‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2, Episode 1: Can Plane Crashes Be Funny?

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Prestige TV Podcast, the fake airline terminal of TV podcasting. I'm Charles Holmes from The Midnight Boys.
Pew-be-be-be-boo! She's Jodi Walker from We're Obsessed.

Speaker 1 And together, we are here to talk about

Speaker 1 one of the

Speaker 1 most cursed TV shows, not the cursed,

Speaker 2 the rehearsal. Certainly not the most cursed.

Speaker 1 Honestly, fair enough. The rehearsal season two, though.

Speaker 1 First of all, Jodi, how are you? Are the vibes in

Speaker 1 your home, your apartment, as fucked up as they are in mine after you watched the first episode?

Speaker 2 Well, we are coming to you from a series of three interconnected studios in LA that are replicating my home here in North Carolina and Charles's home away from home at the Spotify studios.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. Through it to be here.

Speaker 1 I will say,

Speaker 1 it'll be no shock to you that as a 32-year-old man who lives in LA, I'm in the Nathan Fielder hive. Like he speaks to me, you know? Like the women.

Speaker 2 Did you wear your hoodie just to make sure that we knew?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing. I

Speaker 1 would love next Halloween to just go as Nathan Fielder with the laptop. I feel like all the honeys will just be like, that guy's vibe.
Exactly. We love it.

Speaker 2 I had no idea how much I had missed the laptop sling until it showed up, I believe for the first time amongst flames, which felt fully appropriate. Yes.

Speaker 2 And yeah, it's a perfect, simple Halloween costume.

Speaker 1 Were you actually surprised?

Speaker 1 One thing I was surprised about before we kind of dig into the episode is how almost in my mind iconic the rehearsal has become because first, at first in the first season, the

Speaker 1 laptop sling was just a bit,

Speaker 1 but the minute you see it for the first time in this, you're like, oh, we're back in this world. Like now you understand the mechanics.
And I don't know if we've ever talked about it.

Speaker 1 What were your feelings about the first season of the rehearsal?

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 2 I love the first season of the rehearsal. Like when I tell people about it, I get a kind of awe in my voice that I'm honestly not proud of.

Speaker 2 Like I think of it as one of like the great works of distorted genius on television ever.

Speaker 1 Can we call it an achievement?

Speaker 2 Sure. I think, I think that something was achieved, if, if nothing but people's immense discomfort, but inability to look away.
It was so unexpected. And I think that's what's made season two.

Speaker 2 It's like, what's coming? I just, I did not know what to expect of season two.

Speaker 2 I think following the premiere, I know a little bit more what to expect, but season one spends so much of the time kind of unraveling the premise. It's not a success.

Speaker 2 Other than perfect, perfect trivia participant core.

Speaker 2 No, the rehearsals don't work, you know, like it's not. So it was so bold and confident to just

Speaker 2 come back into season two in this premiere cold open basically and explain nothing and to not be like you know i know this didn't totally work last time i'm not sure if we cracked it uh we may have ruined a few kids lives it just comes straight back in and is like and now we're just doing it bigger probably the way to fix it is just to do it bigger high stakes did you last time with the rehearsal season one did you think that this was something

Speaker 1 a premise that could be repeated because i remember coming out of that season.

Speaker 1 This, the first season of the rehearsal basically ends in this place where Nathan Fielder is almost having an existential crisis about fatherhood and his place in the world and the things that he's putting all of these people through.

Speaker 1 And then when they're like, all right, we're doing a second season. I'm like, what? Where is there to go? And when we get to this, where it's like, we're taking on

Speaker 1 airplane crashes, I was like,

Speaker 1 what did Nathan Fielder know and when did he know it?

Speaker 2 Was my main question there.

Speaker 1 Go on, before we go on,

Speaker 1 when did he know it? When did Fielder know it?

Speaker 2 His prescient ability to

Speaker 2 be six steps ahead and one step behind on screen, but always, always ahead is, I think,

Speaker 2 the genius and is, you know, I think also earns the criticism that season one got that this is cruel, that this is, uh, could be an act of arrogance, that this is, you know, kind of like taking the worst of reality TV in terms of manipulation and coercion is kind of because he's so smart and he knows what he's doing and he knows what to expect.

Speaker 2 But I think to answer your original question, I did think that See, I did not expect this from season two.

Speaker 2 I'm not one step ahead, but I thought he could do it all over again because you never know what's real.

Speaker 2 That's the like the compelling thing of it: you don't know if Nathan having the existential crisis in season one is Nathan, or if it's Nathan Fielder, or if it's real, or if it's a play, or if it's in service of entertainment, or if it's in service of growth.

Speaker 2 And so, it does kind of give the ability to hit the reset button, but that's not what he did. He has not hit the reset button, gone back to episodic.

