The Rehearsal closes up shop, for now, with a cathartic season finale
Nathan Fielder's meta experiment finishes its first chapter with "Pretend Daddy"
TV Reviews The Rehearsal
None of us could’ve anticipated that the season finale of Nathan Fielder’s increasingly deranged series The Rehearsal would hinge on a line as terrifyingly delivered as “No, I’m your Dad.” And yet, that’s where we were led in the final installment of what’s now officially season one of the show. (HBO announced a sophomore season ahead of the finale’s airing.) As to what that second season will look like is probably still up for grabs: Will Nathan continue his fatherhood rehearsals or might he return to the initial pitch of helping others rehearse life changing situations? Or might it loop back on itself in some clever-if-cringe-worthy way instead?
In any case, this finale episode felt aptly cathartic—if characteristically discomforting. Which is odd given that we begin with a birthday party (for Adam, who’s now turning nine). But as Nathan finds during said celebration, it’s hard to lose yourself in a fantasy when not only are you faced with background actors who can’t talk back but you are constantly and acutely aware of the fiction of it all. He has a hard time bonding with new nine year old Adam, a fact that yanks him out of the experiment altogether.
But you know who has less of an issue living and losing himself in such an acting exercise? A child actor. A six year old named Remy, to be exact, who not only can’t handle not play acting as six year old Adam any more but who refuses to acknowledge that Nathan is not his “Daddy.” In a series that’s probed the blurred lines between fiction and reality, constantly shuffling between the two often within the same scene, it was only a matter of time until one of Nathan’s actors would lose the plot this way. That it’s a young fatherless boy whose fantasy life with Nathan clearly offered him that which he lacks in real life made it all the more heartbreaking. A rare moment when you could see Nathan struggling with the consequences of this entire operation. And, as with everything in The Rehearsal, the line between its comedy (their conversation around clarifying how Remy should be happy he’s Christian) and tragedy (the later distinction between Nathan being a “friend” and not a “daddy”) got murkier and murkier as the episode went along.
As ever, the encounter rankles Nathan. But it pushes him less to help out Remy (though he does that, eventually, somewhat) and more to revisit his own missteps. Caught up in his own guilt, he decides to figure out what he could’ve done differently. The “rehearsals” then become not iterations of what may happen but, quite the opposite, endless combinations of what could have been. Maybe he could’ve been more detached. Maybe he could’ve not hired child actors. Maybe he could’ve used dolls instead. Or maybe he needed to have kept Angela around. (Side note: I’m so happy we got Anna LaMadrid-as-Angela back!)
Nathan’s instinct is understandable. Who among us doesn’t spend his days (and nights, even) re-litigating old conversations, reimagining the things you could’ve and should’ve said…turning over your every interaction to come up with a more perfect way of having lived your life. Only that’s where Nathan begins. After realizing the play-acting as Adam’s dad was a puzzle he was well-equipped to solve because he’d created it himself, he turns his attention to Remy because it’s a problem that forces him to think outside himself. Literally.
As a way to understand what happened and to forgive himself, Nathan decides the best way to do so is to see himself from the outside. (As a psychological strategy, it feels in line with how Nathan has approached the entire series; he processes from the outside in.) It’s why he opts to play-act as Remy’s mom—only to, as the final beats of the episode suggest, find himself wanting to break that illusion apart altogether. He breaks the rhythm of the scene by announcing he’s the kid’s dad. (Does he mean Remy’s? Or nine-year-old Adam’s?) He shatters the illusion yet again.
Is it a breakthrough or a breakdown? Nathan’s delivery allows us to see it as either. And both. Or, perhaps more to the point, it obscures any one reading of the moment, leaving us, as ever, to sift through our own feelings about what these meta-rehearsals are doing for Nathan and his audience alike. Throughout the series we’ve been nudged to, if not empathize, then understand Nathan’s motivations. But they’ve become so increasingly deranged (note how even the rhythm of this episode was faster and more repetitive than usual) that you start to wonder how much of Nathan’s breadcrumbs you’re being led to follow. It’s long felt like all of these exercises are for Nathan’s own benefit. I myself talked about him hijacking Angela’s “rehearsal.” But to end on such a note is also to open us to the possibility that he’s (obviously) always been in control, nudging us toward examining why we may feel comforted or uncomfortable about his every move.
