Nathan For You

I need to buy a copy ASAP. I feel like it's gotta be just a matter of time before that's yanked off of Amazon.

Fully erect, they looked like spaghetti strands with pieces of burger meat to simulate the grooves of muscle of his forearms and biceps.

my copy's in the mail!

yeah, that line just leaps off the page don't it

nine bucks shipped from amazon seems a good price to pay.

Most amazing show

This is a man who does not respect people, as they are.
I do not like him, his show, or Comedy Central for airing it.

The episode with the "alternative girl" was disturbing.
That chick seemed cool and nice, and she even gave him a second chance.
She must have been lonely, to meet him in the first place.

He made fun of a lonely girl on television.

I do not condone this. I hope he gets cancelled.

40%

Alternatively: people will agree to anything as long as there is the promise of being on TV.

Yeah, my sympathy for Nathan's marks is mitigated somewhat by the fact that no one is required to appear on TV, and also by the fact that every single person appearing on the show signed a release.

Even if that's true I find his humor too mean-spirited to enjoy a lot of the time, like even if the participants themselves aren't hurt it still feels icky to watch him get off on being a dick.

no one comes off worse than nathan.

Very true.

I really dislike a lot of pranky stuff (Improv Everywhere can suck a fuck) and mean-spirited humor, but this show doesn't really push those buttons for me.

I think someone like Sacha Baron Cohen is a lot meaner, seeing he trades off of ambush tactics and putting people on the spot, then plying on their politeness to make them look bad (sometimes with a point, often not). But Fielder right off the bat offers ridiculous solutions to problems, and the humor comes from his straight-man reactions (subbing for our own incredulousness) to people actually going along with his on their face ridiculous to the point of surreal ideas (as opposed to trying to play along with or translate SBC's invented slang). But as written/acted/improvised, there's something more to Fielder that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe a weird sort of ... empathy? Identification with the mark? I'm thinking of his early season rebate episode, where the camping trip in the mountains turns into something sort of touching, or how he twists the genius Best Buy/electronics store episode into a sort of meet cute blind date. And if you're to believe him, there are not only several ideas a season that don't pan out but also plenty of twists there's no way he saw coming, like the realtor speaking in tongues (iirc) when they try to exorcise the ghosts out of her house.

That AVClub interview was pretty incredible, and includes asides like "I think I’m taking a lot of vulnerabilities and insecurities that I had when I was younger, and I’m exaggerating them for the sake of comedy." Or his reaction to the realtor: "Well, that moment in particular, I didn’t even know how to comprehend it. That was an instinct of mine in that moment to take a photo, I guess. Some people view the show that way, and that’s totally valid, but personally, I don’t find the people involved in the show, for the most part, to be foolish. They come across to me as very sweet and endearing most of the time. Especially that real estate lady." Some people he picks seem like dicks (the private investigator, for example) or just out for exposure. Others are more innocent, but I don't think he's trying to make them look bad for being innocent or naive. If anything, like I noted above, he seems pretty attuned to how things are going, and often shifts the gist of his scenarios for the sake of ... pathos?

well put

Honestly, the only time I'm a little wary is when he's fucking with kids ("You don't want to be a baby, do you?"), but that's at least as much on the parents as it is on him.

Though like most reality shows, it's often hard to know how much is actually scripted or prepared vs. how much the audience is lead to believe it is.

Honestly, the only time I'm a little wary is when he's fucking with kids ("You don't want to be a baby, do you?"), but that's at least as much on the parents as it is on him.

It's also tremendously infantile, which is partly what makes it funny. (See also: horsey rides.)

Summit Ice has raised $45k for the Vancouver Holocaust Awareness Centre: http://www.ew.com/article/2015/11/02/summit-ice-jacket-nathan-for-you-holocaust?12444&hootPostID=7219adcc3b15844be47bf254ec4a0e15

That is just incredible.

it's nerdy but i'm tempted to get a jacket

It's for a good cause!

the only time I'm a little wary is when he's fucking with kids ("You don't want to be a baby, do you?")

