Well, I am finally back after my little hiatus. I have the habit of taking those, but this one was in order to finish planning and attend my own wedding. Incredibly important and unfortunately taking up much of my time. But I’m pleased to be back and ready to dive into season two of The Rehearsal. Particularly because my feelings are quite different from my first go around with Nathan Fielder.
If you were around and read my piece covering season one, I was not entirely a fan of his style and wasn’t sure what to do with him the first time around. He certainly had me thinking (and occasionally scratching my head), so for this season, I was not sure what to expect besides the unexpected. Fielder’s style is most decidedly his own and no one else’s, so it was a guessing game for what to expect to see. Season One had Nathan playing dad so a woman could experience raising a child. Real emotions ended up coming into play with real kids, even if you’re playing pretend, and I had a hard time discerning which was the real Nathan and which was acting. But Season Two ended up giving what I believe is a true glimpse into Fielder’s own feelings, and I found myself connecting with him, rather than finding him awkward. Let’s dig in and examine further.
Episode #1. Gotta Have Fun
Fielder’s style is one of a kind, taking on almost a hyper-fixation approach to a project. This season, we see him dive into the field of aviation safety. Studying commercial airline crashes, Fielder sees a troubling pattern when examining the black box communications. Often, something happened in the cockpit, leaving the pilot and first officer in a communication lurch. Power dynamics created an atmosphere where first officers did not often feel comfortable voicing concerns or taking authority over the safety of the aircraft, leading to crashes and casualties. If Fielder can create a testing program to address these communications concerns, can he get it to Congress? And more importantly, will Congress even care?
Episode # 2. Star Potential
The ability to hurt someone’s feelings on purpose isn’t easy. There’s a finesse needed to navigate emotions, especially when your own are involved. Fielder had a background with Canadian Idol, the northern neighbor’s take on our own popular singing show. Fielder describes the volume of people who attend these trials and how, as a producer, you have a moment to decide if someone has star power, the “it” factor. And when that moment’s done, the fact of the matter is you’re going to have to say no to someone’s face far more than you say yes. Much, much more. This wasn’t easy for him, and he brings in pilots to do the same, studying them on their communications. One woman in particular handles the rejection slips easily while making the contestants still feel good about their abilities. He seeks to study her further, but even in his own test scenario, you can see how uncomfortable she is with the other pilot, yet navigates the communication and safety of the craft while clearly holding in her own discomfort. Something a lot of women are good at doing. Well noted, Fielder.
He also navigates his own feelings of dismissal in this episode as he comments on one of his other shows. In the past, he created a real company to sell real items to raise money for Holocaust awareness. In Germany, the episode was pulled, including anything that seems to relate to anti-semitism, with other countries following suit. Yet, several titles connected to Hitler remain up. Quite curious, but he has to manage his emotions and communications to get to the bottom of it. This helps him go further down the communications rabbit hole of the cockpit.
Episode #3. Pilot’s Code
In the episode, we see cloned dogs go through one of Fielder’s simulations, hoping to replicate the behaviors and emotional responses of the original dog. Ultimately, some behaviors were eventually replicated, but not the emotionally related ones. Because, as much as you can mimic the nurture, their nature is still different.
While Fielder had been honing in on bad crashes, he pivots this episode to focus on one quite successful crash. Captain Chesley Sullenberger came to notoriety when he crash-landed a flight in the Hudson River shortly after both engines were taken out by geese. Fielder seeks to study him and figure out why that crash was so successful while others failed. I’m not saying it’s because of Evanescence, but I’m also saying it’s not not because of Evanescence. (One of their songs is heavily key in this installment.)
Episode # 4. Kissme
While dealing with the pilots and his fake singing show, one pilot in particular seemed to lack confidence, and Fielder seeks to help him with that. Acting out a date, but especially in a herd, like animals while they hunt, could provide more confidence, especially feeling supported. Fielder goes so far as to infuse acting into the pilot’s life to try and bypass that unease and move more towards confidence. Could training telling pilots they’re in an acting scenario in the cockpit bypass any nervousness that could come up? Fielder tests it out in front of a fake Congress.
Episode #5. Washington
The reality is, Fielder has hit on an incredibly important topic, and even if he’s making a somewhat comedic show about it, this is a safety issue with real-world repercussions. And if we can aim towards making flying safer, why not do so? But Fielder has to figure out how to speak before Congress and then eventually get before Congress. But he also connects with an Autism group, which praises The Rehearsal. Many of the emotions portrayed in the show, but especially the ability of being able to practice scenarios with various outcomes, is a technique used to help autistic individuals, especially children, be prepared for situations. The woman here praises Fielder’s airport model specifically because the airport can be a very hard experience for an autistic child. And even if the congressperson gives Fielder the brush-off, there’s something good happening here, both with what Fielder is creating but also the conversations and emotional ideas coming from it. What can we learn about ourselves and society as a whole, and how can we seek to use that to make human lives better?
Episode #6. My Controls
I really appreciated Fielder’s approach this season in finding this important safety issue that not many people talk about and bringing it into the conversation. I’ve flown a lot in my life and while the safety of the plane might occasionally cross my mind, the reason is never the dynamics in the cockpit. I can experience turbulence or see something suspicious on the wing of the plane that I might not understand, but at no point have I ever considered the mental health and power dynamics between the pilots in the cockpit. When incidentally, that’s what most frequently contributes to crashes. I think last season, the aspect that weirded me out was perhaps the use of children. Because Fielder’s in-depth approach is no different this season, but I was riveted and captivated far more than in the first season.
Fielder seeks to fully understand psychologies by immersing himself within them, and what better way to understand the psychology of a cockpit than to become a pilot himself? Fielder spends hours upon hours training and eventually gets certified as a commercial pilot. He even got a job flying with a company moving 737s around the world. Because he can get away with flying one if there are no passengers, or rather, no paying passengers. So he’s going to fly a real flight, full of people, but they’re actors who’ve agreed to it. I have a deep respect for Fielder, seeing everything he went through when it came to learning how to fly. And frankly, a deep respect for all pilots. The number of things to learn and understand to safely fly yourself and others seems mildly overwhelming. And even if he was the slowest learner the trainers ever had, he did it, and I deeply respect that.
But the biggest piece I connected with is the mental health aspect of being a pilot. If a pilot gives off even a whiff of being diagnosed with a mental illness, they’re done. Because if your head isn’t in the game, you cannot fly. And this includes Autism. As someone not officially tested but definitely suspicious of my own diagnosis, I felt Fielder’s pain in this episode. We seek to fully understand ourselves, especially our brains, but for some, that is in direct conflict with other aspects of their lives. And is that acceptable? I don’t know. But I do know if there’s a Season Three of this show, I’ll be there.