Ultimately, The Rehearsal’s season-finale episode perplexed me in all the ways I anticipated it would. It made me cringe. It exasperated me to no end. It fascinated me. It constantly had me figuring out how its behind the scenes worked. Even when I could see the strings (PAs offering fake birthday presents to a group of background actors), I was given just enough smoke and mirrors (a maybe real PA or an actress playing a PA talking about how Nathan is a “weird dude”) to force me to finally give up.
Is this show a meditation on “reality” television? A probing examination of the scripts and strictures we’re called to adhere to as part of our social contract? A dissection of one man’s inability to leave anything to chance? A study in control? An exercise in acting-as-therapy? On theater-as-self-help?
My head hurt by the end of the episode, which is, arguably, a testament to Nathan Fielder’s entire project. I’ll be thinking about it for longer than I’d like to admit, as if it were a puzzle I was called to solve rather than a television show I should have simply enjoyed watching. I am curious what he’ll do for a second season, though I do worry for our own sanity—and the discourse it’ll no doubt engender.
Stray observations
- I feared with Angela gone we’d lose the off-kilter humor that has so characterized Fielder’s show so far thanks to a bunch of background actors (who by union rules cannot utter a lick of dialogue) I found myself chuckling at the absurdity of Adam’s ninth birthday.
- “I don’t want you to be Nathan!” offered us yet another unwittingly revealing sound bite of the season. Remy may have delivered it in the midst of a temper tantrum but considering Nathan then decides to play act as Remy’s mom (a performance that allows him to interact with the actor he’s hired to play “Nathan”), you wonder how much to heart he took it after all.
- Although, I take it back. Perhaps the most revealing line in the entire episode came courtesy of “Adam (age nine)” who, when Nathan breaks character and addresses him as an actor, asking the kid whether Nathan makes for a good dad offers the greatest unintentional read of the show: “I mean. You’re a great scene partner.” Is that not The Rehearsal in a nutshell? For all the platitudes Nathan spouts toward the end of the show, the lesson we should all be taking from it is the idea that you can never replicate the real thing. You can try to pretend to be a good father but all you’ll ever do unless you actually become a father is be a great scene partner.
51 Comments
The perfect ending shot- Nathan’s butt crack.I love the discourse of this show but I’ve never gotten the confusion people have with “who is acting? who is real?”. The show does a great job of telling us who the actors are.
We were the actors all along.
Is that why I keep calling Nathan daddy?
I think that’s more just that a lot of people wanted to believe, or at least suspected, that a lot of the real people we saw were actors and this whole thing would be revealed to be a put-on, that it was somehow a rehearsal for the idea of the show The Rehearsal, or something like that.
maybe the real actors were the friends we made along the way.
The big question is not who’s an actor and who’s real, but how much we should believe what the show tells us about who/what is real and not. It really reminded me of Exit Through the Gift Shop in that respect.
Oregon was like a character itself! And playing itself!
the audience for almost everything is depressingly stocked with sub-mentals
Also, for like 5 seconds there at the end I though the whole show was about Nathan rehearsing how to tell his bastard child that he was his dad.
Nathan Fielder has been using actors for strange purposes for so long that it was amazing to see it finally catch up to him, even if he made a little boy cry.
Also I think Eric Notarnicola deserves serious credit as a writer here, his penchant for self-imploding tragic comedies is really strong in this season finale.
Fantastic show. And hey, we even got a non-shitty review out of this episode! Miracles never cease.
The scene with Nathan talking to an age-6 Adam about being Christian is not with Remy or his mom – it’s a different Adam.
made an account to say this but glad to see that it’s been covered
I liked last week’s show. I did not really like this. There were some funny moments, including the entire montage of him trying different approaches. But it all kind of gets overshadowed by the pointless emotional manipulation of a child. Don’t get me wrong, that kid is going to be fine, I’m sure. But it’s not a fun thing, even if you broaden the definition of “fun” to include, like, weaponized awkwardness.
I strongly dislike using kids for movies and tv. I always hope that the ‘child wranglers’ are capable of managing situations that won’t affect the children (especially later in life). This seems particularly cruel to me, though.