Speaker 2 And certainly, like in Nathan for You, there was growth.

Speaker 2 There was a slightly serialized aspect, the sort of series finale that a lot of the rehearsal comes out of, you know, it sort of built to that point. And I guess I thought maybe,

Speaker 2 you know, season one starts episodic and turns serialized. I didn't totally expect season two to, I think,

Speaker 2 go full serialized. So I felt like there could be a season two.
And I often compare, in my mind, at least,

Speaker 2 this show, the rehearsal, to like jury duty, which is its kind of like the good place version.

Speaker 2 That feels difficult to repeat because

Speaker 2 a lot of people knew about it and you were you were fooling someone

Speaker 2 who was cast specifically to be fooled and to be cool about it at the end? Yeah. Here, or at least in season one, these people had presumably signed up for what they were doing.

Speaker 2 And I think there are a lot more people like that who do not know about the rehearsal. Like, I think there's still a pure world out there where you can get rehearsal participants.

Speaker 2 I mean, we still, we got moody, you know, it's serialized, but we got moody.

Speaker 1 To your point,

Speaker 1 one of the most brilliant introductions I've seen in a while in the TV show

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 these two airline pilots. We start with them in a plane.
They're talking back and forth.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, they crash and it's revealed that they're in kind of like a volume type place, like the type of place where they shoot like the Mandalorian and you could see whatever on the screen.

Speaker 1 And their crash ends with a fiery blaze. And Nathan Fielder coming into the screen, almost doing the thing that we're talking about, which is, is Nathan Fielder the devil?

Speaker 1 Does he know what he's doing is evil?

Speaker 1 Does he know, like, I'm not saying it is, but there is this sense where you're like, please don't tell me he's about to do an entire season about airplanes falling out of the sky in 2025.

Speaker 1 Please don't. And then you're like, oh, he's doing that.

Speaker 2 He's doing it and he's trying to solve it. Is he the devil or is he God? So is this a construct that we take on? I don't know.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 could you explain, maybe act like I'm an alien on planet Earth, which I sometimes feel like. How would you explain the elevator pitch of the rehearsal season two?

Speaker 2 Season two

Speaker 2 is,

Speaker 2 I guess, you know, season one was about taking

Speaker 2 humans and helping them practice uncomfortable situations so that they can do them in the most successful way possible. Season two

Speaker 2 seems to be about

Speaker 2 taking humans and manipulating them and their emotions to make the most successful situation possible.

Speaker 2 Like it does feel like it's kind of inverted the script of rehearsing so that we change the situation in season one.

Speaker 2 And now we're rehearsing so that we change the people in order to change the scenario, I think. But to me, the premise is growing.
It is not outlined in the same way that it is outlined in season one.

Speaker 1 Well, even in season one, I feel like there is this level of

Speaker 1 we're slowly getting the rehearsal aspect building and building and building. And part of the comedy is like, he's building this

Speaker 1 fake bar and he's hiring all these actors. And how far is he going to go?

Speaker 1 And in this premiere, it was so funny to be like, oh, it's totally normal for him to build a fake Panda Express because the guy's just like, I also want to bring this up.

Speaker 1 Our one of our main protagonists for this episode, Moody, says, what, teriyaki glazed chicken is one of the healthier options.

Speaker 1 And I'm just like, as someone who gets very high and goes to Panda Express fairly often, I was just like, I don't know if that checks out. I don't know if there's anything healthy at Panda Express.

Speaker 1 Am I being closed-minded about this?

Speaker 2 I guess if you really want to get into this and the diet culture that I was raised in, is like, I was like, my guy, I know that you are not actually versed in any healthy ways because he didn't just say teriyaki chicken.

Speaker 2 He said teriyaki chicken and white rice. Anybody who's watching us doing brown rice, you shouldn't.
Don't do that. But

Speaker 1 white rice is healthy in this household.

Speaker 2 Fuck you. That's exactly, that's exactly right.
I said diet culture, Charles.

Speaker 2 I just think, I, I think like that so quickly just told us a lot about what we needed to know about Moody and like kind of the point of adulthood in which he's in. Yes.

Speaker 2 Where he's like taking stabs at health, stabs at relationship,

Speaker 2 but lives in his parents' house, is fully a pilot. He was, I'm going to say it, a surprising pilot to me.

Speaker 1 I don't know if the show is this evil, but there was a level of them like, did you guys pick this cute kid for a very evil reason?

Speaker 1 Because I was just like, there was a moment like, this is, this is the man my like, my

Speaker 1 life, like the hands that my life is in right now. He's so young and precocious.

Speaker 1 And just, I'm just like, this is the type of person that if I was the parent, I'm like, you can't go around a man like Nathan Fielder. He's, he's not, the vibes aren't great.

Speaker 1 He's going to destroy you.

