The Rehearsal Season 2 Is Bonkers, Obsessive, and the Most Personal Thing Nathan Fielder Has Ever Done: Review

The Pitch: At this level, Nathan Fielder’s work is nearly a style of its personal. From his beloved Comedy Central collection Nathan For You to his work behind the scenes on reveals 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 all the time 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 inventive method. Even his current bout with scripted fiction, final 12 months’s The Curse, carried with it the sort of narrative development that makes the viewers surprise, They aren’t significantly 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 venture, the second season of what could show to be his magnum opus: The Rehearsal. As soon as once more following the comic as he elaborately position performs varied situations within the title of serving to folks, Season 2 is 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 Technique.

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When you’re acquainted with the present, you’ve doubtless been enthusiastic about The Rehearsal Season 2 ever since HBO introduced it had greenlit one other batch of episodes. On the similar time, you most likely requested your self an vital, existential query…

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

In contrast to 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 lady rehearsing motherhood, and Adam, Angela and Fielder’s fictional son. By the climax of the season, it appeared as if the complete conceit of the present had each totally consumed Fielder and fully collapsed round him. He had taken rehearsing so far as it might presumably go.

Don’t get me fallacious, it was an unbelievable journey attending to that time, and the finale finally tackled profound concepts of leisure, morality, and id. Nonetheless, if Fielder had been to start out over and ship a set of one-off tales of helping random Craigslist customers like in “Orange Juice, No Pulp,” it might 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?

Effectively, by implementing the teachings you discovered in Season 1.

For one, The Rehearsal wastes no time establishing its season-long objective — making air journey safer. “I’ve been finding out industrial aviation disasters as a pastime,” 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 targeted 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 grew to become the primary focus. Season 2, nonetheless, neatly positions Fielder at its middle all through, leading to a fair 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 stress in Season 1 was really baffling, Season 2 manages to be much more bonkers, and for the sake of spoilers, that’s the place we’ll depart it.

A Clown Trapped Beneath a Truck: The security of airplane passengers isn’t any laughing matter, and that’s one thing that Fielder is aware of. On its face, there’s nothing overtly humorous in regards to the subject, and even trying 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 ought to be meddling in such high-stake affairs?

Fielder’s relationship with authenticity and sincerity has all the time been tumultuous. Due to well-known antics like “Dumb Starbucks” or his Jimmy Kimmel Reside! anecdote, even when his expression is gravely critical, you’re by no means fairly certain should 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 below 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, nonetheless, is born from that dissonance. Not solely is it an overarching concept, it’s constantly and explicitly introduced up all through the season. Consequently, by the finale, The Rehearsal Season 2 could show to be essentially the most real, private inventive assertion Nathan Fielder has come by means of with but.

Nathan for Nathan: As beforehand talked about, Fielder made a reputation for himself by placing the highlight on individuals who both had been determined for fame or had little interest in notoriety in any respect. 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 all the time remained a subplot to another person’s story.

The Rehearsal Season 2, although, commits a a lot higher 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 quite a lot of quirky and memorable plucked-off-the-street characters alongside the best way, however greater than ever earlier than, The Rehearsal Season 2 is Nathan Fielder’s present. Fortunately, if there’s anybody who can carry that weight, it’s him.

The Verdict: Because of its finer focus, extra private viewpoint, 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 things a fan of the collection might need from a second go-around, not solely answering the query posited on the high of this evaluation (how?) however a much more vital query as nicely: Ought to they make one other season of The Rehearsal?

Whereas it might have been laborious to conceptualize how the reply to that query might presumably 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 will even be out there on Max.

Trailer: