The Rehearsal - Nathan Fielder - HBO

wait do you think that's a reference to the aging mirror???

Was expecting the Curb Your Enthusiasm music at the end there

Of course the guy who made Primer turned out to be an actual dangerous manipulative psychopath, like the scary non-comedy version of what would happen if the Nathan For You character existed in real life.

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 9 August 2022 13:15 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Woah really? Links?

Google him. Arrested for domestic abuse etc

Funny to see him address the "meanness" interpretation of his shows when the Angela actress goes off on him (whose upset dialogue I assume he wrote)

Was expecting the Curb Your Enthusiasm music at the end there

― frogbs, Saturday, August 13, 2022 2:06 AM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol. But "These donuts are delicious" was perfect.

especially if you KNEW she was gonna say "sufganyot" right afterwards

“…and it was cool to own my own bar that HBO paid for”

holy shit that ending

Just rewatched the confrontation with Fake Angela and if he really found that actress in the acting class it seems like a genuine discovery.

her voice was identical

Nate’s Lizard Lounge

him saying “I’m nate” to a patron at nate’s lizard lounge >>>>

"i love the movie Apocalypto"

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Friday, August 12, 2022 11:48 PM (yesterday)

all i could think about was how angela must be an ilxor b/c of ilx's love for that movie 15 years ago

The scene with his parents reminded me of Tom Green.

I was amused by how angry I got at Angela for completely ignoring the premise when Nathan was gone!

gonna say i was not surprised when miriam started talking about israel’s superior microchip technology. more surprised that she didn’t bring up sodastream

i just watched episode 4. this show is hysterical, mind-bending, and heartbreaking and i’ve never seen anything like it before (except of course finding frances)

so far, ep 4 has been my favorite. 3 and 4 in particular, so good

I was amused by how angry I got at Angela for completely ignoring the premise when Nathan was gone!

disappointing but it fits the nathan fielder story. in some ways he reminds me of precocious children who make up games on the spot with elaborate rule systems. They struggle to find people who will play the invented game, if nothing else, because it's too complicated and self-absorbed -- the rule changes always have 100% to do with the little kid and what they think should happen. Kids like that often end up playing alone

sorry if that sounds like an insult to nathan fielder and/or precocious children! there's nothing wrong with playing alone or making up elaborate rule systems, of course. fielder just reminds me of a kid who is in some ways stuck in that world

I don't even know what to think anymore.

Good essay from Sam Adams in Slate (doe Sam post here?):

https://slate.com/culture/2022/08/rehearsal-episode-5-nathan-fielder-hbo-explained-maybe.html

I'm curious if this particular storyline was planned all along or if they just shot so much material that they were able to cobble it together. There has to be like 100 hours of unused footage for this show. In fact I suspect the last episode might actually dive into that idea (iirc pre-screeners didn't get to see the finale which suggests everything is about to turn on its head again)

There has to be like 100 hours of unused footage for this show.

It really depends how much has been scripted, right?

wtf are you talking about, KM? Angela is on a reality show, she pretends the kids and house are hers. The fact Nathan jumps in is meant to be ephemeral, but she already went off script long before he changed the rules, which admittedly fucked the experiment. He “took over” and then left, but she basically decided it was a farce despite the fact she had time for her role. Just complete disinterest in the premise

Nathan rewinding things was completely a break with premise and I get her disconnect there, though

also, rip to Nathan’s irl marriage and the fact his mom thought he was creating another situation for an admittedly fake spouse to march over him.

if he really found that actress in the acting class it seems like a genuine discovery.

IT is getting weirder. Well presumably since it is all scripted and everybody is an actor that must be planned.
But Nathan deciding to take over somebody else's narrative once they have left leaving him the sole parent to how many acting children? Are they still having 3 boys play Adam. Like not weird enough that he would want to raise his fake kid or fake his kid Jewish when it's a fictional situation anyway.
Like is the idea that we think that he who is presumably a versatile fictional role can't tell the difference between real and pretend. So weird.
I bet Angela is gooing to turn up in something else before long, if not in this in a different role.
I was thinking that Nathan's mother was an actress I'd seen in a few things Orange is The New Black and Station Eleven to name 2.