Speaker 2 But he walked, but Nathan, and you know, we'll get to this, but he walks into that house and there's like when he's listening in on the call with Moody's long distance girlfriend, when the camera pans out to reveal that Nathan is laying on the bed, shoes off, literally like twiddling his feet, like he's kicking his besocked feet.

Speaker 2 That's, and I actually found in that conversation what felt a little bit like a rare glimpse of perhaps Nathan Fielder and his actual ability to probe people, make them feel comfortable, get information out of them.

Speaker 2 Because when he is observing that call with the girlfriend,

Speaker 2 he's kind of like, what's going on, man? Like, why do you feel like this? Why do you feel like you can't talk to her? It almost feels like he's talking to a friend.

Speaker 2 And I don't think you got any of that. in season one.
What you did get in season one, I think, and kind of like to go back to a bit of the elevator pitch, is

Speaker 2 this premise that Nathan in season one, in early season one, learned how to do rehearsals that replicate the physical space,

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 conversation, the map graph of where things will go and how to react to something. But he forgot to, and we learned this in the core episode of season one, he forgot to account for emotional response.

Speaker 2 And we see him try to learn that as he goes along. He tries to rehearse emotional responses.
What he seems to learn at the end is that he can't really do that, and that a lot of

Speaker 2 life is about the surprise of an emotional response.

Speaker 2 The genius, then, of this season is not that he's kind of picking up a premise that he's already dismantled, it's that he's seemingly found the one situation,

Speaker 2 commercial aviation disasters, where

Speaker 2 a rehearsal

Speaker 2 could actually be the difference between life and death. Yes.

Speaker 2 Which I think is how he describes rehearsals to his fielder method students in season one, that if they make a mistake, it could be the difference between life or death. And I just,

Speaker 2 I would love to know the process of how he landed on this, like how he figured out this pattern in aviation crashes, which are real. The ones he's naming are real.

Speaker 1 Wait, did you actually

Speaker 1 Google any of them and be like, Did this actually happen?

Speaker 2 Yeah, Charles, I'm a journalist.

Speaker 1 Yes. We all have Wikipedia pages.
I'm a former journalist as well, and I'm just like, I trust you, Nathan Fielder. I don't need to factor you.
Former journalist, Charles.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I trusted it. It wasn't like I didn't think so, but I was just, I was curious because

Speaker 2 the way that Nathan wants to study humanity in this series, I want to study Nathan. I want to understand

Speaker 2 how

Speaker 1 he

Speaker 2 found this premise. And then, as with so many things of his elaborate setups, you're like, is it sheer luck that this happens to be a major talking point in 2025? I mean, yes, it is.
He's not like.

Speaker 2 a psychic.

Speaker 2 But the but the fact that he found something

Speaker 2 could benefit from a rehearsal, according to the actual board member from the NTSB or whatever,

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 2 just really impressive to me. Well,

Speaker 1 if you're in the writer's room, the thing that, the question that I keep circling back to is,

Speaker 1 are planes falling out of the sky and crashing

Speaker 1 actually funny? Because the first, because he makes a joke in the first 10 minutes where he's just like, it's been 10 minutes and there has not been one laugh.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I know it is cliche to say you're cringing at a Nathan, anything Nathan Felder does, but there was a moment where I was like, not clutching my pearls, but I'm like, these are real crashes.

Speaker 1 And like, he is, he is casting fake actors to read real transcripts from the black boxes of the pilots that were like recorded before these crashes. And I'm like, this is so,

Speaker 1 so tasteless,

Speaker 1 but I'm almost, I'm,

Speaker 1 I'm just so intrigued by that tastelessness of a comedian being willing to even go there. Because part of me would be like, these people, people died.
Like, these, this is a real thing.

Speaker 1 I don't know if this is okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think I loved what to me, I was calling that like the Barbie moment when he's like, we're 10 minutes in and we haven't laughed. It reminds me of in the Barbie movie when

Speaker 2 they're zooming in on Margo Roby's face and you're and trying to sit and she's saying that she's ugly and she's worthless and you're just looking at her and thinking she's so beautiful and that the Helen Miran voiceover comes in to say we obviously cast the wrong person to be able to pull off this monologue.

Speaker 2 That's what this felt like to me. I was genuinely thinking in that moment, wow, we're pretty far into this and we haven't really gotten to the punchline, the twist.
No, I'll say, I hadn't laughed.

Speaker 2 And I'm curious to know if you like clocked your first laugh of the episode, sort of, like, because we did spend those 10 minutes, those first 10 minutes in chaos, in fire, but I was smirking a little.

Speaker 1 I was dying.

Speaker 1 The reveal of when they crash the first time and Nathan pops in, I laughed because it's literally like, I was just like, I remember thinking Nathan Fielder is the devil at the exact moment when he got, and that was like, that was the first time.