I don’t think there was any intentional manipulation of the child. I mean, Nathan seemed genuinely upset about the effect the shoot had on Remy. I imagine that, if you’re an actor or anyone in Nathan’s position in Hollywood, you’re so used to the idea of child actors that you don’t really think twice about the effect it has on them — until it slaps you in the face, like it does to Nathan here. I think it’s commendable that he decided to show an unpleasant side effect of the production on camera. And of course, it couldn’t JUST be a somber reflection on the ethics of employing children as actors. The Rehearsal is, after all, a comedy, so it couldn’t dwell on that too long.Honestly, the only person who could potentially be at fault here is the boy’s mother, for getting him into acting at such a young, vulnerable age. And even she seems to think that maybe having him in the show was a bad idea, at one point in the episode. I’ve always thought child actors shouldn’t really be a thing, especially not at Remy’s age.Anyway, I thought the season was phenomenal. Episode one didn’t fully grab me, but from episode two on, I was absolutely hooked. A brilliant piece of television, in my opinion.
This is an incredible response. The person who is a serial liar and skillful manipulator of people was just genuinely blindsided by the fact that a young child took the “rehearsal” as real life, which is literally the point of the show, to simulate real life as much as possible. Moreover, him and his production team must have been surprised by the effect on child actors given how used they are to working with child actors (???). Meanwhile, the single mom responding to a Craigslist ad or whatever is the ONLY one to blame because she should have known the potential effect of acting on a child as young as hers. And as far as being commendable that he showed it, I mean, what else was he going to do?Do you remember that scene where Nathan is calling the parents to tell them he’ll be participating in the rehearsal, and he has that flowchart script and one of the entries is like “It’s fine if you’re uncomfortable, we should be able to find someone who is willing to accept the generous participation fee” or something like that. That’s who you’re giving the benefit of the doubt to.
It’s very unfair to claim the mom is the only one to blame. It’s not like this woman is a Hollywood mom taking her kid to auditions with a million other kids. She’s a single mom raising a child in rural Oregon with no exposure to the showbiz world who was offered a nice paycheck for what seemed like a silly project. Nathan knows this. Sure, maybe she should have asked more questions or been more protective of her kid, but I do not blame someone in her position for wanting the money and little peace and quiet while her kid is “working.” Whether or not Nathan was genuinely surprised by Remy’s reaction, he is still taking advantage of this family’s situation.Also, there’s no way in hell Nathan just “discovered” Angela wasn’t playing along while he was away. He directed every episode and his crew was working around the clock. He would have seen the footage. There must have been moments of Angela not committing to the bit while Nathan was around. I get that much of the show is about what’s real and what’s not but this all felt set up specifically to put a vulnerable kid in a confusing situation.I like Nathan and he’s obviously brilliant but this show left a really bad taste in my mouth. I did not think it was funny or revealing that the guy who was lied to twice about the inheritance was never heard from again. My takeaway was that he was humiliated or worse (which is not to forgive his anti-Semitism). I posted another comment about this that is still pending for some reason, but my daughter is about Remy’s age, and it made me furious to watch Nathan put a kid like that in a traumatizing situation and the answer is to run it all back so Nathan can feel better about himself. Maybe Nathan gets to rehearse for potential fatherhood but what’s done is done to the people who get caught up along the way – they don’t get another chance.
You care too much
“Do you remember that scene where Nathan is calling the parents to tell them he’ll be participating in the rehearsal, and he has that flowchart script and one of the entries is like “It’s fine if you’re uncomfortable, we should be able to find someone who is willing to accept the generous participation fee” or something like that. That’s who you’re giving the benefit of the doubt to.” Dude, that was a gag. You don’t honestly believe he was sitting there practicing all the flowchart scenarios for a 5 second shot do you?
I believe that he used that flowchart to communicate with parents about him being involved in the rehearsal. I don’t believe it was for the benefit of a five second shot, I believe he really had to tell parents the parameters of the project were changing, and I believe he used that flowchart. I mean, the whole thing is not really that funny if he didn’t follow through with it, kind of the whole point of this show (and Nathan for You) is Nathan’s willingness to follow through on what would ordinarily be “gags.” The premise of the show isn’t “What if we did that? haha.”
Right, but he didn’t actually say those things, because it was a visual gag for us, the viewer. every episode of NFY and this has plenty of shots that are obviously jokes for the benefit of the viewer and not something serious they were following through with. Nathan didn’t actually sit in that fake bar for hours and hours contemplating life, he probably did it for 15 minutes for the shot.
