The Rehearsal Season 2 Premiere Places Nathan Fielder In A Creepy Moral Dilemma

Nathan Fielder spends the primary ten minutes of “The Rehearsal” season 2 premiere with seemingly good intentions. He is studied the cockpit transcripts main as much as a number of airplane crashes, and he is deduced that interpersonal nervousness between the pilot and co-pilot is the most important issue at fault for them. In a short time, nevertheless, Fielder dives into murky territory: he hires his actors (skilled in “The Fielder Technique” from season 1) to review the staff at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. 

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This consists of TSA brokers, store employees, flight attendants, and naturally the pilots themselves. For the pilots Fielder has his actors observe them onto their flights, after which observe them to their resorts once they land in different cities. We’re handled to 1 clip, filmed from what looks like a physique cam, the place an actor knocks on an actual pilot’s resort room door. He pretends to be a earlier visitor who left one thing behind within the room, and he asks the pilot to let him rummage by means of his room for it. The pilot, whose face just isn’t blurred for the digital camera, agrees and lets the actor are available in and discreetly research his belongings. 

It is a scene that instantly raises two questions: 1) Is that this authorized? And a pair of) Whether it is authorized, which of my congressmen ought to I name to repair this? 

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Actuality prank exhibits like this are normally allowed to indicate footage of individuals once they’re in a public place, which the airport itself qualifies as. However is the pilot’s resort room nonetheless thought of a public place? Authorized points apart, I believe we will all agree that this habits is crossing a couple of moral traces. I do not suppose anybody would respect discovering out {that a} full stranger has been following them round all day, finding out their mannerisms so as to painting them in a TV present. 

It helps that we all know “The Rehearsal” is not all the time 100% sincere about what’s actual or not actual, so we will assume (or hope) that these folks the actors adopted round for days had been extra conscious of the scenario than “Gotta Have Enjoyable” makes it appear. Nonetheless, the present’s whole disinterest in elaborating on that is intentional; Nathan makes clear all through season 2 that he wants this present must be comedic and entertaining, and the joke of this sequence is that we’re speculated to chortle at how invasive and obsessive Nathan’s being in pursuit of his objectives. 

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After all, not each viewer can discover the humor on this. When season 1 got here out, New Yorker movie critic Richard Brody lambasted the “merciless and conceited gaze” of Fielder. “Deception prevails all through,” he wrote. “Fielder units up a faux web site so as to lure a lady named Tricia, to whom Kor is planning to make his confession, into the undertaking unawares (and the deception goes far, even to a fake job for her); we by no means discover out when she realized what she’d been roped into.” Brody went in on onerous on Fielder, refusing to miss the numerous invasions of privateness and belief that Fielder went on to perform his objectives. 

I largely agree with Brody’s ethical issues about Fielder, aside from the half the place he claims that Fielder is tired of addressing these ethical issues. Season 1’s fourth episode, “The Fielder Technique,” is jarringly meta in how introspective the present’s prepared to be. Fielder roleplays as one of many actual folks he obtained on the present, an aspiring actor named Thomas. Nathan tries to expertise for himself how the entire shady, exploitative apply feels from Thomas’s perspective, and his discovery is deeply unflattering to himself.

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The sequence factors out how Fielder’s manufacturing group pressures folks to signal an “look launch” that’s method too lengthy and complex for many of them to parse by means of. Then, simply to essentially underline how tousled that is, we watch as Fielder pressures one in every of his “Fielder Technique” actors to offer him the keys to his residence. We then watch as Nathan combs by means of this stranger’s residence all evening after which sleeps in his mattress, regardless of telling Thomas he’d solely cease by to water his crops. 

Nathan’s actions all through this present are creepy, however they’re speculated to be creepy. The comedy comes from simply how disturbed Nathan comes throughout, and his obvious lack of self-awareness over it. Nathan’s character does not appear self-aware however the present itself positive does in the way in which it depicts him; the one query is whether or not that self-awareness is sufficient. If the present remains to be exploiting actual folks for leisure, because it positive appears to be doing to a minimum of some extent, does not its self-awareness make it even worse, not higher?

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There are two saving graces of “The Rehearsal” season 2 to date, fortunately. The primary is that it by no means feels just like the present is making enjoyable of the folks whose privateness it breaks. As an illustration, the pilot who will get tricked into letting an actor with a digital camera into his room just isn’t the butt of the joke. The viewers is predicted to sympathize with him, and to be involved by what the actor (and Fielder) are doing. 

The opposite saving grace is that Fielder is (allegedly) solely violating these strangers’ belief and privateness for the sake of the larger good. Stopping future airline crashes is a noble activity, assuming Fielder’s critical about it. I believe most individuals would forgive Fielder’s transgressions if his experiment really wielded constructive, significant outcomes. If Fielder really someway manages to make fashionable air journey much less terrifying, he can violate my privateness as a lot as he needs. 

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