Nathan For You

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.

ok professor

thank you, I agree that I do win the argument

i agree he's not satirizing the gig economy (see: the ending of andy vs uber) and one of the things i like best about the 'critique of capitalism' within the show is that it's not an obvious leftist one

i kinda just assumed the people appearing on his show were compensated in some way

he paid off that cop for sure

Well, he said he did.

This season more than the last few seems to be more about the process than the result, which is pretty funny. Like, setting up his schemes is the whole reason to watch, with the execution almost irrelevant.

Yes. where he places limits and requirements, and where he draws ethical boundaries, is consistently arbitrary and hilarious.

the running sub-theme of nathan being his own biggest project is the best part

Nathan seems to twist reality. Listen to this early NPR report where the host calls him Nathan Fielding throughout, which could be a joke from the show.

I recall an interview where Nathan mentioned having to scrap an entire segment because the business owner figured out what was going on halfway through. I can imagine something like that being a big hit to the show's budget. Might explain why he's drawn to people who are unlikely to know who he is.

I can imagine something like that being a big hit to the show's budget.

Also, designing a ridiculous chili suit or spending $350,000 to validate a TV show anecdote.

Or, you know, going scuba diving to pick up a burner phone dropped off a pier in an abandoned scheme to extort Uber.

well yeah, imagine doing something like that and then having to scrap it because someone figured out this was a comedy show or recognized who Nathan was

Good point. But I assume that kind of stuff is built into the budget.

the RS profile maura linked last month said "the show simply takes a long time to produce; upwards of 90 hours of footage go into one 22-minute episode"

ahahahaha he tells the story again on Seth Myers, and justifies it by saying, "look, if you're the Beatles, and you wrote 'Hey Jude'..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L7GsGc5adk

he misses the fashion police line though

i wonder if he'd had this appearance in his back pocket in case something went wrong on kimmel. although that'd be a pretty short turnaround in getting the episode out in time

lol at him staring at the audience to illicit applause for meyer's kid

this show definitely punches down and exploits immigrant business owners and y'all being obtuse if you deny that or get defensive about that

I don't feel invested enough to get defensive about it, I just don't recall many times I've seen humor in the business owners is in their (generally v understandable) befuddlement at Nathan's weirdness. Off the top of my head the exceptions (eg the ghost realtor and the PI dude) are largely white

*besides in their befuddlement

and those two people tried to get their own reality show spinoffs (Wolfe actually succeeded) so it's kinda hard to feel bad for them. he certainly doesn't seem to have much of an issue getting people to reappear on the show.

jfc you guys. i love this show too but man your bubbles must be a nice place to live. "he gets them back on the show! it means he's HELPING them." smh

idk - I see what you're talking about but it doesn't really feel to me like the joke is often on the business owners. the guilty part for me is that a lot of them probably felt Nathan was legitimately going to help them and wind up having to go along with his bizarre ideas as a result. but I've never really heard of any of them claiming they felt deceived or had regretted going on the show, even if they weren't aware it was for a Comedy Central thing ahead of time. I dunno if that means anything to you, but it does make it a little easier to watch for me.

I don't think it's any more exploitative than any other reality show. Power of the camera/celebrity/fame/TV, etc. I do agree it focuses largely on low-level working people of all bents, but given his gimmick is improving small businesses, I mean, I don't see a way around that. I do think Nathan is typically the uncomfortable butt of the joke, not just because he often makes everything about himself, even when he is clearly barking up the wrong tree with a dumb idea.

I have noticed a lot of Armenians, fwiw, but that's LA for you.

i feel like "los angeles" is a pretty solid running theme, without which the show would be way different

i'd like Nathan to follow up with restaurants featured on Kitchen Nightmares.

he seems to be branching out in the new season out of LA!

Well, driving distance, at least.

LMAOOO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN_ElpaabJU

on spotify too!

"he gets them back on the show! it means he's HELPING them." smh

I don't think the show helps anyone, it's not clear it's harmed anyone though

The most uncomfortable I can recall being was during the manipulation of the "girlfriend" from last season's "Hero" episode

Best new music?

— nathan fielder (@nathanfielder) October 27, 2017

someone with juice make this happen

Next season Nathan crowdsources enough money to buy out Conde Nast just so he can give a song BNM.

A Nathan thing would be to help an indie artist get BNM by putting out EPs that all get at least 3.2 scores (minimal effort), and then releasing them as a compilation album, assuring at least a 9.6 rating.

ahaha