Series Review: The Rehearsal: Season Two: Episode One

The Rehearsal Season Two
Director: Nathan Fielder
Rise Management
Episode One Streaming on Max: 04.20.25

Nathan Fielder (Nathan For You, The Curse) is now a genre unto himself, synonymous with the shift inside cringe culture. No longer is cringe pigeonholed as comedy, Fielder has shown that awkward silences and social blindness can work in a drama. He’s made cringe into must-see TV. He’s made cringe prestige.

Fielder himself has evolved, or maybe it’s just his budget. He looks almost identical to his younger self. Although a bit greyer in the hair, his slow, monotone voiceover sounds just as it did a decade ago when he was on Nathan For You — his hilarious Comedy Central spoof of CNBC’s The Profit. But Fielder is no longer set on fixing failing businesses, now his eyes are set on something far larger. The plan: Fix commercial aviation. 

Season one of The Rehearsal — Fielder’s show currently airing on HBO’s MAX — began as a lighthearted jab at the complexities of life. Fielder tried to ask a question most people have asked at least once: How would life be different if I could practice this interaction beforehand? The first episode was silly, it was Fielder building an elaborate replica of a Brooklyn pub for a local man to tell his bar trivia team that he’s lied about having a master’s degree. Fielder and the man, Kor, run through a seemingly endless array of test confessions, trying to get the perfect one. It’s a great premise, one that unfolds with the awkward hilarity we’ve come to expect from Fielder. During episode two, however, many of the laughs are cast aside and the show quickly turns from a comedy into a domestic fever dream that swallows the rest of the season. Fielder tries to help a woman rehearse what it would be like to have children. Child actors playing her son grow at an accelerated rate and, due to the labor laws of minors, have to be swapped out constantly throughout the day. There are genuine laughs, though the show becomes sad, and real, a testament to Fielder’s commitment to the bit over his commitment to the show’s genre (although at this point the bit is the genre). 

There is no pretense in season two, it starts with the serious, two pilots in the simulated cockpit of a doomed plane. It’s topical, a welcomed discussion in an age of increased aviation disasters. But can Nathan Fielder be the one to fix it? 

The second season also acknowledges that there are little jokes to be found in the reformation of air transportation. After a detailed sit-down with John Goglia, a former presidential appointee to the NTSB, Fielder quips among the ashes of a fake plane crash, “Even though I had the resources to potentially solve this life or death issue and save real humans from dying, I was given this money to create a comedy series… we were over ten minutes into this episode with zero laughs.” 

While there’s no shortage of Fielder’s trademark awkwardness, most of the laughs come from shock, mainly at the attention Fielder pays to his sets. At one point, Fielder enlists his team of actors trained in “The Fielder Method” to shadow airline workers, airport employees, and travelers, gaining insight into them only so they can play those roles in a frighteningly real reconstruction of a terminal at a fake George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Explanations don’t do the set justice. The level of detail is shocking and makes a person wonder about the actual number on the show’s undisclosed budget. It also shows the audience that if there’s a person out there who can fix the broken system that is air travel, it might just be Nathan Fielder. —Norm Schoff

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