Speaker 1 But to your point, that whole, like, I was also clocking where I'm like, like, I'm smirking and I'm like nodding along,

Speaker 1 but I'm not laughing out loud.

Speaker 2 For me, there was a slightly amping up of the humor of

Speaker 2 you're right to point out that these are real people, which you didn't even know because you didn't go to Wikipedia, but these are, these are real, real losses of life, real disasters.

Speaker 2 But the continued joke of him popping up within the fire, like, and, and with the laptop sling the first time, like Like, the way that it keeps happening and he keeps circling was

Speaker 2 really getting to me, but I appreciated that he pointed out that this is technically a comedy series and

Speaker 2 we

Speaker 2 there have been, there have been zero laughs. There have been several smirks, but zero laughs.

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Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 if we can like segment the episode, maybe, because I wanted to kind of figure out who the MVP of this episode was. I think the...

Speaker 1 early contender we've we talked about him a little bit is moody because i think that the genius of nathan fielder who was the character in season one where he goes to his house and he's like obsessed with like

Speaker 1 numbers and shit. And you're just like, Nathan Robin.
Yes.

Speaker 2 Who crashed his Scion.

Speaker 2 It's got some letters. He crashed his Scion at 100 miles per hour.
And you're like, and he keeps saying it.

Speaker 1 Nathan Fielder has a very, because I think he's actually.

Speaker 1 From profiles I've read and different things you see of him, like I actually think he's a very awkward person just in general.

Speaker 1 I think part of his humor is the way that he can immediately connect with someone else who might be a little bit awkward or a little bit innocent. And to your point, bring something out of him.

Speaker 1 Like, that's actually the most human side, I feel, like, a Fielder, where it's like

Speaker 1 he does seem interested in what makes kind of like

Speaker 1 people tick. And I think Moody is the perfect, is the perfect protagonist for Nathan Fielder's show because he's so innocent and so lovable.

Speaker 1 And there's a part of him being like, my sweet, sweet panda express eating boy. Even the

Speaker 1 talk on the bed

Speaker 1 with

Speaker 1 with his Starbucks girlfriend was such a

Speaker 2 like repeated, the repetition of Starbucks, like the way that even when they start the serious conversation when they're in the plane later and he's like, so like if hypothetically you were to have a customer and she's like, it's Starbucks, like the way they just keep saying Starbucks to me was the like psy on TC at 100 miles per hour that hit so hard last season.

Speaker 2 Just so funny. Well, so the other

Speaker 1 MVP candidate for me was

Speaker 1 Starbucks girl. Was that his actual girlfriend or an actress?

Speaker 2 That was really hard for me.

Speaker 2 I have like a really high,

Speaker 2 obviously any lover of this show is going to have like a pretty high tolerance for discomfort.

Speaker 2 That is the sort of make or break for if you enjoy or don't enjoy nathan field or comedy and especially the rehearsal i think this was the only moment for me where i was like i want to put it on two times speed was the introduction of that girlfriend

Speaker 2 from everything i know about the rehearsal she would be moody's real girlfriend

Speaker 1 but there was it didn't seem like it They didn't touch.

Speaker 1 At one point, it seemed like they gave like a buddy like, hey, good to see you. And I was like, this has to be an actress this can't be his real girlfriend they they look like they just have met

Speaker 2 i found it most generously uncomfortable and least generously a little suspect that just generally how it rolled out i did have the thought that she could be an internet girlfriend like

Speaker 2 They met long distance. They've never, they talk and they get on the phone and they're they're like, hey, boo, but they don't really know each other.

Speaker 1 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He said that he had met her the last time in January and it's now March.

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't, you know, like he said he'd met her, but I just don't know how

Speaker 2 real, I think it is possible that this is

Speaker 2 a mostly, you know, just an on-the-phone relationship where she's like,

Speaker 2 oh yeah, I get, I talk to this guy. He's a pilot, whatever.
And Moody's like, this is my girlfriend.

Speaker 1 She works at Starbucks.

Speaker 1 I'll put it to you this way.

Speaker 1 I can't say much, but the minute they started talking, I was about like, I was like, Moody, I've been the other guy at Starbucks. I'm just like, get out.

Speaker 2 You're handing out inklets left and right, Charles. You are Angel at Starbucks.
When she said

Speaker 2 Angel gave me this inklet, I said, that's a Charles Holmes move. I've ever seen it.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 Okay, wait, we can't move on, though, because my end, I loved Moody.

Speaker 2 I was discomforted by the Starbucks girlfriend, but I loved,

Speaker 2 I'm going to call him John G. I didn't quite catch his last name, but the National Transportation Safety board member.

Speaker 1 I have his name. He is

Speaker 1 John Golia, I think.

Speaker 1 He was a board member for

Speaker 1 a former board member of the National Transportation Safety Board, and he is daddy. I'll just say.

