REVIEW: ‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2 Broadens Nathan Fielder’s Antics

The Rehearsal Season 2 is Nathan Fielder’s most ambitious project yet. Considering that this is the same man behind the endless well of cringe comedy that was Nathan for You, the experimentation of the scripted horror-comedy The Curse, and, of course, the dementedly meticulous first season of The Rehearsal, that’s saying something.

The second season of the HBO docu-comedy, if you could even call it that, doubles down on everything that made the first season so unprecedented. The Rehearsal Season 2 increases the scale of his simulations, pushes the awkwardness to its very limit, and crucially gets closer to answering the question of “Who is Nathan Fielder really?”.

For the uninitiated, the concept of The Rehearsal is: Comedian Nathan Fielder helps people deal with difficult situations by offering them a full-scale “rehearsal” of the experience. In the first season, the main rehearsal involves helping a woman simulate all the phases of raising a child, from infancy to adolescence, with additional rehearsals for other situations interspersed.

In season two, the goal is loftier. The main storyline focuses on preventing airline disasters by identifying the causes of pilot miscommunication, with various other loosely connected subplots unfolding throughout the six-episode season.

The Rehearsal Season 2 takes the antics to a whole new level.

The big fun of The Rehearsal Season 2 is the extreme lengths that Nathan will go to make these rehearsals happen. In the first episode of the season, Nathan reveals that he has built a full-scale model of much of Houston Intercontinental Airport and filled it with paid actors as extras. For what purpose? Well, to see pilots interact in their natural habitat, of course. Fielder is nothing less than a madman when it comes to the details of the recreations.

Moreover, the further simulations that Nathan builds are so ridiculous and so expensive that you can practically see executive producers Christie Smith, Clark Reinking, Dan McManus, and Dave Paige panicking off-screen. To spoil the surprise would be criminal, but let’s just say there are more jaw-dropping moments in a single episode of The Rehearsal Second 2 than there are in most seasons of prestige television.

Of course, this is still a comedy show, and the comedy is as wonderfully squirm-inducing as it has always been. Part of the fun of Nathan Fielder’s work is seeing Nathan, with his awkward, often off-putting persona, getting strangers into uncomfortable situations and seeing how they react.

Season 2 brings the goods in this regard, with one particular moment in the first episode where a pilot and his girlfriend have an orchestrated discussion about the girlfriend’s interactions with customers at work. It transmits serious second-hand embarrassment to the audience. It’s just one of a multitude of deliciously disconcerting scenes that Nathan wriggles out of these non-actors worth rolling on the floor laughing over.

The blurring of reality and fiction is The Rehearsal Season 2’s greatest weapon.

The blurring of reality and fiction also remains central to Nathan’s work. Traditionally, there’s been an understanding that certain performers are real people and that Nathan is playing a character of sorts. In The Rehearsal Season 2, that’s not so clear. The appearance of three screenwriters, Fielder, Carrie Kemper, and Eric Notarnicola, begs the question of what exactly is scripted here. Do they come up with the scenarios? Or is the whole show an elaborate “rehearsal” of sorts? The answer never seems any clearer, which only adds to its allure.

The same goes for Nathan Fielder himself. As with the first season, some divergences depict Nathan’s own personal strife. The Rehearsal Season 2, try as it might to keep the audience at arm’s length, occasionally stumbles into what feels like genuine insights into Nathan and why he does what he does. Yet, there’s still that lingering doubt about whether this is true self-expression or simply the narrative Nathan wants to portray. It’s a stroke of genius that, along with the reality/fiction dichotomy, gives The Rehearsal Season 2 a unique space in entertainment.

Although this season is a true marvel in many ways, there’s also the natural diminishing returns that come with repeating the same formula. Nathan went through The Rehearsal before, so this season is less new in concept. It’s all up to Fielder and company to push the concept to the very limit. While this results in a plethora of “can you do that on TV?” moments, it would’ve been nice to see audiences get thrown for a loop a little harder this time around, as it’s easier to catch onto the antics the second time around.

The Rehearsal Season 2 is peak television, nonetheless. Nathan Fielder has never been this ambitious, or perhaps deranged, giving audiences a wild ride that doesn’t resemble anything else on television.

The Rehearsal Season 2 airs new episodes every Sunday on MAX, formerly HBO Max.

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