Nathan Fielder’s comedy can really feel like watching a slow-motion aircraft crash. On semi-scripted reveals akin to Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, the comic makes actual individuals squirm along with his weird ideas, which he affords with rigor mortis-level deadpan. A few of it’s best considered by the marginally parted fingers of a face-obscuring hand.
The second season of The Rehearsal, returning to HBO on April 20, isn’t any exception. Like its predecessor, the present once more makes use of elaborate role-play to sport out tough social situations, solely this time the stakes are method larger. Season 2 focuses on the dynamic between copilots—and the way it can result in, or presumably stop, aircraft crashes. However whereas the subject could also be eerily timely, this season is really concerning the common expertise of standing as much as a superior at work.
In its first season, Fielder positioned The Rehearsal as a present the place completely different individuals follow fixing a brand new interpersonal downside every episode. Utilizing a fleet of actors and costly, movie-caliber units, Fielder created a reality-simulation method that allowed its topics to rehearse, say, admitting to a buddy they’d been lying for years about having a master’s degree. By Episode 2, nevertheless, the present pivoted to serving to one girl—and Fielder himself—rehearse what it may be wish to grow to be mother and father. The rest of the season was spent burrowing additional down that (usually uncomfortable) rabbit gap.
The second season as an alternative dispenses with any pretense of being an anthology and pronounces its aviation focus right away. As glimpsed within the trailer, the season’s opening moments encapsulate the whole lot the present will spend this batch of six episodes unpacking. Inside a cockpit, the primary officer voices his disapproval of the pilot’s ways. The pilot ignores him, and their aircraft crashes in a fiery wreck—just for the cockpit to be revealed as a movement simulator. Cue Fielder rising in entrance of a projected inferno, a Mona Lisa smile on his face.
As they used to say on infomercials, there’s obtained to be a greater method.
Sooner or later after the primary season of The Rehearsal aired in 2022, effectively earlier than the recent spate of plane crashes and near misses, Fielder apparently grew to become excited about air disasters. Whereas studying by infinite pages of black field transcripts, he uncovered a definite sample. Each time first officers appeared to sense an imminent downside, they usually both fell wanting a full-throated warning or buckled underneath the slightest pushback. What if, Fielder questioned, he may assist first officers rehearse advocating for themselves extra successfully?
Disagreeing with one’s supervisor presents a basic conundrum. Say something and the boss would possibly both overrule you or resent you for being proper. Keep it to yourself, letting the chips fall the place they might, and you may be the one getting thrown underneath the bus if there’s any fallout. This thorny communication difficulty carries exponentially extra urgency and threat, although, when it occurs at excessive altitudes, with dozens of lives at stake.
Although he understands he won’t be the proper particular person to tackle this specific communication battle, Fielder acknowledges a supply of killer materials when he sees one.
Numerous the comic’s earlier work mined humor out of the best way individuals talk. His breakout sequence Nathan for You, which ran on Comedy Central for 4 seasons within the 2010s, featured Fielder convincing small enterprise house owners to check out wild advertising and marketing methods. Though the methods themselves have been the meat of the present—a yogurt store unveiling a poo-flavored option, as an illustration, to drum up publicity—a part of the cringy enjoyable was watching Fielder speak individuals into going by with them.
He’d current every ridiculous thought with a straight face and a feather-soft voice, then the proprietor would chortle nervously, uncertain whether or not Fielder was severe. (Rule quantity one among these reveals: Fielder is at all times severe.) Viewers may virtually see the gears turning within the proprietor’s heads, questioning whether or not the reward of getting a plug for his or her enterprise on a TV present shall be well worth the short-term ache of really going by with a poo-flavored yogurt promotion. Invariably, they’d comply with no matter insanity Fielder had in retailer, normally after an ungainly silence.
Within the second season of The Rehearsal, although, that equation has inverted. As a substitute of utilizing his authority as an envoy of tv to speak individuals into doing one thing, he’s educating individuals to speak somebody able of authority out of doing one thing.
All through the course of the season, as with most Fielder productions, some profound—and profoundly uncomfortable—truths come tumbling out. Additionally as per traditional, the present is stuffed with surreal meta-moments, creative tableaux, and the creator grappling with whether or not his personal communication points would possibly stem from having the aura of a company IT man with a darkish secret.
Whether or not the comic in the end finds a sensible technique for making tough cockpit conversations simpler will stay unspoiled right here. Watching the present, although, ought to present some new concepts about talk with one’s boss—particularly once they’re about to make an enormous mistake.
