gunpowder thing, the answer was gunpowder, not China. How the heck was that question phrased?

maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 July 2022 02:26 (three years ago)

he tells nathan early on that he'll invite her to a two-person trivia night with the excuse that they haven't hung out together in awhile or something xp

Clay, Friday, 22 July 2022 02:27 (three years ago)

per the earlier writeup, I'm thinking the two person trivia night is an invention of the show!

maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 July 2022 02:28 (three years ago)

i shouldn't have phrased it that way -- it's not that the bar is hosting only teams of two, it's just that their team will just be the two of them for that night

Clay, Friday, 22 July 2022 02:31 (three years ago)

We saw how seriously they all take it. The others are just going to sit one out? I don't think so. Whatever you have to say, you can say it to all of us

maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 July 2022 02:32 (three years ago)

I assumed it wasn't their regular night, this was some bonus night at a different bar than usual?

Piven After Midnight (The Yellow Kid), Friday, 22 July 2022 02:54 (three years ago)

Nathan Fielder is clearly a genius.

Josh in Chicago, Friday, 22 July 2022 03:37 (three years ago)

iirc i think it was him inviting her to a trivia night that he usually does solo

nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Friday, 22 July 2022 12:07 (three years ago)

diabolical

maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 July 2022 12:19 (three years ago)

https://cheapchickinthecity.wordpress.com/

they are still playing to this day
but that's about all she can say

maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 22 July 2022 12:21 (three years ago)

Given the size of that massive flow chart I figured having multiple people there would have just been way too complicated

frogbs, Friday, 22 July 2022 12:26 (three years ago)

he overplayed his hand with the second episode, this is obviously much more staged than it pretends to be.

i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 23 July 2022 05:07 (three years ago)

still creepy as fuck though

i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Saturday, 23 July 2022 05:20 (three years ago)

I'm more excited about where the show is going because at this point it could go anywhere. It is clearly scripted and better for it. After the first episode I wondered if it was going to follow the same formula throughout, but now it seems like something weirder is going on.

Cow_Art, Saturday, 23 July 2022 05:42 (three years ago)

maybe I’m a rube but I trust nathan completely and I’m just happy to be on the ride

Clay, Saturday, 23 July 2022 11:26 (three years ago)

yea i mean who cares if there is a structure, it will overall be better for it

nathan w the scion guy felt like john wilson - amazing & could not have been planned

johnny crunch, Saturday, 23 July 2022 18:50 (three years ago)

ep 2 was great, was a little on the fence after ep 1 but now it has immediately gone somewhere weirder and more ambiguous I’m totally on board

the life of a rebo band is always intense (emsworth), Saturday, 23 July 2022 22:26 (three years ago)

discussing whether this experience would be traumatizing for the babies involved of course inevitably led to Is it bad for a baby to see you masturbating?

, Monday, 25 July 2022 02:05 (three years ago)

I was utterly perplexed by this second episode. What purpose did the first episode serve if it was just going to pivot to a multi-episode narrative? Anyone else feel that the first episode was filmed pre-pandemic, and the second much later? Did they really relocate the bar? Is this really going to be a multi-episode arc? It's kind of refreshing to see a show where I have absolutely no idea what's going on.

Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 12:45 (three years ago)

he overplayed his hand with the second episode, this is obviously much more staged than it pretends to be.

― i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), Saturday, July 23, 2022 12:07 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was thinking when Nathan hesitantly agreed to step in as a babysitter that the baby's actual mother was just like a hundred feet away from the house.

But as others have said, I don't really care about any artificial elements. There's a certain suspension of disbelief required here (do we really think he transported his elaborate Alligator Lounge set across state lines on a whim?). And I do half believe One Eye Open's theory that everything we're seeing may be one big rehearsal for something entirely unexpected.

Beautiful Bean Footage Fetishist (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 13:41 (three years ago)

Given the leap between the first and second episode I think that's a really good guess. Like, it's going to end with him in the bar, and then the camera will pan out and reveal that the bar has been rebuilt once again in a warehouse in Antarctica or something. "Maybe we are meant to be alone. Maybe all of life is just a long rehearsal to teach us what it's like to be alone, after everyone and everything we know and love has disappeared or died. Or maybe being alone is our natural state, but being with others is what gives us a soul."

Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 13:58 (three years ago)

yeah as far my enjoyment of the show i have no interest in whats actually real or staged. I think its clear that he is interested in telling a scripted story about a character, and its going to be told through the lens of a "nathan for you" style comedic reality show but it is not going to actually be that show.

nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:22 (three years ago)

impression I get is that the people are real but the situations may be staged - for instance Kor's insistence that trivia night goes well is probably something the producers told him to do, but Kor's dilemma itself were probably real. I think NFY would pull tricks like that a lot. as for this recent one I don't think either one of them were actors (Robin seems to have an online trail of being a weird dude) but I am guessing they tried pretty hard to drive Robin out of that house

frogbs, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:35 (three years ago)

but yeah blurring the lines between real and staged is sort of this show's whole deal, not to mention a lot of what NFY was doing near the end

frogbs, Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:36 (three years ago)

Interesting. I haven't looked up Robin at all, but sleeping in a different room and being woken up at least once felt like plenty to get him out of there.

maf you one two (maffew12), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 15:56 (three years ago)

ugh, i had to tap out during the scene where she's whispering her prayer. it's "cringe", but that shit really does hit home. i remember being surrounded by people whispering these things to themselves, always loud enough that the adults next to them (and me, who i guess they thought was too little/childish to understand what was going on) could hear, and remembering the passages in my illustrated bible showing pharisees loudly praying with their faces and hands turned up to god so that everyone nearby could hear them. "i just pray father that you would place your hand heavy upon this production, heavy on nathan..." that kind of stuff particularly, the "place your hand heavy up on this production" shit -- people saying things that are very unnatural, that they heard somewhere else, when someone else was praying too loudly, which just so happens to make them feel like they are world-historic characters during the end times conversing directly with god, get it ouuuuuuuut

Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Tuesday, 26 July 2022 16:20 (three years ago)

What happened to the premise of the whole season in the end? Shouldn’t there have been some sort of collection and analysis of the in-flight footage for him to use to re-pitch to lawmakers again (somehow)? It seemed to be in focus up until they landed. Instead it was dropped and the only thing that concluded was the new side revelation of him discovering and burying a possible autism diagnosis.

Evan, Monday, 26 May 2025 16:30 (two months ago)

I was slightly surprised they didn't return to that at the end, but maybe they tried to re-pitch and got nowhere with it. Or maybe we'll see it next season

Vinnie, Monday, 26 May 2025 18:54 (two months ago)

Well, I guess his ultimate conclusion is also that pilots are incentivized not to look into their own mental health. So maybe he doesn't want to keep exploring a solution

Vinnie, Monday, 26 May 2025 19:52 (two months ago)

was listening to NPR in the car this morning and heard an episode of 1A called "Ask a Pilot." the snippet below was so relevant to The Rehearsal that I thought it was actually prompted by the show, but apparently the 1A episode was a rerun.

WHITE
Aidan, thanks for that call. I also want to read a message from Oklahoma. "What's the stigma around becoming a commercial pilot while prescribed SSRIs? I know it's not impossible, and there are organizations that work with medical professionals to help obtain medical clearance, but how do employers and peers handle it? Is it taboo?"

And SSRIs are medications used to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. Jason, what can you tell us?

MIDDLETON
Yeah, I'm so glad this question was asked. I have such a strong opinion on this, and I believe this is a massive failure of the AME, the Office of the Aviation Medical Examiners. I mean, if you think about the population, there's about 320,000 commercial pilots in the world, worldwide.

And just in the U.S., it's estimated that 25% of the population has some sort of mental health issues, meaning on the spectrum from low depression up to very severe issues. And the problem in aviation is if you check that box, you're done.

So, what it's doing, it's either making aviators lie to the FAA about what they're doing and hiding the medication that they're taking, that they should be taking, or they're flying untreated, which is a huge problem as well. And the way that the FAA is structured, the aviation medical system is really, really set up for failure, in my opinion.

And this is not just my opinion. I'm sure Tomica would agree and James as well on this point.