Speaker 2 Obsessed with him because you make a great point that, like, Nathan does is awkward. He does have this ability to connect with

Speaker 2 other sort of uncomfortable people. When he says, at one point in the airport, he's like, talking to anyone is always hard, no matter how close you get to them, just like confidently says that.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I could talk to a stranger for hours. That's not my life experience, but it is the Nathan Fielder life experience.

Speaker 2 And, but what I also love is when Nathan comes into the presence of a like deeply confident and capable person. I think last season that was like the Jewish tutor who had many twists and turns.
Yes.

Speaker 2 And this season it is John G as I call him, who could still have many twists and turns. But what does he say? He says

Speaker 2 when he's giving the speech that he doesn't know is a setup, setup, he's like, bureaucrats, they don't have any backbones. That's never been my problem.
My problem is I maybe have too much backbone.

Speaker 2 And I didn't have any questions. I was like, I completely believe you.
That backbone is solid as a rock.

Speaker 2 And it is you, the loss of you, not the loss of Pete Budig, which is the reason that planes keep going down.

Speaker 1 I mean, I will say a laugh out look.

Speaker 1 A laugh out loud moment for me is when John G comes back to the episode and they go to one of the tradings that they have in real life, and like Nathan is being his like polite self.

Speaker 1 And what does John G say? He's like, basically, this, this professor is boring as shit.

Speaker 2 Nathan cues it up in the voiceover. He's like, he's like, John took me to see this and he thought it sucked.
And then, and then you hear John go, this guy's a boring professor. It's just so funny.

Speaker 2 He's got nothing but criticisms, but he's right about all of it. When you, once you start getting sort of the participants, the like

Speaker 2 the real people, John, Moody, the girlfriend, the real LOLs start rolling in.

Speaker 2 Like you pointed out with Moody, when they are in his hotel room, and first of all, the visual introduction of Nathan sitting on the toilet, the closed seat toilet, watching him brush his teeth is perfect.

Speaker 2 And much like reality TV, the the best moments of this show, I think, are really made in the edit. Like they are made in how this is put together, not the actual plot, sort of.

Speaker 2 And then, and then the kind of plot you can't expect, like no one can script that Moody cannot put that ironing board down to save his life.

Speaker 1 I'd say more about his character and like how young he is, because I've been in that same exact style hotel running late for some shit. And I'm like, fuck this ironing board.

Speaker 2 Like, I have places to, I was like, leave cash on the desk and get out of there.

Speaker 1 Like, leave a cash tip don't put the ironing board down i mean even like one of the funniest moments from this episode is when nathan is basically telling him like hey man if you ever feel like you're getting nervous and you need to take back control grab the steering wheel grab the yoke and seeing this kid grab it

Speaker 1 and i'm just like this is the most

Speaker 1 excruciating like when i tell you i was like i this is why i hated this the the first season and loved it in the same measure, where there's parts of it where I'm like, I'd rather fucking like sticking a needle in my eye than watch this kid do this.

Speaker 2 It was that conversation in the plane

Speaker 2 was

Speaker 2 just unnerving. I, I don't, I don't

Speaker 2 know what they're trying to accomplish. I,

Speaker 2 well, I mean, should we talk about the rehearsal?

Speaker 1 As someone who falls in love with baristas constantly, I kind of wanted Nathan to be like to Moody,

Speaker 1 hey, man,

Speaker 1 you know what it is. Even when he calls the girlfriend, their conversation is so short and clipped.
I thought the same thing you did where I'm like,

Speaker 1 This can't be his real girl. Like, this has to be some internet thing.
Cause even when Moody is just like, yeah, you want to, you want to see my Batman Legos? I'm like, this is on HBO, man.

Speaker 1 like put the fucking batman lego

Speaker 1 as someone on the midnight boys i know what happens when i have to invite a lady over i'm just like you know what we're throw a sheet over the batman legos

Speaker 1 we're putting this in the box sorry bruce sorry robin you'll come back out

Speaker 2 no he wanted it to be known he was like this is who i am he said i don't know if you want to get the batman legos I'm so sweet.

Speaker 1 Even the way Nathan is like, he lives with his parents. I'm like, we didn't.

Speaker 1 Because at first, when I saw the house, I'm like, damn, maybe Payant pilots. Well,

Speaker 2 no,

Speaker 2 I will say that, like, he is a young pilot. And so he's not getting any,

Speaker 2 you know, like,

Speaker 2 he's getting the worst of the worst shifts. It's a, it's hard to be a pilot.

Speaker 2 I could understand how he would maybe not really have like a permanent girlfriend that he sees all the time, but I was still

Speaker 2 unmoored by the relationship with the Starbucks girlfriend.

Speaker 1 Also, if we're going to be real, if you're a pilot, here's the thing: I love my job. I love podcasting.
It's so much fun and great.