You’ll have to clue me in on those other similar jokes for the benefit of the view they didn’t follow through with. How do you know he didn’t obviously say those things? I would say that both Nathan for You and The Rehearsal have things that read fairly obviously as “gags” and that they then follow through on. The flow chart he used to call parents is similar to the one he used in the first rehearsal to allow that guy to run through various jokes and whatnot to ease the tension, and it was obvious they actually used that flowchart. There’s not any reason for me not to believe that Nathan, who after all would have had to call parents to let them know of his participation in the project (or someone from the production would had to have), didn’t use that flowchart during those calls? That they went through all the trouble of actually producing that flowchart (which is not necessarily an easy thing to do), and then he didn’t use it when it was actually needed for some reason? Do you also believe Nathan didn’t actually do the meta-rehearsals for himself? Did Nathan say he actually sat in that fake bar for hours?
In the scene you’re talking about he’s reading from that part and doesn’t read the line you have a problem with to a parent who had just said they were on board lol.“How do you know he didn’t obviously say those things?”Because it would have been funny and they would have used that clip.“Do you also believe Nathan didn’t actually do the meta-rehearsals for himself?” The stuff that involving real people’s reactions? Sure. The stuff that’s just him and producers? No, those are bits, exaggerated and edited for comedic effect. This is a show with a legit writing staff and edited by the Portlandia and Kroll Show guys. If there’s no real unsuspecting person’s visible reaction in a scene, I assume it’s a bit.
Wait, to defend your argument that he didn’t use the flowchart you’re citing to a scene where he was reading from the flow chart? And you have the nerve to “lol” as if you just destroyed my argument, rather than undermining your own?Also, “because it was funny just to see it” isn’t actually an answer to how you know he didn’t say those things.I’m talking about the rehearsals he had for himself, that was only people in on the joke (i.e., actors, himself, his production team). You’re telling me, for example, the scene in the first episode where we find out he is rehearsing the confession, that was all fake?
If you honestly sincerely believe that Nathan Fielder on the show is the same as Nathan Fielder the man behind the scenes then you’re taking the show at a weird face value. As with Nathan For You it’s pretty clear we’re getting a very manufactured version of whatever “reality” these people are occupying, and the central part of that superficial construct is Nathan’s supposed obliviousness and latent sociopathy. Given how much of the show has seen him interrogate the ethics of subjecting people to the very situations he’s engineering—situations that are actually markedly more transparent than the false realities on the shows this is commenting upon—it seems fairly obvious that the narrative we get on screen is intensely edited. Yes, that kid was probably genuinely upset, but I don’t think Nathan was blindsided by that or failed to address it outside of what we see on screen—he’s aware of what he’s doing and the dangers therein, almost cripplingly so, and I’d imagine there was a lot of safeguarding on set that we’re not privy to because it would ruin the narrative he’s telling here, rupturing the fourth wall wrapped around the fourth wall we’re supposedly looking through. The fact that he then took the time to not only address the potential damage he’d caused in-character, but also spin it out into the climactic centrepiece of his character’s (emphasis on character ie fictional) complete separation from reality is surely so indicative that he (he being the non-fictional Nathan) not only thinks the exploitation of child actors isn’t funny, but that it’s something far more endemic than what is seen here. I think you’re really underselling the layers of commentary and engagement here and reducing it to face value.
I’m not sure where you’re getting that I don’t understand the difference between Nathan Fielder’s Public Persona and whoever he is in real life, nor do I understand what the relevance is.It’s astonishing you believe that Nathan knew exactly what he was doing in pushing that kid to where he ended up, but somehow still want to give him the benefit of the doubt. If there was safeguarding to protect the kid, it failed! The kid ended up not understanding that Nathan was not his father, and ended up being upset at having to deal with that fact. I don’t care if Fielder thinks the exploitation of child actors isn’t funny. I care that what he did was emotionally manipulate a child, and that I, personally, not only do not find it funny, but am bothered by it enough that it tainted the experience of watching this episode and the entire series.
I loved this episode. The way Nathan examined the tiny details in Remy’s house, how he asked Remy’s mom where she got her vest, and the fake hand tattoo on the actress portraying her were pitch perfect. He once again managed to spin the concept and make it powerful and heartbreaking, just like he did in Finding Frances. This guy graduated from one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades, after all.
