Nathan For You

@davey i thought the same thing. that montage of anecdotes was amazing

the scene where he invites himself to the wedding was excruciating

yeah as much as I love this show there are entire scenes I just have to skip

The hilarious thing about that is the couple seemingly unaware of the art of saying "We'll get back to you on that".

also lol @ how he goes from hiding behind a tree to ripping up the dancefloor

its even more awkward when you consider that there were probably other couples that just flat out said no, this was as close to a "yes" as he got

series is killing it. last episode was insane

So I've not seen him on Kimmel yet, should I go watch the new ep first or would seeing Kimmel first make more sense? Or is it entwined?

*intertwined

The best way is to have seen the Kimmel appearance without the knowledge that there was going to be an episode about it. The next best thing is to watch the Kimmel appearance first, then the episode.

^ this is correct

Next best thing it will be (as a watcher of the show I unfortunately haven't avoided the knowledge)

yea I was glad to have not seen the appearance first

was there any info on if Kimmel was in on it? I was leaning toward he was since after the story he says "you're out of your goddamn mind" in a laughing way that seemed like he knew.

Ok that was great. Surely Kimmel and Dunst too were in on it though, right?

Extremely good uncomfy viewing the couple.

I don't think Nathan believes in people being in on it

yea i would doubt they were

kimmels comment and knowing laugh maybe were just a guess that something was up idk

nathan commenting that 'i considered just leaving' when dunst's story was hitting all his points was really funny also

Idk but it doesn't take anything away from my enjoyment of the show either way

I legitimately think the Kirsten Dunst thing was a coincidence

The show thrives on that sort of happenstance

that appearance on kimmel makes so much more sense now lol

okay this show has made and does make me laugh but it's pretty ethically dubious right? i've been getting more and more uncomfortable with it, like it's a lot of immigrants/people of color or just genuinely unhinged seeming people who are the ones ending up lampooned and yes a lot of them do agree to do do whatever he is saying but there is certainly a power differential. i usually see this excused away by people saying 'he makes himself the butt of the joke' but i don't quite see it that way

I legitimately think the Kirsten Dunst thing was a coincidence

So do I.

re: the ethics, I dunno, it always seems to me like it could be a hell of a lot worse. Like the Chinese restaurant marriage proposal thing could sound iffy on paper but they almost went out of their way to underline the absurdity of the concept above all else, even if the gag itself does necessarily lean on the "otherness" of the setting.

i guess my problem is less that he was doing a silly impression of a chinese restaurant and more that he... you know... got someone to marry him against their consent? (even if it was fake which i suspect)

not surprising that tim and eric produced this, it sure fits into that T+E school of humor centering on basically laughing at mentally ill people

eh, nathan always comes off more clueless and worse off than anyone else on the show

but he's putting on an act

This show's humor is rooted in evil, and so is Tim and Eric. But how evil, really? To me it's like two dogs play fighting "evil". Nobody's getting hurt here, as far as I know, and everyone comes out of it better off, or at least in the same place they were.

Compare it to Million Dollar Extreme which is fucking Neo Nazi shit.

So much of the humor is Nathan's absolutely idiotic, overwrought ideas. The people going along with it is like the background to that... it's less evil than Jay Leno's Streetwalkers segment.

so we've got:

a- it's not as bad as neo-nazi humor (although his fake ted talk was really good)
b- even he 'comes across' as clueless or poorly off even though that isn't reflective of the situation at hand

*if he does, ugh

c- can we not

Yeah, I like that one, the c option

i like the show you all, just you can't deny there's something a pretty immoral about it

if by immoral you mean twisted or strange sure
if you mean "evil" i can't even exactly
like in this dark fucked up world how is this the thing you wanna take offense at

what's some good MORAL comedy these days that doesn't go overboard with the lampooning of the mentally ill like our friends Tim and Eric do, or the targeting of ethnic immigrant shop-owners like anti-immigrant Nathan Fielder does

i take offense at plenty, thanks

would you be OK with the show if the producers had decided to remove any scenes involving immigrants or people or color?

just using that as an example of a power differential and punching down

the entire show is a ruthless mockery of contemporary capitalism which is kinda the ultimate punch up imho

One of Nathan's best bits this season involved goofing on a well-off white couple and talk shows. Tim and Eric's best bits goof on middle class white values.

So ... ??? as far as your premise goes. Which is worse to you than Million Dollar Extreme unironically attacking Jewish and black people?

The gist I get from the T&E scene is, "what a weird, fucked up world humanity is." And that includes everything including the wealthy, the powerful, the middle class, and more.

i think MDE is worse, that doesn't mean parts of this aren't bad lol

I think there's something humanistic about it

"This is us, humanity, without the veneer or romance", because Nathan nor T&E focus their humor solely on immigrants or the mentally ill

okay sure! i think i get that part of it. to be fair i do occasionally watch a youtube channel of a spectacularly insane man because yes, it's 'us'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RHuAkkjcHM

Tim and Eric, Nathan Fielder, they're weird-ass whack jobs, too. Just higher functioning.

somehow i suspect that NFY is more ethical than the shows it’s parodying. you ever read Bar Rescue Updates?

the entire show is a ruthless mockery of contemporary capitalism which is kinda the ultimate punch up imho

eh, I dunno about this. it doesn't go deep enough into finance to strike meaningfully at contemporary capitalism, but it's a mockery of marketing for sure, and I think that's also central to the Tim and Eric aesthetic (the LA/entertainment industry side of it, anyway). but anyway the stylistic similarities between this show and Tim & Eric pretty much end there. I don't think the intent with this show is to "punch up" at contemporary capitalism as much as it is to generate lols by sneakily revealing the ridiculous and depersonalizing lengths people will do to in the name of increased revenue.

so yeah, I guess the Nathan character is somewhat exploitative and therefore unethical, but I wouldn't call it significantly exploitative and I certainly don't get the feeling he's specifically targeting anyone under his realm of privilege. it's not as bad as Borat, where the character's schtick is supposed to be used as an attack on racism, but then it goes and perpetuates racial stereotypes as a means to exposing a deeper & more genuine racism that isn't as often documented. Nathan's merely using/perpetuating the stereotype of Canadians being social awkward psychopaths, which is sort of true actually, and therefore not as bad.

it doesn't have to be a total critique of capitalism to be a meaningful one imo. the funniest parts of the show from the sociopolitical satire angle (it also entirely works independently of that dimension, just on the level of cringe comedy) are like, Nathan's plumbing the depths of the desperation within the gig economy (the things he can get craigslist randos to do!) and other stuff congruent to 'people in LA will do anything for money/if a guy with a camera crew asks them to do it' (restaurant swapping out revolting menu items)

it doesn't, it can still be, but I don't think he's going after the gig economy itself, or really any economy in particular. the craigslist ads he uses to bait participants aren't really the punchline, they're just a convenient source for producing an endless supply of desperate/dim folk ripe for the picking for use in the show's asinine rube goldberg marketing schemes. the schemes themselves are what elevates this show beyond man on the street bits, or whatever other condescending comedy extraction techniques other shows use to get us to laugh at regular people. the patented Nathan™ schemes are elaborate and elegant and this show has excellent writers. But designing the show that so that it puts these unwitting participants (initially unwitting, anyway, I mean they do sign a release right) inside of the schemes for us to laugh at is both somewhat unethical yet also hilarious.