The Rehearsal (TV series)

The Rehearsal is an American docu-comedy television series created, written, directed by and starring Nathan Fielder. It premiered on HBO on July 15, 2022 to critical acclaim. It was renewed for a second season in August 2022.

Premise
The Rehearsal features a character played by Nathan Fielder who helps ordinary people rehearse upcoming difficult conversations or life events through the use of sets and actors hired to recreate real situations. The situations can be trivial, like confessing to a lie about educational history, or more complex, like raising a child. Fielder commissions extravagant sets with every detail recreated, and hires actors to inhabit these sets and practice different dialogue trees with his clients dozens of times to try to prepare them for every variable. Information used to train the actors and build the sets is often collected without the subjects' knowledge (this aspect, however, is often played with a comedic effect).

Production
The premise for The Rehearsal developed from Fielder's series Nathan for You. In preparation for the earlier series, Fielder and his team role-played scenarios to predict how real people reacted to his ridiculous suggestions, an exercise that often proved inaccurate. Fielder was inspired by the futility of the human impulse to control one's own future, which he found "really funny."

Some of the humor in The Rehearsal is derived from its extravagant sets. In the first episode, Fielder constructs a perfect duplicate of the bar in which the subject's difficult conversation is to take place. He also constructs a duplicate of the subject's house to practice their first conversation.

On August 19, 2022, HBO renewed the series for a second season.

Release
The series was first teased in 2019 as part of Fielder's deal with HBO. The title The Rehearsal was revealed in June 2021. In June 2022, a teaser was released, and a poster showing a release date of July 15, 2022.

Critical response
The series has received critical acclaim, with some praising it as one of the best new series of 2022. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 95% approval rating with an average rating of 9.4/10, based on 56 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "The Rehearsal gives Nathan Fielder carte blanche to take his absurdist comedy to the limit, which he pushes even further past with deadpan aplomb in what might be his most uncomfortably funny feat yet." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 86 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

The Rehearsal appeared in the top ten on numerous publications' "Best of 2022" lists, including first for Far Out, IndieWire, The Ringer, and ScreenCrush, among others.

Analysis
In The New York Times Critic's Pick review, James Poniewozik wrote "the show has a philosophical core: Is it ever possible to truly understand another person?" Vox's Alissa Wilkinson likewise called the show "an excellent reminder that we know much less about others than we think we do," and compared it to the writings of Leslie Jamison and Martin Buber.

The show's blurring of simulation and reality have drawn comparisons to the Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York and the Tom McCarthy novel Remainder. The series has been described as a spiritual successor to Nathan For You, since both shows share a premise of Fielder helping average people in humorous ways. Vulture described Fielder's "willingness to screw with people" and put them in situations that might embarrass them or cause them to do things that are out of character being the core thread of his work.

Many critics viewed the show as a critique of the exploitive and disingenuous nature of reality television, with writer Israel Daramola of Los Angeles Review of Books calling it "a commentary on...the inherent phoniness of reality television as well as the faults and constrictions of acting as representation of real life." The series' central idea of rehearsing and performing social interactions resonated with many autistic viewers, who viewed it as an analogy for masking. Variety writer Daniel D’Addario highlighted the series' ultimate message that "all of us are performing, all the time."