WHITE
Yeah, I see Tomica and James both nodding. Jim, anything to add there?

FALLOWS
This is one more. Yes, I agree with everything that Jason said. And I think one of the points about current changes is if you don't have any perfectly clean medical clearance, you have to have some approval from the medical headquarters in Oklahoma City of the FAA.

And there's an enormous, maybe year-long backup in there simply being able to review these applications and waivers, and their staff is being cut too. So, this is one just very tangible illustration of how staff cutbacks can affect flying safety.

jaymc, Monday, 26 May 2025 20:00 (two months ago)

there is committing to a bit, and then there is becoming a licensed commercial airline pilot over a period of years

gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 27 May 2025 17:39 (two months ago)

i was pretty awed by the final monologue (taking off in ecuador, flying solo across the atlantic until he reaches the "welcoming sands of namibia." maybe he really does love the solitude of being a pilot after all?)

gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Tuesday, 27 May 2025 17:40 (two months ago)

my surface level take is that he fell victim to the problem he was trying to solve. theres pointing out the obvious problem with the self-reporting medical certifications, but also the ego, human nature, validation, whatever you want to call it that prevents him from giving it all up after the sunk cost of those years spent getting to that point. at the end, the copilot seemed totally open and comfortable and embodying all the lessons that nathan was trying to teach, but nathan himself was the one embodying all the dangerous behaviors that he was trying to stamp out in other people, leaving important things unsaid so as not to make things "weird" in the cockpit. at the end of the day theres just an overpowering human urge to go with the flow and just hope that nothing bad will happen. it reminded me of nathan for you, where so much of the comedy came from people being nicer to nathan than they should, seeing the lengths people will go to in order to accommodate a madman and go along with his bad ideas just to avoid an uncomfortable conversation.

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 27 May 2025 18:09 (two months ago)

you could also read the whole thing as a rehearsal for his own benefit, the altruism of improving cockpit communication actually just him knowing that he had issues understanding emotions and communication, and that all the rehearsing would make him finally overcome his own doubts about his mental health and be able to tell himself he's normal, taking his own problem and projecting it onto everyone else

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 27 May 2025 18:19 (two months ago)

Omg the Summit Ice website text is amazing.

https://summiticeapparel.com/pages/about

“In October of 2023, our sales plummeted by nearly 90% and we couldn’t figure out why. After extensive market research, only one answer made sense: consumers had suddenly become more savvy about the quality of softshell jackets. Therefore, we believe the best way to achieve our goal of raising awareness is by shifting our primary brand focus from genocide to craftsmanship.”

calm potatoes (flamboyant goon tie included), Tuesday, 27 May 2025 21:04 (two months ago)

I enjoyed this interview with Fielder:
https://www.vulture.com/article/nathan-fielder-the-rehearsal-season-two-finale-interview.html

Non-paywalled: https://archive.ph/El8ZF

jaymc, Tuesday, 27 May 2025 21:10 (two months ago)

just watching the finale now

nathan knows he’s blowing it up, his expert says that it won’t be a real example for legal purposes, and as his remit goes, he’s doing the real rehearsal

and then his dialogue about being formerly into gambling followed by his room having a big dive/cards Las Vegas logo over it… yes

ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Wednesday, 28 May 2025 04:14 (two months ago)

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this before, and in fact, I'm still not quite sure exactly what it is that I watched.

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 29 May 2025 01:46 (two months ago)

finally got around to the first episode of s2 and the shot of nathan standing outside the plane window as they simulate it taking off is just wonderful

ufo, Thursday, 29 May 2025 03:09 (two months ago)

i totally blubbed at the finale. couldn't tell you why yet

massaman gai (front tea for two), Thursday, 29 May 2025 05:40 (two months ago)

nathan went on cnn to talk airline safety

https://bsky.app/profile/bkoo.bsky.social/post/3lqcxvlugn225

https://bsky.app/profile/junlper.beer/post/3lqd6kpplzk2g

gestures broadly at...everything (voodoo chili), Thursday, 29 May 2025 17:11 (two months ago)

I saw some intriguing (to me at least) discussion about not whether Nathan was actually flying the plane but whether there were actually passengers on the plane he was flying, actors or no. On one hand, if he did the work, as it appears he did, he was within his rights to do what he did. But would or could HBO actually insure the production if even theoretically all those people were at risk, should anything have gone wrong? Don't know how that works, but for sure Nathan has not been above slight of hand and tricky editing. This final episode even underscored his magician bona fides.