Yeah that was the only time on the show that I felt like he really crossed a line, that one was unpleasant.

The Summit Ice thing is pretty funny

It just occurred to me that, even though the Doink It! dude completely disagreed with everything Nathan wanted to do and also thought Nathan's message to the kids was awful and seemed to think that the entire thing was harmful to his product...he still signed off on appearing on the show. It would probably, by all rights, have been one of the aforementioned failed segments that never aired if his desire to be on TV hadn't superseded his judgment in every other regard.

more or less everyone he "works for" disagrees with nathan (except for the total nutjobs), but there's something about being on tv that demolishes people's sense of responsibility and common sense.

also tbf, the doink it ad is clearly not aimed at kids in any case
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eb5sNjhItw

Got my "Movement" book in the mail today! Will leave it in the bathroom to perplex visitors.

xpost "If you don't have this toy, people will think you wear diapers and cry all the time."

got my book too; looking forward to reading on the subway and recommending it

ok, click that summit ice $45k link, scroll down to the image of Nathan holding the doink-it, and tell me why he looks like a simpsons character

next episode supposed to be about abusing "you break it, you buy it", gonna be some real awkwardness upcoming

i'm super glad a couple people agreed with my view on him.
the thing about this is, well, sometimes what he does is absolutely harmless and hilarious.
but, there was that episode a couple of weeks ago: the skit with the balloons and horse-rider was totally harmless and hilarious, everyone was in on the joke, or got the joke a little later (and it was still harmless), etc. but, in the same episode, when he exploited that cool, nice girl's loneliness in the other skit, well, that was just really f-ed up.

eh. sure. he's harmless and funny sometimes, but it just isn't worth it to me to continue to expose myself to his other completely mean-spirited behavior/humor. simply put: some of the shit he does is just bad for my soul. i'm never watching him, again.

this week's had some good moments but also some of his least convincing schemes

The age progression scam artist was definitely one of the creepiest/funniest moments thus far

Agreed that the business ideas were particularly terrible this time around but that's kind of the point isn't it? The whole second half was just a lead up to a drunk bro in a sumo outfit trying to make his way down a narrow aisle in an antique shop in order to score some free pizza.

and that was amusing, but I prefer the eps where his ideas have a hint of inspiration to them, even when they're obviously insane

yeah, i love this show and i loved this episode but it was among the most disturbing he's ever done

all worth it for him breaking the plate at the end

the guy telling the kid he was gonna die in space in like two years
the drunk brothers from ohio earnestly discussing tag teaming with nathan
"that's a boy"
the guy writing emails on his phone and ignoring nathan
the pizza at the end of the booby trap

haha yeah "that's a boy" made me lose it, dunno how Nathan kept a straight face through that

the jacket rigged with whiskey-removing and apple-juice replacing pumps

god, how did i forget that

I just hope no PUA engineers watch this show

I just caught a screener for this week's episode and it might be my new favorite.

http://www.avclub.com/article/nathan-yous-star-confronts-v-club-mom-who-scorned--226825

what a great interview!

I thought the sports/antique show ep was totally about the ancillary weirdness and less the business fix. So in the case of the former, it's all that creepy photoshop guy (and the astronaut). In the latter, it's that can't make it up drunk dude he finds. When he takes the guy home, man, who knows what he was expecting/hoping to find there. Getting pulled into a triple tag team scenario?

yeah watching that photoshop guy continually repeat "I'm 90% sure" over and over was worth the whole segment, though it went from hilarious to creepy really fast

Smokers Allowed was pretty close to this show at its best for sure
As good as the mountain climbing to get your rebate episode

"Smokers Allowed" somehow conjured both Frederick Wiseman and David Lynch for me

this show is starting to feel like Review, in a good way

how long did they actually rehearse that to get it down so pat? you could see pages of the script being printed off, one including a long paragraph about Louie C.K...