Season one of Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehearsal,” a Lynchian, meta-comedy about making the right choices in life — whatever those may be — was rife with Fielder’s Jewish identity.
While ostensibly helping an ultra-devout Christian woman named Angela “rehearse” motherhood, the Canadian Jewish comedian inserts himself and his Jewish identity becomes a source of conflict. Fielder ends up taking the child actor playing his and Angela’s pretend son to synagogue (showing off his own bar mitzvah photos to the audience in the process) and a Hebrew tutor, and celebrates Hanukkah with him in secret, to Angela’s disapproval. The season ended with Fielder reflecting on how he took the whole experiment too far and attempting to repent and repair for his wrongs, a la the Jewish concept of teshuvah.
Now, nearly three years later, “The Rehearsal” is coming back for a second season — Fielder’s special laptop harness and all — and has the potential to be just as Jewish as before.
In a 36-second teaser HBO released last week, we see Nathan Fielder observing multiple participants or actors doing “rehearsals” in adjacent and identical living room sets. The participants appear to be portraying a couple, with all the men wearing the exact same greenish-grey shirt and cargo pants and each woman wearing a jean jacket and floral dress. Nathan himself seems to be wearing the same exact grey sweater and jeans from last season. As the shot fades out, the teaser reveals that the new season will premiere on April 20.
Per Warner Media, “‘The Rehearsal’ follows one man’s journey to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life. With a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources, Fielder helps ordinary people prepare for life’s biggest moments by ‘rehearsing’ them in carefully crafted simulations of his own design.” The logline adds, “In season two, the urgency of Fielder’s project grows as he decides to put his resources toward an issue that affects us all.”
So will season two of “The Rehearsal” be as Jewish as the first? So far, it’s unclear. But as his work on “Nathan For You,” “The Rehearsal” and most recently “The Curse” prove, Fielder seems to always intertwine Judaism or Jewishness with his projects in the most unexpected ways. Here’s hoping his “Fielder Method” will continue to embrace that strategy.
