Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

The opening scene of The Rehearsal begins with an awkward Nathan Fielder speaking directly to his audience.

“I have been told that my personality can make people uncomfortable, so I got to work to offset that,” Fielder says.

At its core, The Rehearsal is a docu-comedy series about Fielder helping ordinary people rehearse difficult situations by recreating them with extreme detail, racking up a massive bill along the way. Fielder and his team build intricate sets to mimic real-life locations and hire actors to mimic the real people’s mannerisms. But Fielder’s clients, the viewers and Fielder himself slowly get sucked into the rehearsals, which causes everyone involved to question what is reality and what is fantasy.

This premise is first introduced in the pilot episode, where the audience meets Kor Skeete, a trivia-obsessed man from New York. Fielder rehearsed their initial meeting weeks prior by recreating Skeete’s apartment and hiring an actor.

Skeete confides that he has been lying to his bar trivia team about going to graduate school. Fielder promised to help Skeete rehearse his confession until it’s perfect.

The first rehearsal is a success. Kor admits his lie to his teammate, but Fielder begins to recognize the complexities and ethical dilemmas such rehearsals may cause—the subjects he tries to help are seemingly unaware of his potentially deceitful methods

Guess what? Here is the trailer for my new show The Rehearsal

A photo posted by nathanfielder

The following episodes move away from the premise of the show, instead focusing on Angela, a woman from Oregon, who enters a manufactured experiment to see if she’s ready to be a mother.

Fielder decides that he is the best fit for the father figure. Throughout the season, Fielder tackles certain experiences of parenting, including differing religious beliefs, neglect and addiction. What began as a series where Fielder sought to alleviate anxiety morphs into one that confronts his own psyche and actions.

By series end, Fielder discovers that one of the child actors he hired to play as his son, Remy, is having trouble leaving Fielder behind as his pretend father. Remy’s mother, Amber, tells Fielder that Remy grew up without a father and has had difficulties letting go of his attachment to Fielder. Even though Remy understands Fielder is not his actual father, Remy shows no inclination that he wants to leave his “pretend daddy.”

Fielder, up to this point, has been exempt from the consequences of his fictionalized worlds. However, with Remy, Fielder and the viewer simultaneously learn that not even the people within The Rehearsal can differentiate between fantasy and reality. This leaves an interesting quandary for Fielder: can you call something a ‘rehearsal’ if it feels real to you?

Fielder has struggled with vulnerability on The Rehearsal and his previous show, Nathan For You—often hiding his feelings with humor to cope with uncomfortable situations—which he admits in The Rehearsal’s pilot.
In his relationship with Remy, Fielder finally confronts an uncomfortable situation without the use of a ‘rehearsal’ or comedy and understands what it means to be a father. He has doubted his ability to be a father, as he is a divorcee with no children. It is from being vulnerable and dropping his act that Fielder takes accountability for his actions and becomes present in his life.
Although Fielder’s methods on the show may be considered cruel, this is a necessary element of the show, as it allows The Rehearsal to examine the complexity of human emotion and behavior.

By the end of the series, Fielder has learned that “rehearsing” for difficult situations cannot provide a solution to every problem because life is unpredictable. A person cannot rehearse emotion—it must be felt.

Published on August 29, 2022 at 10:41 pm