Nathan For Me

"The Rehearsal," Nathan Fielder’s strange and odyssean project on HBO, is a show about vulnerability. Or, really, how to avoid it.

If we go back to the beginning of "The Rehearsal,” Fielder tells us why he’s making this show. The first words spoken on the first episode of the first season of "The Rehearsal" are this: “I’m not good at meeting people for the first time.”

“I’ve been told my personality can make people uncomfortable,” he continues, just one minute into the episode. “So I have to work to offset that. Humor is my go-to instinct, but every joke is a gamble.”

"The Rehearsal" is notoriously difficult to describe to people who don’t watch it — and even to those who do. On its face, it is one strange man putting himself and others in awkward, unconventional, and even exploitative situations seemingly just for the sake of doing it. Every episode — and really every scenario he presents — is a gamble.

[Note: The rest of this essay contains relative plot spoilers. I recommend not reading the rest of the piece unless you have finished S2 E5.]