This 'The Rehearsal' Fan Theory Says Nathan Fielder is Pranking Us
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If you're at home, alone, every Friday night—definitely not like myself!—watching The Rehearsal, are you having a creeping feeling that everything isn't quite how it seems?
The HBO series, which sees Nathan For You's mastermind prankster, Nathan Fielder, lead willing subjects through extensive practice runs for their Big Life Moments, is evolving by the week. Most recently? The series has seen Fielder increasingly work himself into his own social experiment, joining Angela in her extended trial period for parenthood. Episode Four also sees Fielder do everything he can to give himself the experience of participating in his own show, embodying an unsuspecting actor from the Nathan Fielder Acting Method program to a hilariously obsessive extent. It has all inspired an onslaught of think pieces and hot takes, either accusing Fielder of being exploitative or heralding him as an incredible comedian. But, as the series becomes increasingly bizarre, have you ever thought that Fielder is pranking us at home?
There's a solid contingent of The Rehearsal fans speculating away on Reddit, and they just might be onto something. I'm looking at this thread, specifically, from Reddit user bunnycake4. The title: "Does anyone else think Angela is an actor?" This is in reference, of course, to Nathan's new (fictional) partner, who is very much against Satanism, but also loves gardening. Or, you know, making Nathan garden. Anyway. Let me drop a couple responses from the thread.
From user OldAnimator815: "Sure, she could be the rehearsal for someone else. I could see Nathan revealing at the end that Season 1 was just a rehearsal and he's showing the footage to some lady that Angela was playing. Kind of like the beginning with Kor, 'I've rehearsed this dozens of times.'"
User MissionCreeper adds: "Yeah she's the rehearsal for Nathan who is practicing for making a show called The Rehearsal and we're just seeing the footage of him rehearsing, not the real show."
Doesn't Angela act a little too much like a quirky reality TV character? Regardless, it got me thinking. Whether or not The Rehearsal plays out the way the show's Reddit hive thinks it will, we're definitely in for a surprise. Think about it. Remember The Rehearsal's pilot episode, which Fielder layered with an oddly large amount of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory subtext? At the very end of that story, after we toured through Willy Wonka's wonderland, met an enormous amount of characters, checking out various contraptions along the way, Wonka lifts the curtain. The tour was a morality test, deciding who is worthy of inheriting his empire.
In some odd, Nathan Fielder-y way, The Rehearsal may very well be a morality test, too. Why are you watching The Rehearsal, or even reality TV in the first place? Is it to laugh at an oddball like Angela dancing alone in the kitchen, so you can feel like the normal one? Or is it, as we're seeing with Fielder's journey, to learn something about yourself? Is Fielder Willy Wonka, and we're Charlie Bucket at home, being put to the test? If The Rehearsal sees Fielder reckoning with his behavior as Nathan For You's puppetmaster, then he may very well be challenging the viewers who ate it up along the way.
Cue another "Pure Imagination" needle drop, baby.
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