Speaker 1 There is a time when I'm out when people are like, What do you do? A nice hot young lady is just like, What do you do for work? And I'm like, I'm a black man podcasting.

Speaker 1 I literally have to be like, I'm a podcaster. It's not about relationships or how women aren't shit.
And they're like, Well, what is it about? And I'm like,

Speaker 1 you know, uh,

Speaker 1 this and that. Superheroes, and you just see their eyes glaze over.
That's my cross to bear.

Speaker 1 If I was a pilot, bro, like, I'm just like pilots, flight attendants, the stories I've heard from homies are just like, hey, I'm in your city for a day or two.

Speaker 1 People are like, they see the uniform, all bets are off. I'm like, Moody, you should be the man, bro.
You look great. You love Panda Express.

Speaker 1 Well, so your wild

Speaker 1 pilot oats, you know?

Speaker 2 It's a great lead-in. Yeah, I would also, I would likewise like to introduce myself as a pilot instead of a podcaster and blogger, but here we are.

Speaker 1 Oh, you still use the B word in 2025.

Speaker 2 I don't say it, but it's true.

Speaker 1 You're more than a blogger. You're more, we're, we're more, we're more than our blogging selves.
Honestly, fuck that. I'm proud of blogging.
I'm proud of blogging. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 And I'm tired of the judgment and the ire I, I, I, that is thrust upon us. People need podcasts to listen to.
People need blogs to read, you know?

Speaker 2 Yeah, make us subjects on the rehearsal. We're worth it.

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Speaker 1 So the other, my last MV MVP candidate, because we've done Moody, we've done John, we've done Starbucks Girl. The pilots were hilarious.

Speaker 1 Every single pilot that was, because once again, you're like, is this happening? When they reveal that they told everyone they hire from the pilots to the people flying to follow actual people.

Speaker 1 And it's revealed that one of the pilots follows a guy to his hotel knocks on his door and then goes into the room I'm like is this is this legal this seems like stalking this doesn't seem okay

Speaker 2 it's the fielder method Charles it is well established that there are some ethically blurry lines within the fielder method but boy does it get blown up in this season.

Speaker 2 I mean, I do feel like we have to explicitly talk about the premise and the actual fight the rehearsal that comes into play in this first episode the general idea presented by Nathan to John G

Speaker 2 is that the the commonality between many of these most disastrous aviation crashes is that the first

Speaker 2 What are there? What are there? It's the captain and the.

Speaker 1 It's like the captain, and I want to say I have it here. It's like the first, it's the first seat.
Let me see.

Speaker 1 Moody is the first time. The first officer.
Yes. First officer.
So

Speaker 2 many times the first officer knows that there's going to be an issue, can see it, but does not have the confidence or is shot down by the more senior officer.

Speaker 2 And if the and if the first officer felt the confidence

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 literally take over the yoke and go back, turn around, steer the plane to safety. At the moment that they knew that something was wrong, then many of these flights could be saved.

Speaker 2 And I loved the moment when John G was like, you're on to something here.

Speaker 2 Like, it was like he knew it, but actually, Nathan had put this thing together with all his little files, all his little three ring binders, all his little tabs, and all of his attempts to be serious, which is kind of other than the rehearsal itself, the through line of this

Speaker 2 serialized premise of season two is that

Speaker 2 Nathan has stumbled onto this thing. It is serious.
It is life and death.

Speaker 2 And he both wants to take it seriously, be taken seriously, but he is a comedian who has been hired to make a comedic reality docuseries or whatever the hell you call this concept.

Speaker 2 So that rolls into meeting Moody, who is the perfect candidate for needing to build confidence

Speaker 2 to approach,

Speaker 2 let's say, a more alpha personality, much like Starbucks girlfriend, much like

Speaker 2 a pilot, the captain. And

Speaker 2 then Nathan sets up the rehearsal

Speaker 2 that will show him, that will show Nathan, not Moody.

Speaker 2 Nathan is the one who needs to experience this rehearsal, how

Speaker 2 captains and first officers relate to one another.

Speaker 2 I'm going to say I had a bit of a gripe here.

Speaker 1 Wow. Like,

Speaker 2 I can suspend

Speaker 2 reality

Speaker 2 to be like, sure,

Speaker 2 Nathan for his, you know, high concept rehearsal practice needs to build an entire functioning bar that he eventually gets a liquor license for because he's developed an emotional attachment for it.

Speaker 2 But the idea that to understand

Speaker 2 how first officers and captains meet one another, he needs to build a fully functional airport terminal,

Speaker 2 including a fully functional Panda Express, and not just build the structure, but hire 70 actors trained in the fielder method, fly them to Houston to study their primaries, not just fly them to Houston, also hire a 24-7 travel agency team so that if they need to follow their pilots to continue to study them and go inside their hotel rooms, they can book a flight 20 minutes before those prices.