My favourite bit was the moment after the seemingly innocent playdate when Nathan asked nine year old Adam “Did you get enough?”
My favorite bit was when Nathan got the adult to play Adam and they cut to the guy having a smoke break.
My favourite bit was Nathan staring at a child practicing the violin before asking through narration “What on earth was I doing?”I actually had to pause the show until I stopped laughing.
Finding Frances? I gotta look this up!
I wonder whether the reviewer (whom I’ve been going to right after watching each episode to have an imaginary dialogue with) or any of the commenters here are dads. I am. One voices their distaste for “the pointless manipulation of a child,” and reading that gave me the same thought I had during the whole episode: what’s so different about real life compared to the “rehearsal” Nathan puts on? Plenty, on the surface, but like “Synecdoche, New York,” not as much when the emotional stakes reach a certain height, and you wonder whether the artist knows he’s also a jailer (who else had their eyes water up when they silently begged the screen that he really could be Remy’s dad?). Negotiating with your own children about what’s real and what isn’t while attempting all the while to sell them the version of the world you think they’re already creating in their own mind always feels like a gamble in the end. All the religious stuff, and Remy’s mom’s truest statement “Because I can see myself,” tells me that when it came time to edit and air this episode, the intention seemed clear to me that more than providing “cringe,” laughs, or discourse for the Internet, Nathan’s rehearsals are meant to become the invisible backdrop that can throw reality into relief, in all its usually-invisible mundanity.
Long time AV Club reader. Love the discourse here. But I made an account just to say I am not okay with this. Full disclosure, I am father to a little girl about Remy’s age, and I am sick to my stomach. I have no doubt Remy’s mother is an excellent parent and I am sure Remy will be just fine, but to see a child put through this is horrifying. Yeah, I get it the joke is on Nathan and he’s the main character, but he also damn well knew Remy had an absent father and that should have been the end of the casting process. Sure, you can blame mom for signing her kid up for this but if I lived in rural Oregon and got the chance for a paycheck to put my kid on TV I’d probably agree too. I really liked Nathan For You and I think Fielder is incredibly talented. There are lots of fantastic jokes in this season. But overall the takeaway of this season for me is “I can do whatever I want to people as long as it makes me feel better about myself” and that is not ok. Same thing with the guy whose brother thought he was dating a golddigger. So in one moment he not only gets screwed over in his own actual life but also seemingly believes he’s getting his part of the inheritance in the “fake” scene and then he suddenly disappears from the show. Did this guy have the emotional capacity to handle it? Was he as confused as Remy and decided to call his real life brother and say “You agreed to it, give me the money?” Who knows what happened to this guy? And there’s also no way Nathan was “surprised” by the fact that Angela was ignoring the facade of it all when he was gone. The dude directed every episode, you think he hadn’t seen that footage? I’m all over the place with this comment but I’m just so angry about the idea that Nathan knew the kid was fatherless and made this happen because it suited the narrative. Ostensibly the show is “The Rehearsal” but my impression is more that everything was planned in advance so Nathan could tell a feel good story about himself. I think the entire premise of the show was ruined by the ending – a rehearsal means practicing before it happens. It’s not going back and doing it over again so you can feel good about yourself and forget about the way you treated real people in the moment.Again I know so much of the conversation about this show is about the degree to which Nathan is the real point of focus. But there is no way Nathan did not know the kid was fatherless and proceed anyway. “Hey I traumatized this kid, look for season 2 coming soon on HBO.”
What makes you think he knew the kid was fatherless from the beginning?
Fair point, maybe he didn’t know from the very beginning, but I find it hard to believe that detail came out of the blue in this episode, considering the liabilities of the casting process, not to mention how much time Nathan spent with the kid in person. Maybe I’m wrong and it was a total shock to everyone, but at least to me saying “sorry I didn’t know” isn’t an excuse for potentially traumatizing a child. The joke of Nathan rehearsing over and over again to avoid future mistakes is funny, but there’s very little regard for how the show has affected the real lives of the people involved. And I get it, the joke is on Nathan and it all turns on him but this show felt more destructive to me than his previous work.
