Editorial note: Spoilers ahead for season two, episode two of “The Rehearsal.”
Nathan Fielder has an intriguing habit of incorporating his Jewishness into his projects.
The 41-year-old Canadian Jewish comedian dedicated an entire episode of his series “Nathan For You” to creating outdoor apparel line Summit Ice after his own favorite winter sportswear brand Taiga supported a Holocaust denier. The company, which uses the slogan “Deny Nothing,” donates profits to the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. (Though they just announced a very interesting rebrand.) In season one of “The Rehearsal,” Fielder hijacks one of his subjects’ rehearsal of motherhood and introduces a child actor to Judaism, taking him to synagogue and celebrating Hanukkah with him. And then, in “The Curse,” Fielder’s character Asher is explicitly Jewish. In the first episode of the show, Asher and his newly converted wife Whitney (Emma Stone) celebrate a weird, tense Shabbat together.
It’s a starkly authentic choice for a performer whose work toes the line between reality and fiction, never truly revealing when he’s being genuine and when he’s playing a role.
Season two of “The Rehearsal” is no exception to this trend. And what results is one of the most ingenious pieces of Jewish comedy I’ve ever seen.
In the show’s sophomore season, Fielder takes on commercial aviation safety, forming the theory that more airplane crashes can be prevented if first officers felt more comfortable speaking up when they think a captain is wrong. In the first and second episodes, Fielder utilizes unconventional tactics like encouraging a pilot to have a tense conversation with his girlfriend during a flight simulation and making a group of first officers judge a fake talent competition called “Wings of Voice.” When he puts the most likable first officer from “Wings,” Mara D., in a flight simulator with a captain who purports to be banged from nearly all dating apps, Fielder realizes something. Mara D.’s polite, but initially unsuccessful attempts to get Pilot Jeff to stop asking about her dating and sex life reminds Fielder of a situation in his own life.
Fielder reveals that he recently learned that the Summit Ice episode of “Nathan For You” was no longer available to stream on Paramount+, despite all other episodes still being available on the streamer. He’s adamant in trying to correct the issue, saying that Summit Ice is his “proudest achievement” and his “only proof to these pilots that a comedy show can actually make a difference.”
But when he asked some contacts at Paramount why the episode was removed, he wasn’t given a clear answer. According to Fielder, they said it was because of “sensitivities.” Only in a later email, Fielder claims, Paramount explained themselves. As Fielder says in the show: “A decision was made by Paramount+ Germany to remove the episode in their region after they became uncomfortable with what they called anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Israel/Hamas attacks.”
Ah, yes. Because removing an episode of “Nathan For You” from streaming is the solution to peace for Israelis and Palestinians that we’ve all been waiting for.
“Before long,” Fielder continues, “the ideology of Paramount+ Germany had spread to the entire globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable.” As he says this in voice-over, a map of Europe appears on the screen with Paramount’s logo engulfing the continent and then the world. If you’ve ever watched a documentary about World War II and Nazism before, you know exactly what kind of comparison Fielder is making here.
“This is real, by the way,” Fielder confirms.
To really drive the point home, Fielder adds: “Currently, there are 50 results on the Paramount app for ‘Nazi,’ 10 for ‘Hitler’ and 0 for ‘Judaism.’ We’ve been erased.”
And so, Nathan Fielder sets about to do his own rehearsal: confronting executives at Paramount+ Germany in-person. It will offer him the opportunity to push back harder against Paramount than he did over email. He builds a set of what he imagines the Paramount+ Germany offices look like: a stark, wooden hall with huge blue banners featuring the Paramount logo, a map with flags of other streamers representing enemy war plans, goose-stepping Paramount+ soldiers and, inexplicably, a painting of a giant, rotund Germanic woman holding an apple.
Fielder sits down with an actor playing a network executive and gets down to business. “In Germany today, we have no tolerance for any images that may evoke hate or incite violence toward any group of people,” the German executive argues.
Fielder retorts, “Look, I know you guys are, you know, probably feel a lot of shame about what you did in the past and now you’re trying to overcompensate by being the world leaders in fighting antisemitism. But when it comes to art, I think you have to know your place and you have to let us Jews express ourselves.”
Despite this appropriately tough response, Fielder gets sidetracked and requests to start over with the actors improvising a bit more. When they do, the German executive calls out Fielder for making the offices look like a war room and dressing him like a Nazi, questioning Fielder’s sincerity in hearing Paramount+ Germany’s perspective.
The exercise ends there with Fielder unsatisfied, and he doesn’t return to it for the rest of the season. But he’s sending Paramount+ a clear message about censorship all the same. According to Variety, Paramount+ was not given a heads up before the episode aired last night. When Variety asked a Paramount+ spokesperson for their thoughts on Nathan Fielder comparing Paramount+ to Nazi Germany, why the episode failed to meet their standards and if/when it will be returned to the streaming service, they declined to comment.
So, will Nathan Fielder save us all from dying in fiery airplane crashes? Only two episodes in to the season, the answer to that question is yet to be revealed. But, what is for sure, is that Nathan Fielder is offering the most biting satire of his career in season two of “The Rehearsal,” and his Jewish background is important enough to him to be a part of it.