Nathan's mother is not Lori Petty.

I did say was thinking so like past tense.
Hadn't realised Lori Petty was Tank Girl when I saw her in more recent things

Would add another layer if the parents turned out to be actors too though.
LIke is the entire thing about supposed representations of the 'real' anyway.
Or is it just an existential comedy show about like epistemology like.

mental tricks, optical illusions and basic desperation.
& desolation.

Doing magic tricks is reportedly part of Fielder's origin story. Not only does he do a trick to break the ice in at least one episode of Nathan for You, I've read a profile or two where he does a trick to break the ice with a reporter. So sleight of hand and optical illusions are really his thing, the existential/epistemology stuff is like the exploration of illusion in a narrative context.

From that Slate piece I linked to:

The rehearsals themselves apparently parallel ideas from both Kabbalistic study and Jewish midrash, although it’s doubtful that Nathan the character is aware of this. (As for Fielder the writer-director, whom the Forward likens to “a Kabbalistically imagined Jewish God”—who can say?) But they’re rooted in a simple secular precept: Life comes down to a handful of decisive moments, and how you fare in those crucial moments determines whether you will succeed or fail. Nathan tells the actors he’s teaching the Fielder Method that the slightest misstep on their part “could ruin someone’s life,” a line repeated by the actor he hires to play himself. But it finds its most poignant expression in the second episode, “Scion,” when Nathan takes on the role of co-parenting Adam. “It’s scary to imagine raising a child,” he reflects, “when you always know that a single misstep on your part could ruin their entire life.”

And later:

He’s so invested in the idea of narrowing life to a series of predictable, and therefore manageable, possibilities that he hasn’t grasped a basic truth: No matter how much you practice, you will never be ready. What matters most is the ability to accept imperfection, in yourself as well as in others. You will make terrible mistakes, and suffer the consequences: marriages end, people die, things that should have been said never are. But if mistakes were permanent, Angela would still be “standing on the corner drinking 40’s” and not taking part in Nathan’s bizarre experiment. The most important lesson the religious instructor teaches Nathan has nothing to do with Judaism. It’s when he asks if she wants to rehearse her confrontation with Angela and she tells him she prefers to “shoot from the hip.”

So, presuming an at least somewhat scripted/predetermined end is in sight, it becomes an even more complex moral puzzle box: a (somewhat) scripted story of a man playing a version of himself rehearsing scenes based on real scenes (that may also be scripted) about choosing what paths (scripts) we follow and learning (through rehearsal?) that the most honest/"real" path is possibly the one that is unscripted.

I’ve heard him talk in interviews about his love of magic and how it was a good social crutch for him as an awkward young adult, a way of having controlled & manageable social interactions. “Do you want to see a magic trick?”, then you do the trick, you both talk about the trick, the interaction is going to remain within very predictable guidelines.

This show is insane and I love it.

"I hadn't been to a synagogue for years, because it's so boring"

irl loled at that line.

keeping my finger hovering over the "is this antisemitism" ilx thread, ready to click, as Angela explains to Nathan why she wouldn't want her child to learn about judaism

miriam would love that thread

keeping my finger hovering over the "is this antisemitism" ilx thread, ready to click, as Angela explains to Nathan why she wouldn't want her child to learn about judaism

or as she talked about the camerawork of her favorite director

of course miriam really managed to get more racist than angela, in a classic twist ending

not that much of a twist if you've spend much time around people like her

fuck yeah

https://pitchfork.com/news/nathan-fielder-the-rehearsal-gets-second-season-at-hbo/

one of my favorite music shows, "getting asked for an encore"

Ok how can it even go from here? This season seems like a culmination of everything Fielder has done.

crossover episode specials with big brother and the bachelor

Nathan Fielder....will you accept this rose?

Fielder: .....okay.

Uhhhh….holy fuck. Dunno how to process that

Not gonna spoil it but wow that was a great direction to go in

Wow

Great finale, it felt like it should be the series finale. So I'm surprised but delighted to get another season, wonder where it will go next