The Rehearsal Season 2 Is Bonkers, Obsessive, and the Most Private Factor Nathan Fielder Has Ever Achieved: Overview

The Pitch: At this level, Nathan Fielder’s work is sort of a style of its personal. From his beloved Comedy Central collection Nathan For You to his work behind the scenes on exhibits like How To with John Wilson and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Who Is America?, his public appearances to the primary season of The Rehearsal, Fielder’s reality-bending, absurdist meta-humor is immediately recognizable and at all times participating.

And it’s not simply Fielder’s trademark awkwardness or knack for locating a few of the most attention-grabbing folks you’ll ever see on tv. There’s a uniquely surreal, ever-heightening nature to his artistic method. Even his current bout with scripted fiction, final yr’s The Curse, carried with it the sort of narrative development that makes the viewers surprise, They aren’t severely taking it that far, are they? But when Fielder has dedicated his profession to something, it’s certainly taking it that far.

Which brings us to his newest challenge, the second season of what might show to be his magnum opus: The Rehearsal. As soon as once more following the comic as he elaborately function performs varied situations within the identify of serving to folks, Season 2 is yet one more labyrinth of the human psyche populated with stupidly costly units, attractive laptop computer harnesses, and a military of actors educated in The Fielder Methodology.

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For those who’re aware of the present, you’ve seemingly been enthusiastic about The Rehearsal Season 2 ever since HBO introduced it had greenlit one other batch of episodes. On the identical time, you in all probability requested your self an vital, existential query…

How the Fuck Do You Make a Second Season of The Rehearsal? Good query. Nice query, really.

Not like the episodic construction of Nathan For You, The Rehearsal Season 1 indulged in additional linear storytelling: Whereas every episode launched rehearsals, from Episode 2 onward there was an underlying fixed within the type of Angela, a girl rehearsing motherhood, and Adam, Angela and Fielder’s fictional son. By the climax of the season, it appeared as if the whole conceit of the present had each absolutely consumed Fielder and fully collapsed round him. He had taken rehearsing so far as it may probably go.

The Rehearsal (HBO)

Don’t get me fallacious, it was an unimaginable journey attending to that time, and the finale finally tackled profound concepts of leisure, morality, and identification. Nonetheless, if Fielder have been to start out over and ship a set of one-off tales of aiding random Craigslist customers like in “Orange Juice, No Pulp,” it could really feel a bit off, no? In order the premiere nears, it’s value asking as soon as once more, how the fuck do you make a second season of The Rehearsal?

Properly, by implementing the teachings you realized in Season 1.

For one, The Rehearsal wastes no time establishing its season-long objective — making air journey safer. “I’ve been finding out business aviation disasters as a interest,” Fielder lays out in each the primary episode and the trailer, “and I began to note a disturbing sample within the causes of those crashes.” From there, it’s six full episodes prioritizing that singular objective (plus a number of temporary associated detours).

Then, there’s the difficulty of the protagonist. Whereas Fielder was omnipresent all through Season 1, a majority of the episodes centered on the folks he was coordinating the rehearsals for — the trivia fanatic Kor, the spiritual Angela, the bandana-wearing Patrick. Doubtless a holdover from Nathan For You, a present largely constructed off of Fielder’s interactions with most people, it wasn’t till the ultimate episode or two that Fiedler’s story turned the principle focus. Season 2, nevertheless, well positions Fielder at its heart all through, leading to an excellent deeper degree of thematic improvement. (That is true to such an extent that, upon a rewatch after ending the collection, the primary few episodes of Season 2 really feel solely re-contextualized.)

Lastly, The Rehearsal Season 2 does what any good sequel does — it additional expands upon the unique concepts. Whereas the heightening of stakes, absurdity, and narrative pressure in Season 1 was actually baffling, Season 2 manages to be much more bonkers, and for the sake of spoilers, that’s the place we’ll go away it.

A Clown Trapped Underneath a Truck: The protection of airplane passengers isn’t any laughing matter, and that’s one thing that Fielder is conscious about. On its face, there’s nothing overtly humorous in regards to the subject, and even making an attempt to make it humorous looks as if a harmful concept. As Fielder asks himself on-screen, is that this all actually a good suggestion? Is he the one who needs to be meddling in such high-stake affairs?

Fielder’s relationship with authenticity and sincerity has at all times been tumultuous. Due to well-known antics like “Dumb Starbucks” or his Jimmy Kimmel Stay! anecdote, even when his expression is gravely severe, you’re by no means fairly positive in the event you ought to take him at his phrase. He’s the boy who cried wolf or, to borrow a visible metaphor from the trailer, a clown trapped beneath a truck — everybody watching assumes it’s all a part of the bit.

The primary season of The Rehearsal collided with that reality head-on, resulting in open-ended questions and sufficient assume items and video essays to fill a library. Season 2, nevertheless, is born from that dissonance. Not solely is it an overarching concept, it’s persistently and explicitly introduced up all through the season. Consequently, by the finale, The Rehearsal Season 2 might show to be essentially the most real, private inventive assertion Nathan Fielder has come via with but.

Nathan for Nathan: As beforehand talked about, Fielder made a reputation for himself by placing the highlight on individuals who both have been determined for fame or had no real interest in notoriety in any way. He discovered methods to inject his personal private journey into sure tasks, notably in situations like Nathan For You’s feature-length collection finale “Discovering Francis,” but it surely at all times remained a subplot to another person’s story.

The Rehearsal Season 2, although, commits a a lot larger proportion of its time to Fielder. It’s his objective to stop aviation disasters, in spite of everything, so the emotional core of the season lies inside his successes and failures. After all, there are various quirky and memorable plucked-off-the-street characters alongside the way in which, however greater than ever earlier than, The Rehearsal Season 2 is Nathan Fielder’s present. Fortunately, if there may be anybody who can carry that weight, it’s him.

The Rehearsal (HBO)

The Verdict: Due to its finer focus, extra private perspective, and  — sure — extremely outrageous set items, The Rehearsal Season 2 clears the extraordinarily excessive bar set by Fielder’s previous work. It’s all the pieces a fan of the collection may need from a second go-around, not solely answering the query posited on the high of this evaluate (how?) however a much more vital query as properly: Ought to they make one other season of The Rehearsal?

Whereas it could have been onerous to conceptualize how the reply to that query may probably be sure — outdoors of the devoted belief of Fielder’s cult-like fanbase — now that it’s right here, it couldn’t be clearer. If Season 1 was a mindfuck, stirring controversy and leaving viewers’ jaws on the ground, Season 2 is a gut-punch; an clever knock-out blow that additional defies all classification, expectation, and logic.

The place to Watch: The Rehearsal Season 2 airs on HBO beginning Sunday, April twentieth. Every episode may also be obtainable on Max.

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