‘The Rehearsal' season 2: The flying comedian

Mint

17 hours ago

Comedians mine insights. That's the job. They observe something nobody has explored in quite the same way, finding a different vantage point, a different take, a different hypothetical what-if tangent, to make a greater—or a more amusing—point. 'What's the deal with airline food?" is the line used to distil (and mimic) the observational stylings of Jerry Seinfeld, for instance. The question now is what a comedian does with that point. Mostly, a nugget of insight gets polished into an episode, a film, a concept.
What if a comedian could do more? Much more. What if—as shown on The Rehearsal—the insight of a comedian could actually make a difference, even to an infinitesimal degree, to improve the dynamic within the cockpit of an airplane?
'I believe that any human quality can be learned," says Nathan Fielder, 'Or at least emulated." The Canadian comedian first broke onto the scene with Nathan For You, where he pitched and executed absurd ideas to help small business owners. It's a small, mad series I have previously described in this column as 'Borat with a business degree." Armed with an HBO budget, Fielder's ambitions get supersized in The Rehearsal (JioHotstar), where he constructs a painstakingly exact replica of a pub in order to help a person practice confessing a lie to a friend. That fascinating season gets progressively wilder, right up to rehearsing parenthood. The second season literally soars.
Fielder himself, deadpan and awkward, is a personality-less cipher. He's the straight man arguing that everything can be practised till it is perfected—or till it appears perfect enough. In the second season, Fielder approaches an air safety expert who has advised multiple US presidents and tells him that, as someone obsessed with air crashes, Fielder has researched the material deeply and genuinely believes he has found a factor common to most plane crashes. A factor that the series then tries to address.
This is unlike any comedy—in intent and in execution. The Rehearsal is frequently funny, taken to incredible extremes, and full of great lines, but it's seatbelted in place by earnestness and curiosity. Fielder's own commitment is absolute and astonishing, putting himself not only in mortifying situations but going to tremendous lengths: through the six episodes this season, Fielder is a diaper-clad infant suckling from the teats of a giant animatronic puppet, Fielder is a man nervously skirting where he himself may stand on the autism spectrum, and finally—most breathtakingly—he becomes a licensed airline pilot, flying a planeful of passengers in a real Boeing 737.
The comedian's fundamental observation is that on board a commercial flight, the pilot and the first officer don't speak. The system draws so many lines of status, hierarchy and seniority between the two people sitting in the cockpit of a plane that the junior doesn't feel empowered to address the senior—which removes a basic check-and-balance between two qualified and experienced professionals that could potentially save a dire situation. Can the comedian, and his all-naturalistic 'Fielder method", encourage the two people at the helm of a plane to speak freely?
It's a remarkable challenge, and while Fielder tackles it with all his might and insight, it's the what-if tangents that make The Rehearsal sensational. To illustrate nature and nurture, he takes a dog that has been cloned and tries to recreate the upbringing its 'parent" dog got—right down to importing truckloads of air (!!) from another state. He tries to set up a first officer on dates and tries to resolve shyness and insecurity in a different kind of high-pressure situation: a first kiss. At one point, he literally recreates famed pilot Sully Sullenberger's memoir in order to learn what made him so exemplary. Was it his love for the alt-metal band Evanescence? This sounds far-fetched, but we each contain multitudes, even in our playlists. Fielder looks at everything.
The comedian finds learning to fly extremely hard. This is where the constant and copious pretending comes in handy, as he sits in a chair at home and imagines himself as a pilot who isn't afraid of anything. As he eventually passes his tests, Fielder gets overwhelmed by the fact that—after logging in all their solo hours flying single-seater aircraft—pilots are certified for commercial flight only after conquering… a simulator. 'I was in awe," Fielder gushes. 'A simulation so good, they were willing to bet every passenger's life on it. It was the ultimate rehearsal."
The premise of The Rehearsal is massively seductive. The chance to practise everything—a job interview, a deposition, heartbreak, childbirth—before actually doing it offers the illusion of a second chance at life itself, a command-Z option that allows us to undo what we got wrong. Yet the very fact that we know it is a rehearsal surely must affect our behaviour during the experiment itself: without the HBO cameras and the actors and the multiple retakes, would the co-pilot attempt to kiss the girl?
Maybe he would. Maybe it doesn't matter if he would as long as he thinks he can. Which is what the simulation allows.
'When you practise being other people for long enough," Fielder says, 'you can forget to be yourself." The Rehearsal, miraculously, keeps forgetting to be any one thing. It is a treatise on mental health, on hierarchical issues, on shyness in the workplace, on the importance of feedback. Just because it's a joke doesn't mean it can't say something.
'I'm going to be in the Captain's seat," Fielder says, 'so there's really nothing to be worried about." He then pauses for two beats, instantly creating the aforementioned worry. That masterful pause is The Rehearsal, unique and unpredictable and awkward, capable of leading anywhere at all. As a viewer, I genuinely believe this show has given me more empathy and compassion for pilots. Theirs is a job of impossible pressure, and we owe them this understanding. Hats off.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.
Also read: One nation under the mango: Why are Indians obsessed with the king of fruits?