Doesn't change anything, of course. Still fascinating stuff. Big interview here:

https://archive.ph/Ft43G

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:17 (two months ago)

The actor passengers probably signed a mound of paperwork releasing hbo from liability

calstars, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:21 (two months ago)

I'm not sure those liability waivers work that way, but I'm not a lawyer.

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:47 (two months ago)

Someone on Reddit mentioned that they knew one of the passengers on the flight, and it was real. (If you trust a random redditor, that is.) However, there's also been speculation that there were two flights and that the the exterior shots (from the aerial photography unit) were of a flight without passengers.

jaymc, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:49 (two months ago)

Interview with Rep. Steve Cohen, who is still befuddled by Fielder:

“We had a nice discussion about different things and got along and posed for pictures afterwards,” Cohen said of the meeting. “He did have a tendency to just to just kind of sit and say nothing at times. How much of that was schtick and how much of it was real I never really knew — and I still don't know.”

...

“Maybe people thought I acted abruptly at the end," Cohen said. "But we’d had a long meeting, and I got up and said, ‘It's been nice talking with you’ because I had another appointment I was late for. But he's an awkward guy. Or he acted like he was awkward.”

jaymc, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:51 (two months ago)

But how would a passenger even know it was real? The door to the cockpit is closed while it is in flight, we can't see the pilots actually piloting.

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:53 (two months ago)

it kind of plays into his theme a little bit, because it's a black box, so to speak. no one really knows what goes on in there.

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 29 May 2025 23:54 (two months ago)

I also found the finale really touching

FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Friday, 30 May 2025 02:31 (two months ago)

Didn’t expect to like this season nearly as much as I did. I don’t think I even finished s1!

FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Friday, 30 May 2025 02:32 (two months ago)

“I’m here, so I must be ok” was such a perfect line.

FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Friday, 30 May 2025 02:39 (two months ago)

I’m watching him on CNN giving a remarkably sincere interview about aviation safety, but also dying at him repeatedly going out of his way to refer to his 737 flight as ‘the miracle on the mojave.’

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Friday, 30 May 2025 03:20 (two months ago)

yes that did happen

brony james (k3vin k.), Friday, 30 May 2025 03:22 (two months ago)

I Totally butchered the final line

FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Friday, 30 May 2025 04:20 (two months ago)

whoops missed that voodoo chili, has posted abt the cnn interview hours earlier. there were some good laffs in the full 15min segment, including him referring to himself as a hero who saved hundreds of innocent lives (bc he landed the plane safely)

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Friday, 30 May 2025 12:13 (two months ago)

Just finished my god. The one actor who questioned how many of the other actors declined to get on the flight and then responded with “actors” was amazing

Heez, Friday, 30 May 2025 14:55 (two months ago)

need a comp of the accompanying promos for this season as a b-sides collection to the season

calstars, Friday, 30 May 2025 15:09 (two months ago)

what would the difference be between a licensed commercial pilot certified to fly a 737 flying a bunch of actors in the plane and Nathan, a licensed commercial pilot certified to fly a 737 be?

Nathan's also apparently been flying empty 737s around as a side gig and that's pretty verifiable

ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 30 May 2025 15:19 (two months ago)

I liked how his reaction to his copilots squinting face mirrored the autism test he struggled with

Heez, Friday, 30 May 2025 15:22 (two months ago)

I think one of Nathan's greatest strengths isn't doing things that seem unreal, but instead doing things that are completely out of left field far in advance and only pulling back the curtain at the last minute

he admits it on the show, but he obviously had conversations where he explained to the pilots that he, himself, was a licensed pilot to be honest and build rapport throughout the entire season and he cut every single one of them! we get to the last episode and we're finally in on the bit. just an amazing payoff

ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 30 May 2025 15:42 (two months ago)

I doubt he'd go that deep again, but it's funny to imagine a season where he's doing something similar but about Nascar drivers, and we get to the last episode and he walks over to a car that has the SUMMIT ICE logo splashed across the hood and he jumps in

ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 30 May 2025 15:44 (two months ago)

lol yeah a real missed opportunity to not have summit ice livery on the plane, that would have been incredible

waste of compute (One Eye Open), Friday, 30 May 2025 15:56 (two months ago)

I just read a New Yorker piece on the finale and was thinking that he really is the closest to Andy Kaufman as far as effectively blurring the line on if they really are that way or not

Heez, Friday, 30 May 2025 16:06 (two months ago)

what would the difference be between a licensed commercial pilot certified to fly a 737 flying a bunch of actors in the plane and Nathan, a licensed commercial pilot certified to fly a 737 be?

Well, if what the show said is accurate, about 1500 hours in the air, plus other certification standards that he didn't get, vs. a loophole? This is something I just saw on Indiewire:

For “The Rehearsal,” we see some of that prep work in the show’s most stunning flashback to date — the two years that Fielder spent training to become a licensed commercial pilot type-rated to fly a 737, and the show’s search for a rentable 737 safe enough to fly. Fielder was still probably well short of the flight hours needed to achieve his airline transport pilot’s license at the time of shooting “The Rehearsal” finale, which is the certification that the vast majority of pilots flying passenger planes have.

But even so, Fielder dedicated himself to learning enough material to fill a college degree in a condensed amount of time, in addition to his work as a comedian. Although it comes out a little bit heartbreaking as the final voiceover of the series, from an insurance perspective if Fielder’s allowed to be in the cockpit, then he must be fine.

The main answer, therefore, in how “The Rehearsal” got away with packing a real airplane full of real people (even if they are actors) and flying it in the actual sky is that Fielder did the work to be qualified to fly it, that the production found a plane airworthy enough (thankfully, without bird nests), and that the team around Fielder, from his co-pilot to the show’s aviation consultants (two are credited in the episode, Steve Giordano and Robert Allen) to the crew in the chase plane, were experienced enough for HBO’s army of lawyers to agree they had indeed mitigated as much risk as possible.

Josh in Chicago, Friday, 30 May 2025 17:25 (two months ago)

the other trick is that there was a licensed passenger airline pilot in the cockpit, it just wasn’t Nathan

ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 30 May 2025 17:55 (two months ago)

I remember from discussions on PPRUNE that the typical cost to become a pilot for Ryanair was something in the region of £103,000 - for some reason the £3,000 at the end stood out - and you have to cough up that money yourself. Actually, no, a bit of Googling reveals that it's €103,500:
https://afta.ie/mentorship-ryanair/eu-ryanair-future-flyer-programme-ab-initio/

If my calculations are correct you spend 98 hours flying and a lot of time in the simulator and attending "long briefs", unless I'm misreading it and that's part of the uniform. Ryanair pays its captains £70k/€80k, so assuming you're willing to slum it, you'd start to make a profit after working 4-5 years. By that time you would be sick of seeing Spain from forty thousand feet. I assume a lot of that course involves night-time navigation and route planning stuff that Fielder probably wouldn't have had to bother with.

Imagine for the next series of The Rehearsal that Fielder tries to sort out Tom Cruise's life. By dressing up as Tom Cruise, following Tom Cruise around, attending premieres with Tom Cruise. Imagine that the final episode is released to cinemas as a reboot of the Mission: Impossible franchise starring Nathan Fielder, and imagine that it's a huge success. That would be a heck of a thing.

I wonder how difficult it would be to erase an actor's film history and replace it with AI. Imagine a background actor in the recent streaming version of Willow who only appeared in that show - I pick Willow because it never had a physical release and it's currently unavailable. Imagine if Fielder took over that man's life and, with AI, replaced him, George Lucas-style. Imagine doing that with multiple releases spread across different studios, over a long period of time. That would be an impressive stunt. At this point the elaborate nature of the stunt has taken over from the emotional core of the programme.

Or imagine if he surreptitiously replaced every physical copy of a particularly rare printing of the Bible with an exact duplicate that has "thou shalt commit adultery" instead of the original wording.