Speaker 2 I'm just

Speaker 2 what, and we don't know how many people are really taking these flights. Some of this could be fudged.

Speaker 2 The building, some of it could be fudged. The airport is real.

Speaker 2 There was Lomain in those Panda Express bowls. And my thought is just that what he could have done to understand that was ask Moody, because that's what he ultimately does.

Speaker 2 I mean, when the rehearsal once again fails.

Speaker 1 I love that part. I love burning, you know, Warner Discovery's money.

Speaker 1 But I think if I could go Galaxy Brain, what I think potentially this season might be, because I haven't watched ahead, is that

Speaker 1 weirdly, this this almost seems like meta commentary on which everything is on Nathan Fielder himself and a show like Nathan for you where it's like he basically breaks down this thing of like we can start saving lives if first officers are more willing to take control when they realize that to your point the more alpha senior person who is all bravado is about to steer them off a cliff and there's political implications there's social implications, but I think for the Nathan Fielder project, to me, that actually is his comedy.

Speaker 1 When you go back and you watch the best episodes of Nathan for You, you're always like, why did this person go along with Nathan?

Speaker 1 Why did they go along with this big, dumb plan, whether it's shit-flavored ice cream or rebates and all this shit? Why didn't somebody just take the control and be like, why are we doing this?

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I like that as an idea. I don't know if that's what the season will be about, but I do like Nathan kind of poking at this.

Speaker 1 When someone puts a camera on you or has some level of power or some level of fame over you, there is a level of you just shake your head and be like, all right, I guess I'm along for the ride.

Speaker 2 So I totally agree. I think the difference here and the further meta commentary, because there are always several layers, is that Nathan in this case is the one who looks foolish.

Speaker 2 I don't really have a question about why Moody would go along with this. You know, like it's, it's kind of no skin off his back.
Like, he's them building this airport.

Speaker 2 I mean, I would love to see if he had any questions because seemingly he did not. Clowns in his head, literally, we haven't talked about the clown.

Speaker 2 Just all vibes, you know, whatever, I'll do what this guy says. I'm probably getting paid.
Nathan is the one who shouldn't be doing this. And in this case, Nathan is the one.

Speaker 2 And the sort of meta commentary that I assume and hope will present itself over the course of the season is that Nathan is in his head. Nathan believes that he has to take the reins.

Speaker 2 He has spotted this serious problem

Speaker 2 and he has to make people take him seriously. And what's a great way to be taken seriously? Build

Speaker 2 a three warehouse long replica of an airport. This is the most serious rehearsal we've ever done.
Don't worry about the fact that it is completely unnecessary. Like the airport does

Speaker 2 nothing to advance the premise that at first officers could learn to harness their emotions and be more confident. And let's face it, this is something that could be accomplished in therapy.

Speaker 2 But because Nathan has identified the specificity of it, he wants to accomplish it with rehearsals. And this is his practice.
This is his science. So, like, I do like that aspect that

Speaker 2 because he's in his head about it and he wants to be taken seriously, he does this insane and unnecessary thing, which is what we saw unraveling in the first season, sort of.

Speaker 2 This one is starting at that level. And it's like starting at sort of life or death stakes.

Speaker 1 I mean, there was, there's even this moment where

Speaker 1 when he's on the bed with Moody,

Speaker 1 he does almost a very un-Nathan thing where it's like Moody is describing this very complex worry that he has that his Starbucks girlfriend is hitting on or is being hit on and is going to be taken away by or fall in love with one of her customers.

Speaker 1 And Nathan is being almost too mature in this moment. And he's just like, why, why would you worry about that? That does, that seems very, very weird.

Speaker 1 And the cringy part is like, if that is indeed his actual girlfriend, the very thing that Moody was scared of happening, you're just like, oh, this might actually be happening. And I do that.

Speaker 1 That's so interesting to me how it's like, I started feeling like in this episode, even the conversation that Nathan has with

Speaker 1 one of the fake pilots, where he's just like, wait. Did I actually say anything to you when I got in here? And the guy was like, no, you just kind of gave me some instructions and walked away.

Speaker 1 And you're like, I was like, Is everybody just Nathan Fielder? Is everybody just this awkward?

Speaker 1 And is society just built up of all these mini Nathans in their head trying to like rehearse or change things that are out of their control? And they're just like, You know what?

Speaker 1 I'm gonna just sit and not actually say hi to anyone.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, yeah, who among us hasn't tried to control a situation that is out of our control?

Speaker 2 But also, who among us hasn't regretted not trying harder to do something about a situation where we did have some control or we had more control than we realized. And I guess the

Speaker 2 idea here is that these first officers could be taught

Speaker 2 and to rehearse their emotions, to couple that with rehearsing their physicality and to pull back on the yoke when they feel like someone is telling them that something is out of their control, but they actually know that it's in their control.

