The Rehearsal’s Season Finale May Be Nathan Fielder’s Apology to the Past
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The post The Rehearsal’s Season Finale May Be Nathan Fielder’s Apology to the Past appeared first on Consequence.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, “Pretend Daddy.”]
The ongoing chatter online speculating on how Nathan Fielder could possibly wrap up the first season of his brilliant new series The Rehearsal tended to stick to variations on one theme: that everything we’ve been shown in the previous five episodes was all an elaborate practice session for Fielder himself — a metanarrative red herring in the vein of Orson Welles’ 1973 film F For Fake.
Hilarious as that turn likely would have been, it also would have been a cop-out. An easy escape from the broader theme that Fielder and co-writers Carrie Kemper and Eric Notarnicola touch on in Nathan’s voiceover in the final scene of the Season 1 finale, “Pretend Daddy”: “Life’s better with surprises.” And perhaps the biggest surprise that Fielder has to reckon with in this episode is the unintended consequences of his quest to be the perfect father and help his previous subjects rehearse their lives.
After injecting himself into the rehearsal of Angela, the fundamentalist Christian who wanted to prepare for her eventual motherhood, Nathan has taken the lead role and, as the episode opens, is trying to hold the perfect birthday party for his “son” Adam, played by child actors Remy and Liam. It’s a surreal faux-celebration as Fielder is surrounded by extras who, due to union rules, can’t speak any lines and so are pretending to really enjoy themselves.
The party ends on some bleakly funny and discomforting notes. At the behest of the Christian parent of one of the rehearsal’s many Adams, Nathan has to cheerfully explain that he’s going to hell because he’s Jewish. More troubling than that is how the lines separating the rehearsal from real life get increasingly blurry for poor Remy, the younger of the two actors. He continues to call Nathan “daddy” even when he’s off the clock and refuses to leave the set of the rehearsal.
The Rehearsal was already a self-aware series, with Fielder making comedic hay of the desire that many adults have to be famous. The participants of this show or other series like Fielder’s previous triumph Nathan For You or Sacha Baron Cohen’s satirical Who Is America? (on which Fielder served as a director) are lured in by the presence of cameras, willingly putting themselves into often bizarre circumstances likely for the sole purpose of being on TV. Whether any of the people who take part in these shows are happy about what they see isn’t something the creators of the series seem particularly concerned with.
The Rehearsal (HBO)
With that in mind, The Rehearsal can be read as an apology to the folks who were unwittingly mocked through Fielder’s other work. Throughout this series, the weight of his actions bear down on him: Think of the first episode where Nathan rehearses admitting to helping his subject essentially cheat at bar trivia and is greeted with anger. Or how the scenario Fielder and his team concocted to “help” Patrick ended up causing the young man to have an emotional breakdown and cut ties with the show.
Watching Remy tearfully beg to remain at the farmhouse with his “daddy” brings the moral implications of Fielder’s seeming indifference to a head. But to assuage his guilt, Fielder decides to go further down the rabbit hole, rehearsing ways that he could have kept Remy from becoming too attached.
It culminates in the brilliant final act as Nathan attempts to understand Remy’s mom’s decision to put her son in this situation by rehearsing as her, complete with Liam (the actor who played nine-year-old Adam) donning a wig to take on the role of Remy and a fake Nathan Fielder. (“He’s kind of a weird dude, eh?” comments the actor playing a producer to Fielder as they watch “Nathan” interact with “Remy” on the monitors.)
At the end, Fielder has his triumphal moment of growth, but it is also never in doubt that that last scene of him having a heartfelt breakthrough with Liam was likely entirely scripted. Life may be better with surprises, but on TV, Fielder isn’t leaving anything up to chance.
The fuzziness about how much of this series is on the level isn’t ever cleared up within The Rehearsal Season 1, nor through the post-game interviews that Fielder and some of the participants in the show have been giving in recent weeks. That ambiguity does leave the door open to the possibilities of a second season (which was announced hours before this episode aired) but it also makes this final episode of Season 1 feel slightly unsatisfying.
It also casts a revealing and somewhat damning light on the previous five installments. Though he finds resolution with Angela in this episode and Remy does seem to be coming around to the reality that Nathan isn’t his father, no one else in The Rehearsal gets a similar conclusion.
Where else could this have landed though? Pulling back the curtain to reveal that every last person and moment of these six episodes was fake likely wouldn’t have felt gratifying either. As funny as The Rehearsal is, the “puzzle of my own design” that Fielder says he’s trying to solve in this episode and the series as a whole only gets more complicated and elusive.
The Rehearsal Season 1 is streaming now on HBO Max.
The Rehearsal’s Season Finale May Be Nathan Fielder’s Apology to the Past
Robert Ham
Popular Posts
Idris Elba's Daughter Didn't Speak to Him for "Three Weeks" After Not Landing Role in His New Film
Corey Feldman Says Marilyn Manson Sabotaged His 2017 Tour: Exclusive
Angelina Jolie Sued FBI to Learn Why Brad Pitt Wasn't Arrested for Domestic Violence
Police Believe They Stopped Potential Mass Shooting at Bass Canyon EDM Festival
Foo Fighters' Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert to Stream Live on YouTube and Paramount+
Mark Hoppus Hints at "Next Phase" of Blink-182 After Reconciling with Tom DeLonge
