It’s not TV – it’s HBO. It’s not a performance – it’s a rehearsal.
Nathan Fielder has made a career of toeing the line between reality and the absurd. Is he really as deadpan as he seems? Are the actors on the show actors, or are real people this brazen? I know for a fact I’ll never get the answers, and that’s why I watch.
The premise is simple: help regular people have difficult conversations by rehearsing in everyday situations.
Courtesy of HBO
HBO screened the first episode of Season 2 in front of a ravenous crowd of loyal superfans. Lines stretched down an entire block of Sunset Boulevard with people hoping to get an advance look. There was even a bit of jostling as people waited for a photo op at the famed Lizard Lounge.
It was me, I was the jostling.
This cult following – can it be a cult following if the show is a hit? – Reacted BIG in the room, a good omen for TV’s equivalent of the follow-up album. The audience was hyper-polite, but even they erupted several times during the hour.
Love, confusion and a cockpit dominate the episode, with Fielder’s usual rogues gallery of Craigslist hires and ultra-niche personalities bringing warmth to objectively bizarre circumstances.
Courtesy of HBO
It’s hard to watch so many moments of this show. This episode’s most painful conversation award goes to Fielder’s dry-as-a-dune conversation with a man from Ohio. It made me so uncomfortable I had to look at the floor. You wouldn’t believe how much gum was down there.
But as I have for the last seven years or so, I’ll be tuned in to any and everything Fielder does – the rehearsal, the show and the strike.