Speaker 2 And as always, at least what we know from season one of the rehearsal, Nathan, the sort of character that he is on screen, is learning that lesson at the exact same time. And

Speaker 2 You know, he has this whole inner monologue going on and this kind of crisis of confidence confidence of I am a comedian, people see me as a comedian, which is obviously a bit of a farce as well, because he introduces that idea when he's listening to John G give a speech.

Speaker 2 And he's like, he's like,

Speaker 2 when approaching a serious man or when introducing a serious man to a comedy television show, Nathan says, in the most serious voice possible, as the most serious man, like, this is a serious man who is presenting this stuff to us, but he's having this crisis of confidence around, can I be taken seriously?

Speaker 2 Can I approach something seriously? I don't think I have the awkwardness that is often the through line of the characters and the people within Nathan Fielder's shows.

Speaker 2 But I know what it's like to feel like you're only valuable for your more clown-like qualities and that if you write a couple funny blogs, you can only write funny blogs forever.

Speaker 1 You're spitting. First of all, Jodi,

Speaker 1 you are not only one of the most talented people at the ringer, you're one of the most talented people I know. But Charles, I want, if we both, because I felt it too, like, you are spitting.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, everybody just sees me as Coke Baby Chuck the hater, and I'm more nuanced than that.

Speaker 2 All right. You are.
Dang.

Speaker 1 So, honestly, my last question for you, because you're cooking and I can't really top that. This is amazing.
Is

Speaker 1 there a possibility that season two of the rehearsal can surprise us in the same way that season one can because i remember the slow

Speaker 1 burn of season one of the rehearsal people being like what is this laughing but not knowing and then when it hits it's like Everybody in my life is like, yo, what the fuck is going on?

Speaker 1 I can't believe this. And I think the curse was even more exaggerated where it took until the last episode for people to be like, wait, what?

Speaker 1 Huh? Like, this was what I was watching? Do you think that Nathan Fielder can perform that magic trick one more time? Or are we too on to him and his little trickster awkward ways?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think the really positive outlook here is that he's already started us in a very different place. So, like, the idea that there could be

Speaker 2 another sort of big twist and the and the twist in season one sort of being that we go from from what we think is going to be a new rehearsal every week to

Speaker 2 you know the wild character of Angela Nathan grappling with fatherhood children going into slides as teenagers and coming out as six-year-olds 20 year olds dressed as babies so that child actors aren't harmed like the way that that season unraveled We're just already kind of in a different scenario.

Speaker 2 I mean, I think it's notable that this premiere actually started out not with rehearsals, but with recreations.

Speaker 2 Like we're already sort of upended in what to expect. And I definitely think that that can be accomplished by Nathan Fielder is to like expect the unexpected and you still won't.
get it.

Speaker 2 Like you, there's no way to guess,

Speaker 2 I feel like, what is going to happen next. And I also feel like the groundwork groundwork has really been laid, that the premise of the rehearsal and what a rehearsal is has changed.

Speaker 2 Because I really love how it was seated throughout the episode, that now the sort of average rehearsal that we were, the kinds of rehearsals we were dealing with in season one are just like a commonplace part of Nathan's life.

Speaker 2 The reveal that when he is talking to the United PR representative and you're like, this isn't going well. And then he gets up, goes down the hall, and you find out that it's a rehearsal.

Speaker 2 He's talking to one of his actors down the hall, but he cuts it off. It's not going well.
He has not perfected the rehearsal.

Speaker 2 He is not ready to make this call, but these rehearsals kind of don't matter to him anymore. He's moved on to bigger, better things.

Speaker 1 He,

Speaker 2 if he can get the confidence, is ready to save lives. Like he is ready to change the face of aviation as we know it.
And I think that starting on that level is,

Speaker 2 I don't, I certainly don't know where it goes next.

Speaker 1 Here's the thing.

Speaker 1 I believe in Nathan Fielder,

Speaker 1 but if I believe in anyone more, I believe as a first officer,

Speaker 1 you are the greatest pilot ever. I would never take over the controls because you're always going to land us where we need to go.

Speaker 2 Charles, you know that you're the captain. I'm just an extremely confident first officer.

Speaker 1 Ooh, yeah, you're just like. I've been through the fielder method.
You're like, he has crashed us so many times. I am not afraid to be like, hey, yo, relax.

Speaker 2 But, yo, no, but you know, if you forget my favorite joke, I'm definitely going to shout it out.

Speaker 1 Yo, Jody, thank you so much. Guys, we'll be here checking in on the rehearsal season two.
So, hop in the plane.

Speaker 1 We will try to get you there safely. And if we don't, well, you always have the memories.
So, thanks, everyone. We'll see you again soon.