Nathan Fielder, The Rehearsal, and the Inevitability of Failure (Tales from Room 241, No. 3)
"Sometimes you don't want to say anything, but you do want people to know you exist." - Nathan Fielder, The Rehearsal
There is no one else alive like Nathan Fielder. It is no exaggeration to say that he is one of the foremost creative and comedic geniuses of our time. His best known work is “Nathan For You” a comedy show where he goes into failing businesses and gives them an insane solution to try and make them more profitable. However, his current show, “The Rehearsal”, is what has pushed him from being an incredibly talented creator to one entirely in a league of his own.
The conceit of “The Rehearsal” is that Fielder is allowing for people to rehearse for the biggest moments in their lives, taking away the stress that they will mess something up. The first episode of the series is self-contained and does a perfect job of conveying how the series will work and the lengths Fielder will go for this show. In order to help a man tell a friend he doesn’t have a masters degree, Fielder makes an exact replica of the bar it will happen in and has an actor study and perform as the man’s friend. This isn’t mentioning the prep Fielder has done for himself, rehearsing how to help the man rehearse for his problem.
While this first episode has a solved-in-one solution, the core of the show focuses on Angela, a woman who wants to know what it would be like to raise a child but doesn’t have a husband to do so with, nor is she in a stable enough point in life. Fielder creates a rehearsal for her to experience from ages 0-18 what raising a child would be like, and this is followed throughout the rest of the season.
Before reading further, I implore you to watch “The Rehearsal” first. I will go into heavy spoilers, and the show works on a stronger fundamental level when you do not know what is going to happen next. It’s only six episodes and is some of the most creative television there has been in years, if not decades.
As Angela’s rehearsal goes on, it sees Fielder stepping into the role of an active participant as Adam’s (the rotating cast of child actors playing the fake boy) father. With the rules of this rehearsal, Adam would be aging up at an accelerated rate , which caused a problem when Fielder had to work on a different rehearsal for a couple of weeks, but came back to Angela and Adam the equivalent of nine years later. This spirals into Adam hating Fielder and eventually having to be sent to the hospital due to a drug overdose. The stress and mistakes caused by his absence became too much for Fielder, but since he has control over this fake world, he just recasts Adam back to being a small child, erasing the damage he caused the teenager he once thought of as a son.
In this second cycle Fielder is more involved with the family as a whole, and while this strengthens his relationship with Adam, Angela’s desire for control yet detachment from the rehearsal becomes an issue. So large of an issue, in fact, that she ends up leaving the project. And yet Fielder continues the rehearsal, now raising Adam as a single father like the son he never had.
One of the child actors, Remy, forms a bond with Fielder in the process though, and believes he is his real father. From there the finale spirals into Fielder being changed by this. He makes amends with Remy and establishes that they are just friends. He tries to redo the rehearsal with several different actors from ages 6, 9, and 18 (as well as a fake doll) and recreate a specific scene of Adam saying “I love you, daddy!” And at the end, we see Fielder take on the perspective of Remy’s mother and how she brought Remy into the show.
The real life mother knows her child is going to be okay, but Fielder cannot fathom the idea of this faith without backing, and he puts himself in her shoes. We see “her” side of all of these events unfold, all in a manner for Fielder to try and right his wrongs through another perspective. But as the season ends, Nathan is talking to a former-Adam-now-Remy child actor as Remy’s mother, apologizing for making him a part of “The Rehearsal” and saying that Nathan didn’t want to hurt him, he just made a mistake. But as this growth seems to be making its way to him, he slips up and tells the actor that he’s their dad. The actor is confused, thinking he meant mom, but Fielder doubles down. The show ends with Fielder trying for one more time to be Adam’s dad, a chance he won’t get to keep once the cameras cut.
Nathan Fielder has created a world that every person has dreamed of. A place where mistakes can be reversed, where control is always attainable, where you can live without fear of being wrong. In this, Nathan Fielder has created a hell of his own design. This is a world where nothing means anything, where fact and fiction are blurred to the point of being the same, where life becomes nothing more than movement on a camera. “The Rehearsal” is incredibly funny with its extreme lengths that Fielder will go to for basic ideas, and the enjoyment of seeing how regular people will react with the absurdism inherent in a show like this. But it is also a deeply existential show on the idea of choices and our effects upon others.
Failure is necessary to life. Without it, the measure of success cannot be valued. If you have no experience with loss, you will never know what it’s like to gain something. Fielder has removed loss from the equation, and everything changes because of it. When the trauma of seeing your teenage son overdosing on drugs your absence pushed him to can all be returned to the innocent and fun life of taking care of a six-year-old, the impact of things ceases to exist. It is only when the illusion is shattered do things feel real. When Angela leaves the rehearsal, when Remy wants Nathan as his real dad, these failures from the real world fracture everything this show is about.
One of the most poignant scenes in the show is when Fielder retroactively rehearses how his final discussion with Angela went. He tries to say different things, act like different people, all in a way that would make her stay, but it never works. He always fails. This idea of replaying an event over and over and wondering what you could have done differently is a universal experience. A familial argument. A bad job interview. A failed relationship. Wondering that if you had maybe just said the right words at the end, she wouldn’t have walked away. It would have been okay and things would have been resolved. But it never would. She never would. The failure had to happen. Failure is inevitable and it is necessary. It’s never the measure of what you did to fail that is what you’re judged by, it’s how you respond.
There is no universal or objective way to view the ending of this show. The final montage of Fielder taking the role of Remy’s mom from the casting process for the show up through all of the events shows his criticisms of the show and himself as he realizes what he has been doing, how he has been manipulating these people and himself, and falsehoods of this world as compared to the real one. But in the end, Fielder ends up doing something so human and so wrong. He slips up when talking to the Remy-actor and says dad instead of mom, but doubles down on it. “No. I’m your dad.” And the episode fades to credits and ends the season.
Through the entire series people have been off put and critical of Fielder’s removed and nearly emotionless mannerisms. But right at the end, when the only person the show is focused on is him, he fails. His rehearsals and plans all fail because of his humanity. His desire to be a father to this boy, no matter how many layers of actors and absurdity the situation is enveloped in. And he needed to. Fielder has failed throughout the series in small ways, yet with the control of production he is always able to fix those. This is where the season ends though, and his lack of change and remorse changes everything. The desperation and intensity when he realizes what he wants and doubles down on it is palpable and downright unsettling.
People have the ability to change, but moments don’t. No matter how differently you may want it to go, the moment will always play out the same. There is no true way to rehearse for life despite how desperately you may wish there was. But that’s a good thing. It doesn’t matter how a rehearsal goes, all that anybody cares about is how you do in the real show.