Reality is only make-believe

Comedian Nathan Fielder's experiment in reality TV is a high stakes game that exposes the building blocks of the genre while creating its own elaborate fictions

- Adrian Horton

One of the many confounding pleasures of The Rehearsal, comedian Nathan Fielder's elaborate social experiment/ docu-reality HBO series, is how often the show exposes its own illusions. The central concept of the series is straightforward, if typically absurd: what if you could rehearse fraught conversations or situations in advance? How much could you control if you had every resource to prepare? The show depicts both the tedious constructions of facsimile - building a replica bar, hiring actors, stress-testing potential conversations and the unnerving, at times sublime, suspension of disbelief.

In his prior show, Comedy Central's cult hit Nathan For You, Fielder drew laughs as the ultimate committer to harebrained ideas carried far past the point of sense, with such deadpan absurdity that you couldn't distinguish between silly and serious. During four seasons of Nathan For You, Fielder coached real small business owners into inane plans. The show offered a litmus test for one's tolerance for cringe. The viewing experience was a mix of awe at the grandiose stupidity of the schemes, amusement at the lengths to which Fielder would go, and concern for the businesses.

The Rehearsal takes Fielder's commitment and viewer trepidation to new heights. It takes a knowingly false notion - that one can control emotions, or life - and doubles down again and again until that notion looks like unhinged genius. There are the building blocks of realityish TV - participants are both exposed and kept at a remove, the assumption that everything is quasi-real and quasi-scripted crisp editing. Watching it feels like reaching the outer fringes of reality television; you're not quite sure what to make of it, but can't stop looking.