To be fair, Nathan did visit Remy (more than once, I think) to reinforce the reality that he is Nathan and not daddy.But I think you make a good point about how destructive (or at least consequential) this show was compared to Nathan For You. There’s definitely some irony there considering it was set up as a show that would people to practice their actions vs. a show where he implemented changes in peoples’ lives.
Chill.
I feel Nathan rolled with the kid not having a father in the picture, I don’t think he anticipated that the kid would form such an attachment to him. idk, I read Sarah Polley’s book and it seems the kids in Hollywood films are put through a lot more terrible things than Nathan examining the imprint he had on this kid.
I don’t think we nearly have enough information about how this show is actually constructed, what’s real, what isn’t, who knew what and how these things were all handled behind the screens to draw the conclusions that you’re drawing regarding Nathan’s treatment of that young kid.
The kid who he had the conversation with about being Christian was pretty obviously not Remy. But I’m not exactly shocked that this review gets basic facts wrong, given the reviews for previous episodes.
i’ve never seen this show but have heard about it – is it a real thing involving real people or done totally with actors (actors playing “real people”)?
Both. The original premise of the show is that Nathan painstakingly recreates real-life scenarios with actors and sets in order to prepare real people to handle them. Really only the first episode-and-a-half follow that premise though; it goes way off the rails pretty quickly.
Yes.
“Even when I could see the strings (PAs offering fake birthday presents to a group of background actors), I was given just enough smoke and mirrors (a maybe real PA or an actress playing a PA talking about how Nathan is a “weird dude”) to force me to finally give up.”The subtitles literally refer to the PA as “ACTOR”. Thank you, Manuel, for failing your readers this entire season. Hopefully you can rehearse what went wrong before season 2 drops.
or might he return to the initial pitch of helping others rehearse life changing situations?I hope so, I was looking forward to that premise, and missed it when they dropped it.
Same. I would have preferred a different scenario for each episode & that all the shows where 45mins. Maybe a final reveal, where all of the scenarios merge together full circle. Nathan, pls make that show.
Just an observation:Father Nathan and six-year-old Adam deal with the same issue as the child actor and the real life mother. Nathan’s rehearsal wife left him to parent adam on his own. He grew attached to the boy as an actor. And vice versa. The only difference is that the lines blurred for the boy much stronger than Nathan. On top of that, the only way he was able to empathize in rehearsal mode is when he embraced a feminine roll as child actor’s mom. He couldn’t find the right persona to be emotionally available to 6 year old Adam actor until he embraced a feminine energy.
I don’t think you are using the word ‘platitude’ correctly, it means something that’s so overused it loses meaning and that’s not what he was ‘spouting’ at the end.
I think a lot of the reviews are missing a pretty glaring implication of the finale. The whole show has been a rehearsal for Nathan to introduce himself to a child of his that he isn’t involved with.If you include the Fielder school, there are three rehearsals outside of the main one with Angela that give us some important ground rules for how he’s operating. The first episode with Kor gives us the idea that the simulations can be restarted as frequently as necessary.Then there’s Patrick where Nathan learns he needs to produce the emotional connection and we also get a light dose of the anti-Semitism to come.Then we have the Fielder school which reenforces the whole meta-ness of the show and Nathan himself highlights the risks of what he’s doing. It’s also an excuse to let Adam age into a teenager.Furthermore, he asks Angela if the child asks about him while he’s in LA. Nathan is testing the bounds of what age the kid starts to miss and/or resent him.When he comes back to the teenager, he restarts the simulation to make the teen more angsty and resentful, which leads to the OD and restarting the simulation again with a younger Adam. He then admits that he had developed an emotional connection with this Adam.This is the part where things get a little murky for me, I binged it all last night and I’m still mulling it all over. He tells Kor he’s divorced which is true. We see in the clips of Angela while Nathan is away that Liam (Adam at 9) says his dad is in Vancouver for work. Nathan’s parents come down from Vancouver and Wikipedia says that’s where Nathan’s from, could this be Liam just getting his backstory down or is it just a coincidence? Nathan also drops in a line when his parents are visiting about how they’ve seen that behavior in him before. Does Nathan ask Liam to act as Remy to try and build a stronger bond with Liam? Does he do it because Remy doesn’t quite grasp the pretend-ness of it? How long is this show going to f*ck with my head?This episode was anything but cathartic for me.