Editorial note: Light spoilers ahead for season two, episode four of “The Rehearsal.”
In season two of “The Rehearsal,” Nathan Fielder is doing things on television the likes of which no one has ever seen before. He’s called out an entire studio, namely Paramount+, for their censorship practices and essentially compared them to Nazis. He’s attempted to get into the head of Captain Sully Sullenberger by reenacting his entire life, including pretending to be a baby in a giant crib and breastfeeding from a giant puppet. And there are some even crazier things that the 41-year-old Canadian Jewish comedian does later in the season that I cannot tell you about yet.
But in the latest episode of “The Rehearsal,” Nathan Fielder gets laughs by participating in one of the oldest and greatest Jewish traditions there is: being a yenta.
In “Kissme,” Nathan is still ostensibly trying to fix the problem of aviation safety by testing his theory that first officers will be more likely to speak up to captains if they are roleplaying as more confident versions of themselves. But how does this translate into the experiment of “The Rehearsal”? It means that Nathan starts meddling in the dating life of a pilot named Colin, of course. He eavesdrops on a conversation about dating between Colin and a fake crew member, planted for the purpose that Nathan could listen in on their conversation. He has Colin rehearse going on dates with “the pack,” a group of background actors who mimic Colin’s actions in order to make him feel more confident. And when Colin’s efforts to secure a date fail, Nathan tries to drum up interest in the pilot among members of the pack.
“So who here is into Colin?” Nathan asks the background actors, technically his employees, in the full-scale model of the Houston airport after Colin leaves one day. He clarifies, “When I say into, I mean you find him cute. Or are attracted to him. OK, raise your hand if you’re into him.”
When three of the women say they are, he takes them into Nate’s Lizard Lounge to dish. “So what do you guys like the most about Colin?” he asks them with an almost school-girlish enthusiasm. The conversation almost immediately gets sidetracked when one woman says she’s turned on by intelligence, citing Albert Einstein and specifically his theory of relativity as something that gave her a wet dream. After interrogating that statement for awhile, Nathan returns to the point. “Ethically speaking, I can’t ask you to pursue Colin,” he says. “But if tomorrow during any one of your breaks if you wanna shoot your shot, let’s just say, I’m not going to stand in your way.”
He adds: “Let the games begin.”
The games do indeed begin, but not really because of what any of the women do, but again, because of Nathan himself. At Nathan’s behest, an actress named Emma strikes up a conversation with Colin. The whole thing is caught on behind-the-scenes cameras which, presumably, Nathan is watching. A little while later, Nathan brings Colin into Nate’s Lizard Lounge where Colin reveals that he and Emma are going to get coffee and “bounce [travel] ideas off of each other.” “Bounce ideas?” Nathan says suggestively before revealing, “You know, she actually told me she has a bit of a crush on you.”
Colin responds positively and Nathan says, “Let the games begin,” a second time. Clearly living for his newfound status as a matchmaker, Nathan also checks in with Emma one last time before her date to make sure her “intentions are pure.” When she says they are, he moves ahead with the next phase of his plan. That is, have actors rehearse as Colin and Emma in the beginning stages of a relationship as a means to study their behavior.
With more actors rehearsing as Colin and Emma, Nathan learns about “the eye,” a little trick women do, according to one of the actresses, to get men to kiss them. In hopes that Colin would kiss Emma, Nathan teaches him about it. Meanwhile, the actors rehearsing as Colin and Emma start getting way more physically intimate than the actual couple do. This leads Nathan to bring the actors’ partners to set to be transparent about the process. (Read: sow drama.)
“You cool with all this?” Nathan leadingly asks the boyfriend of one actress as they watch her tenderly make out with another actor.
“She’s an actress,” he responds.
“It’s not my favorite thing to see,” another partner of one of Nathan’s actors tells him as she takes off her top on screen. “But it doesn’t feel like I’m watching my girlfriend get intimate with another man, it feels like I’m watching the character she’s created.”
Eventually Nathan ties this all back to aviation safety, albeit convolutedly. He argues that he’s just trying to understand how to get people to share their true feelings, and he’s learned that people seem to get a free pass to do whatever they want (ex: make out with another person in front of their significant other) if they just say they’re acting. It’s important data for aviation safety, apparently. In the meantime, however, it’s clear that he’s relishing getting to be a little messy and overly involved in the lives of the people he’s working with. His tone and demeanor get a little more playful when he’s encouraging his actors to date or clearing a path for them to get more physical, like they’re Barbie and Ken dolls in his HBO-blank-check-funded play land. Is this because gossiping, dishing, meddling and matchmaking achieves his ultimate goal, which isn’t aviation safety but instead really good TV? Perhaps.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t at least a small part of Nathan that was, like any good yenta, just doing it for the love of the game.
