[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Rehearsal, Season 2 Episode 4, “Kissme.”]
If Larry David is comedy’s social assassin, using his humor to dissect and dismantle the unspoken rules of society, Nathan Fielder is comedy’s most invested social anthropologist. The comedian has built a career on reveling in uncomfortable situations, pushing cringeworthy interactions as far as they’ll go, and letting the air of awkwardness hang for as long as possible, all in the name of revealing some sort of truth about our nature as contemporary Earth-dwellers. Oh, and for laughs — that too.
This is especially the case in The Rehearsal, a show that (he insists) is still a comedy. Season 1 of the HBO series got deep into the weeds of emotion, behavior, clashing personalities, and greater ideas of morality, and so far, Season 2 has only continued to widen the scope. The latest offering of The Rehearsal, Season 2 Episode 4, finds Fielder returning to one particular topic that has seemingly both interested and confounded him for the bulk of his career: love and relationships.
Fittingly titled “Kissme,” the new episode of The Rehearsal follows Fielder taking the next steps in his attempt to understand the psyche of airline pilots. After a rousing performance of “Amazing Grace” by the remaining contestants of “Wings of Voice,” Fielder becomes particularly preoccupied with the struggles of one specific first officer, Colin.
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When we first meet him, Colin reads as a generally well-meaning, though quite introverted, young man who confides in Fielder about a lack of success in regards to his dating life. To instill more self-confidence in Colin, Fielder introduces a new method of rehearsing called “The Pack.” Inspired by a nature documentary that covered certain animals’ tendency to hunt in packs, Fielder hires a host of actors to hover around Colin on a staged date, mimicking his every word and movement.
“Animals will hunt in packs ’cause it gives each individual animal the confidence to do things they would normally be afraid to do on their own,” Fielder explained. “I wondered if that idea applied to humans would make social interaction feel less scary.”
Of course, being a Fielder production, the concept doesn’t stop there. Fielder then kicks it up a notch by lightly encouraging some of the actresses to consider Colin as a potential romantic match outside of the simulation. A few admit to finding him cute — be it because of the way he carries himself or because he has a sexy Einstein-ness about him — and start to flirt with him on set. One of them, Emma, eventually even secures a real-world date.
It’s once Colin and Emma embark on their first few hangouts that the real crux of the episode becomes clear. Bluntly, Colin is afraid to make a move. Even as Emma flashes her eyes and shares with Fielder that she’s been waiting for a smooch, Colin can’t bring himself to lean in for the first kiss.
This conflict is juxtaposed with five simulated couples who are each pretending to be Colin and Emma. In typical The Rehearsal fashion, these actors learn everything they can about their respective mark and then reside on a set that’s constructed to be an exact replication of Colin’s apartment. At the same time that Colin and Emma are struggling to light that first spark, many of the fake couples are already getting hot and heavy.
The Rehearsal, photo by John P. Johnson/HBO
The whole situation deeply confuses Fielder. He clearly empathizes with Colin’s social anxiety, but can’t figure out a way to break down his walls. Similarly, he stands in absolute amazement as he watches some of the “fake Emma” actresses get extremely physical with their scene partner while their actual significant others watch from just a few feet away. “You’re cool with all this?” he asks one of the actress’ partners while she makes out with a “fake Colin.”
As he stands there taking all of the insanity in, laptop strapped to his shoulders as always, there’s a real sense that Fielder is deeply invested in the delicate, illogical, unpredictable dance of human relationships. I mean, in a nutshell, that is the whole point of The Rehearsal, after all.
Returning to Fielder’s past work reveals that he’s been tackling romantic and familial love onscreen since the earliest days of Nathan for You. A recurring bit on the beloved Comedy Central series is Fielder trying to transform professional relationships into personal ones. Seriously, rewatch a season or two, and you’ll be shocked at how many segments end in him asking the business owner of the week on a date or to hang out.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s hilarious and has led to classic moments like “the wizard of loneliness,” but its consistency is remarkable. Both directly and indirectly, the topic of one’s dating status has been Fielder’s secret weapon to make things both incredibly awkward and surprisingly genuine, from that poor guy in “Maid Service” to the manufactured love triangle in “Dumb Starbucks” to the other co-pilots featured at the beginning of “Kissme.”
Nathan for You also has several episodes dedicated to Fielder comedically working out his own relationship-related insecurities. There’s the fake dating show he creates for himself as a method of immersion therapy (“Haunted House / The Hunk”), the time he went on dates literally wearing another man’s skin (“The Hero”), the time he secretly measured someone’s dopamine levels to confirm scientifically that he was fun (“Nail Salon / Fun”), and the infamous instance of him asking an actress repeat “I love you” over and over again (“Smokers Allowed”). The series even concluded with a full-length documentary about the search for a long-lost love, Finding Francis, in which he forges a relationship with an escort that, in typical Fielder fashion, ends up blurring the line between entertainment and reality.
His post-Nathan for You projects have been equally focused on romance. The Curse, the scripted dramedy that he references in “Kissme,” is largely concerned with the interworking of his character’s less-than-healthy marriage, and the first season of The Rehearsal faced Fielder’s obsession with emotional connection head-on, culminating in a genuinely intense speech given by an actress portraying Angela. Even earlier this season, we’ve seen Fielder leverage a fractured relationship with the “friendship flowers” incident in Episode 1 and interview a dude who’s “been banned from pretty much every dating app known to man” in Episode 2.
“Kissme” simply serves as his latest trip to the well of love’s mysteries. Like in life, however, it seems as if the experience only served to introduce more questions than answers, especially given that Colin’s resolution is a lone, simple kiss on the cheek.
Fielder’s projects often feel like an extension of himself, not the least bit because he almost always plays a heightened version of himself rather than a traditional character. In that way, it’s tempting to view his career as an attempt to both figure out and exploit human nature, particularly when it comes to how we interact with each other. If that’s the case, Fielder unfortunately seems a long way off from cracking the code of love. It’s a hell of an enjoyable time to watch him try, though.
New episodes of The Rehearsal premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.
