Standing, uncomfortable, anxious induce: Why the rehearsal is the most fascinating show of television | Nathan field

WHat, suitable advice, a competition with reality sing, three cloned Yorkies, the content moderation of Paramount+ Germany and the safety of aviation have in common? Practical nothing, except for the interest of the television mastermind Nathan Fielder, who is brought together in the second season of the rehearsal with such different concepts.

In just four episodes, the genre bending show of sophisticated simulation-in the essential extremely realistic role-playing game in the name of the preparation of people for unpleasant situations–old of the most convincing, bizarre and insanely brilliant scenes this year delivered: a shy commercial air pilot on a first date, accompanied by 20 actors, which is moved by 20 actors mirror. Field, who carried his serial uniform laptop and banged into a “destroyed” cockpit through so wrong flames. The sight of the Lizard Lounge – an exact replica of Brooklyn’s Alligator Lounge, in which the field player only tended the bar last month – in an exact replica of a section of the George Bush Airport in Houston. And in a scene that shockingly transgressive even for a docu-comedy Auteur Who has been buil a career on Stretching the outer boundaries of reality television, the sight of field, shave, rubber-capeded, suckling from the paper-mache teat of a puppet as part of a Canonically Insane, Deeply Sincere Attempt to Relive the Life -And Thus Absorb The Wisdom -Of Captain Sully Sullenberger (by Tom Hanks Biopic, who came into the Hudson -Ruhm).

If you haven’t seen the sample or have not acclimatized experimental comedy on Fielder’s ultra-tiered brand, this will probably sound deeply repulsive, boring and/or nonsensical. And it is-Fielder’s comedy that could be described more precisely as Rube Goldberg-like social experiments that are pursued at such absurd ends and deliberately alienated with such a dead narrative that it causes laughter. Cigging, where other zacks had what others would slide over, built Arcanes in-jokes with long-Swiss payouts on the trail of the former prestige TV drama, it is television that examines human condition. How do people think about why they behave in a certain way, as they react to unsurpassed social interactions.

And yet it is a television, a really unique meditation about art and authenticity, performance and sincerity, which has only improved with its second season. The first excursion of the rehearsal, which was broadcast in 2022, introduced the audience to the special strand of neuroticism and the obvious power of negotiation at HBO; In six episodes, he constructed numerous simulations to abandon a potential real experience that was mainly geared to consider a woman whether a child (in one of the muscle and rightly criticized bits of the show. Business schemes of his comedy Central series Nathan to become a penn of television.

With the second season with six episodes, Fielders imposed the scale and the missions of his magic tricks and at the same time the production, the assumptions and experiences that go into the production of reality television, further questioned in the service of an apparently noble and current goal: aviation safety. Field was theorized that the No. 1 cause of aircraft turrets is a human error that is reinforced by breaking communication in the cockpit. For some reason, co-pilots do not correct the pilots if they make a mistake. Based on the number of Real Crashes Field’s team rejections with mandatory virtual explosions about flight simulator in the first episode, this seems to be a reasonable hypothesis. But in order to prove it, a characteristically complicated and involved series of experiments begins to better test from the replica of the living conditions of a 2011 dog for his clone-desto in order to test nature towards encouraging a co-pilot to arise with his girlfriend during a simulated flight.

There is a certain hyper-competence pleasure to see these scenarios and to see the imagination of a person who has so much financial and legal runway in view of the runway. But the series is the most satisfactory for this TV fan as a great deconstruction of the rules of reality TV due to a sophisticated role-playing game. The fourth episode dismantles the series-long assumptions behind the attitude of actors to say certain dialoglinia or carry out certain scenarios, which means that the logic is questioned behind any lock of unbelief. And one of the many side quests of the series includes the elaborate staging of a vocal competition with aviation motifs, which was presented to Field’s Junior Producer of Canadian Idol-Dem Nord-Spin-Off by American Idol, where he was instructed to reject hopeful singers who did not “star potential”. Meditation about what makes potential staff outside the screen better with a not envied task is fascinating and practical at the same time. In theory, co-pilot judges are selected because they all have the quality not to have died in an airplane crash-which would be better ready to disturb stubborn captains.

Like the entire work of the field player, wings of the voice have criticism of psychological manipulation and incorrect representation. On Monday, the participant Lana Love broke a show NDA to say that she had lost $ 10,000 and made it impossible to believe by the show producers that she was in a real vocal competition show and not, as Field it, “a singing competition as part of another TV show that has nothing to do with singing”. A measure of manipulation is integrated into the Fielderian worldview and the school of acting, although I would argue that his methods are easily googled at this point and the topic of the ultimate criticism of the show. In my opinion, the second rehearsal relay is the least ethically contaminated performance of the field (and this includes its dramatic turn of the HGTV satire). The overarching illusion of the show works because it fulfills a general purpose as the original goal of “better understanding human condition” – it is impossible to say how serious the field is to change the requirements for flight simulations in the Federal Aviation Administration in order to promote better Cockpit communication.

And with a clever, misleading heart. In the recent episode that was broadcast on Sunday, Field helps a shy co-pilot called Colin to improve his non-existent romantic life by practicing a first date with a turn. After Field has seen enough natural documentary films to know that some animals work well in packs, he recruits about a dozen actors to float Colin around Colin, and imitate every movement and every word, the idea that it is easier to do things if they don’t. It is very possible that the shy, social cue-averse colin was also an actor that was not a not steady. Fielder naturally has his own motifs as a master puppet player; The picture of Colin, which sips coffee, which is repeated by a choir of other faces, indeed makes an excellent television. But it also caused me to make this surreal, clearly field hack into the inevitable loneliness of life, to universal discomfort of social awkwardness and personal uncertainty. Of course it fails. The show should believe that all human behaviors can be taught that all emotions can be simulated and checked. Both the magician and the audience know that life does not work that way, but what a miracle to pretend something else.