The Rehearsalis a docuseries for HBO in which participants receive help preparing for big life events with the help of show creatorNathan Fielder. People familiar with Fielder’s work, like fans of his Comedy Central seriesNathan For You, will feel at home with his awkward personality taking center stage. As he points out in Episode 1, his “personality can make people uncomfortable, so [he has] to work to offset that.” Even as guests are visibly awkward, they seem comfortable opening up in the space Fielder creates. Whether it is genuine shyness or a fantastic improvisational performance, his moments of prolonged silence get people talking. He also seems genuinely interested in what people are talking about, however mundane, which gets people to elaborate and often leads to hilarious turns in the conversation. His talent for drawing humor out of seemingly banal moments without mocking or alienating participants givesThe Rehearsalits unique comedic voice.
Audiences get their first taste of Fielder’s bizarre appreciation for reality as soon as the show starts. Kor Skeet is the first participant inThe Rehearsal, and he needs help to prepare to confess to his group of trivia teammates that he has been lying to them about having a Master’s degree. When Nathan enters his household, he makes small talk about Kor’s interior design and quips about his books. Only when he reveals to Kor what the premise of the show is, that they are going to hire actors and meticulously practice for his meeting with his teammates, do we learn that Nathan has rehearsed for his meeting with Kor. Prior to meeting the participant and filming the show, Nathan hired people to pose as building inspectors in order to get an inside look at and recreate Kor’s apartment, then he hired an actor to run through the potential conversation. You get to see every joke he made while walking through the apartment again, but with a fake Kor in a replica apartment.
While it might unsettle the average participant to know that Fielder has a 1:1 replica of their apartment housed in a storage facility, Kor seems more concerned with how one particular teammate will respond to his confession. He also will not tell Nathan the name of the specific teammate that worries him. Rather than mocking him, Nathan adapts and decides to foment a friendship with the guest to get him to be more open in conversation. Fielder’s comedy thrives on stochasticity. His openness to change leads to hilarious moments, like them sharing personal stories in a heated pool. It also does get Kor to open up, and when he tells Nathan about his friend Tricia and her blog, Nathan again uses this information as an opportunity to create a fake blog called Thrifty Boy.
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Another fantastic example of how creating the space for his guests to express themselves and be honest leads to some of the juiciest moments inThe Rehearsalcomes later in the first episode with Kor’s unwillingness to lose trivia. While rehearsing the big confession, which he and Nathan decided would occur at a trivia night one-on-one with Tricia, Kor admits that he would probably abandon the mission if he felt it was throwing off his trivia game. When faced with a person who has two completely conflicting desires, Fielder is able to create an absurd moment. He decides it is best to teach Kor the answers without letting him know since Kor would never agree to cheat. He painstakingly gets the answers by posing as the host of the fake Thrifty Boy blog, so he can film the actual trivia host giving the questions for his readers to follow along with at home. He then hires actors to stand around the city posing as pedestrians and workers who work the trivia answers into everyday snippets, like a policeman cursing China for inventing gunpowder and a construction worker reminding passersby that the impressive building going up is not as tall as the world-record-holding Burj Khalifa. By listening to Kor’s needs and using an HBO-sized budget to cater to them, Fielder turns the normal reality of coming clean to an acquaintance into a surreal epic.
Fielder creates more spectacles of mundane living in Oregon, where he has planned an elaborate parenthood rehearsal consisting of rotating child actors for hopeful parent Angela. Nathan is great at helping Angela find a co-parent. Despite her particular wants in a man, Nathan works with her, even filling in as a babysitter while she goes on dates. The man who she finally gets to agree to participate inThe Rehearsalwith her is Robbin. Robbin is also an interesting person. He is obsessed with multiples of 11 and agrees to co-parent with the celibate Angela under the assumption that he could convince her to hook up with him. He also drives Nathan to his apartment, treating Nathan to his numerological ramblings. At his place, Nathan abides by Robbin’s attempts to sneak a bong into his bag, his close fight with a similarly-aggro roommate, and his attempt to drive while stoned with no license plates. Fielder is almost too accommodating, considering that this person was being courted to look after children. Fortunately, even if Robbin did not bail on Angela several hours into a night of a crying robot baby, the entire show is filmed and production could ensure he was at least acting like he was fit to be around children.
Fielder ends up taking on the role of co-parent with Angela. He dresses up with the actor playing the child for Halloween and helps cover for Angela’s depressing takes on the importance of not celebrating the biggest Satanic holiday. Other hilarious back-and-forths ensue because of his openness to Angela’s conspiratorial suggestions, including him seriously entertaining her and Googling whether Halloween had Satanic origins. He is able to make light of a situation where a grown woman is afraid to dress up as Catwoman without explicitly mocking his guest or alienating her. He even does the same with his other Oregonian guest Patrick, by drawing attention to the absurdity of his bigotry without openly mocking him. The crafted scene where Patrick helps the old man search for gold (and wipe) is also a hilarious diversion, one Nathan felt was necessary to get Patrick more emotionally connected to his life-event simulation. Fielder is great at tuning into moments and conversations to find exactly what avenue to explore when crafting a documentary television series.
The Rehearsalis a masterclass in improvisation. After all, paying attention to the moment and finding the best aspects to respond to is just a longer way of saying “yes, and…” Fielder, despite or because of his awkwardness, has wonderful chemistry with people that pop on screen. He gets people to open up, he directs conversations towards aspects he finds funny, and he expands upon what he finds to make them more robust humorous moments.The Rehearsalowes its unique comedic voice to Fielder’s awkwardly inviting way with words.
