It’s hard to describe The Rehearsal to people. It started with a simple premise: Nathan Fielder uses HBO’s unbelievably large budget to stage immersive replicas of social situations so members of the public can prepare for difficult conversations no matter what goes wrong. That lasted about a single episode in Season 1, before the show was derailed by Nathan’s own “rehearsal” of parenthood, the development of his own acting technique, and an uncomfortable realization of how his rehearsal affected the child actors involved.
Now, in Season 2, Nathan is setting his sights to the skies by trying to help pilots assert themselves and prevent crashes. So far, that has involved creating an old environment for a cloned dog, creating a fake singing contest, and matchmaking a lonely pilot. In Season 2, Episode 5, “Washington,” Fielder tries to be the best aviation safety advocate he can, and along the way, we get an uncomfortable look at what really goes behind the scenes of this series.
At the start of the episode, Nathan stages a rehearsal of a congressional hearing, but quickly realizes he doesn’t have an avenue to get in front of Congress — not even with the help of the lobbying division of Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company. But Nathan soon discovers that the ranking member of the Aviation Subcommittee is also part of the Autism caucus, and he finds a different way in.
From the beginning of The Rehearsal, neurodivergent and autistic fans have lauded it for how it shows the complex work that goes behind “masking” — the process of trying to blend in to society by using normal social cues, despite it not being natural. This is something Fielder is very aware of, as we see him scroll through different thinkpieces.
He decides to speak to an expert in autism, who suggests he use his replica airport to help autistic children get used to the routine and environment of air travel, and he becomes hesitant. “I made a commitment to myself we weren't gonna use any kids in the rehearsals this season,” he says, a reference to when an actor playing his son in Season 1 got confused by the blurred reality.
It’s no secret that the “Nathan Fielder” character we see in The Rehearsal and his previous show, Nathan For You, is not the true personality of Nathan Fielder the comedian. It’s something he has poked fun at himself when appearing on late-night TV shows as his “real self.” But in this episode, that character becomes a point of introspection. “Every public opportunity I've had in my life to convey sincerity, I instead turned into a joke,” he narrates.
This separation between Nathan and his public persona becomes the story for the rest of the episode. He doesn’t admit that he may be autistic, but he does open up his airport to kids with autism and incorporates his new knowledge of masking into his proposal for the pilots. He purposefully doesn’t plan an elaborate rehearsal for his meeting with the Congressman in order to show he doesn’t have to prepare for every conversation this way and is “normal,” but the meeting is as awkward as ever.
At the end of the day, even the “sincere” version of Nathan we see here is, still, a performance, as real as his real estate developer in The Curse. But this is the first time we’ve seen this character acknowledge how his show can actually affect the world outside the one he constructed in a positive way.
We saw the negative consequences in Season 1 with the child actors, something Nathan feels remorse for now. But this episode shows how at least some levels of irony can fall away, and Nathan Fielder the performer can pay homage to how rehearsals are helpful, even if they aren’t backed with a hefty check from David Zaslav. This may not be the “true” version of Nathan, but it may be truer than him being himself. Just as he’s learned after the past few weeks, sometimes playing a role can embolden you to be more of yourself.