Ashley Pomeroy, Friday, 30 May 2025 18:30 (two months ago)

Funny you should mention Tom Cruise. I just saw the new M:I this afternoon and the Rehearsal finale tonight, and there’s definitely some similarity between Tom Cruise hanging off a biplane in midair to entertain an audience and presumably to prove to himself that he’s still got it and Nathan flying a 737 and concluding “I must be ok.” I guess what I’m saying is Nathan is the Tom Cruise of comedy.

That CNN interview is great. Love when he starts interrogating Wolf Blitzer. “You were in Mission: Impossible.”

dinnerboat, Sunday, 1 June 2025 02:15 (two months ago)

one thing the Sully episode reminded me of was the NFY where he elaborately concocts a wild scenario all so that he has a story to tell on Jimmy Kimmel. in retrospect that feels like a dry run for this show. as does the episode where he creates "The Hunk".

interesting how with NFY there was always this open question of how much of it was real, how much the subjects actually knew, and whether any of them were actually actors...whereas The Rehearsal sees that line and stomps all over it. gotta say I was pretty thrilled by the turn Ep 5 makes (the autism one), after it spent time wondering how many pilots may have undiagnosed mental issues I wondered if he'd look inward like that

frogbs, Monday, 9 June 2025 17:23 (two months ago)

also wanna say Nathan muttering "oh fuck" as he's getting blasted with milk from the giant puppet Mommy is probably the hardest I've ever laughed at anything on TV save for maybe certain On Cinema moments

frogbs, Tuesday, 10 June 2025 14:42 (one month ago)

that moment felt like the "real" Nathan slipping out (if there ever is such a thing on his shows)

Number None, Tuesday, 10 June 2025 16:44 (one month ago)

it definitely felt like it happened when that lady was talking about getting turned on by Einstein

frogbs, Tuesday, 10 June 2025 17:42 (one month ago)

anyways one moment that really stuck out to me was Nathan testing out the whacking off on a bus joke in the mock Congressional hearing. nobody laughs the first time, then he takes them aside to ask if they thought the joke was funny, and when they said they did, he tells them to just act as normal, if something's funny they can laugh. so in the next take everyone is doubled over in laughter in a clearly exaggerated fashion.

what I loved about that scene (outside of it being hilarious) was how it suggested that an actor who is just playing "a normal person" with no other direction still puts that layer of distance between themselves and the character, they're focused on the 'performance' and therefore ignore their normal impulses (such as laughing at a joke), which is a microcosm of what the show is about. but at the same time it's sort of a macrocosm (is that a word?) of the show's theme, since the bit is obviously scripted (at least the last part was). I feel like a lot of the things he tried to do didn't actually go as he hoped - I think he really was ultimately trying to get a law changed, he really did want Colin and the actress to fall in love, he was trying to get something interesting to happen with the dog clone but nothing really did. this happened in NFY all the time. but in the actual show itself, Nathan can control everything that happens. he can use the footage to tell whatever story he wants to. he's the captain.

also I felt the smile he cracked when everyone was uncontrollably laughing was actually kind of genuine. I mean it was still him telling the joke. that's another theme he explores a lot, whether an acting performance can make you feel a real emotion. kinda dovetails with the stuff he does in Ep 3 with the fake Colins.

frogbs, Thursday, 12 June 2025 14:15 (one month ago)

Iirc one of the few clear examples of him breaking character is in the Nathan for You episode when the guy admits to drinking his own piss.

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 12 June 2025 14:37 (one month ago)

*his grandchild’s piss

Judi Dench's Human Hand (methanietanner), Thursday, 12 June 2025 14:38 (one month ago)

lol that's right!

Someone dug this up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuTd6xUyLos

Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 12 June 2025 15:33 (one month ago)

two weeks pass...

I liked S1 pretty much, but S2 was better in pretty much every way. It felt like it hit harder and was also funnier.

That scene where Nathan is contemplating getting the fMRI results to find out if he has autism, etc. felt so real with the flashbacks to him copying people growing up like it was something he had wrestled with his entire life.

il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Monday, 30 June 2025 11:36 (one month ago)


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