‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2 Finale: Nathan Fielder Lands the Plane

All right, welcome to the Prestige TV podcast.

And if you're here, you must be fine.

I'm Charles Holmes of the Midnight Boy.

Boys, she's Jodi Walker of We're Obsessed, and we're back to discuss the season finale of the rehearsal season two: My Controls.

Jodi,

this fucking episode is nuts.

This episode is, um, we are going to talk about it.

It is emotional,

it is, it is expansive, it is ambitious, it is, it is thought-provoking.

But before all of that,

the head pilot that you've been this whole season, how are you doing?

I am

emotional.

I'm on edge.

I just, I spent this entire finale extremely on edge.

You have described it well.

I would add also, it's serious.

There certainly are a few laughs,

and I will get to them.

Nathan searching for a plane in plain graveyards really got me going good, as well as the final beat drop.

But it's a pretty serious episode.

I feel like every each episode of this very short six episode season has been kind of a different genre of television.

And we've definitely dabbled in absurdist comedy.

I would say this is sort of like absurdist drama.

The stakes were high.

My anxiety was high.

Nathan's maybe was.

I guess maybe we'll never know.

How are you feeling?

Like electric.

I'm vibrating because the question that I always had in the back of my mind for this, for this season of finale and just the season of TV in general, is that what I think the first season of the rehearsal did so well is that the season finale of that and the crux of

Nathan making this connection with this small boy, this actor child, and that scene of the

child calling him like dad and crying when he left was a moment where I was like, he's crossed over into something that is so emotionally raw and uncomfortable and to your point, dramatic.

It seems true.

And I would, I think that this season, I know this season was so much more

all over the place in good and bad ways.

And so kooky and just irreverent and absurd.

But I was waiting for that emotion.

Like, what's going to be that episode where I'm like, not only this is why he did the thing, but it kind of breaks my understanding of what reality TV is, the Nathan Fielder project.

Just what he thinks is important ambition on an ambitious scale.

And this episode did, like this episode did the thing where I was like, oh, this was

way more insane than the season one could ever be.

Like, like, could, and I didn't think it was possible.

But when I saw it was an hour-long episode, I was like, is he about to do the thing?

And he did it.

And the thing was hitting you with a two years earlier time card.

You know, like, I think that we have talked.

I know I've talked every episode because I can feel myself doing the exact same physical motion.

Every Every time I say this season, he's pulling out, like pulling, zooming out more and more and more.

And I think that last season's story was quite intimate, literally.

He was in a farmhouse with, you know, a fake partner and just a whole series of fake children.

This one from the very beginning has been a lot bigger.

It is a lot more of an intentional study of humanity, still through this very strange, very acute lens of pilots.

And at the end, I did really have some very specific feelings about pilots.

I'm sure that most viewers will.

And that will perhaps have repercussions throughout,

perhaps unintended repercussions throughout airline safety for the end of time.

Who could say?

But it was such a big, ambitious story to tell.

And it somehow still all ends kind of with the wings of voice, um, a singing reality television competition within a reality television show.

I, I really do marvel.

This is a

this is a gonna have to rewatch for me, but kind of scared to do it.

Yeah, rewatch.

I had the same thing where I was just like, after this episode, now I think about the season entirely differently and the things that I was catching or not catching.

But before we get too down that rabbit hole, I want to kind of go through the plot because there's so much, there's so much that happens in this in this season finale he learned to fly he learned to fly as we all spoilers he learned to fly we uh as you said we get a two-year flashback where nathan walks us through his plan to become a certified commercial pilot it takes nathan seven months and 120 flight hours to graduate from flight school We realize he's not a natural at this because a typical student can do it between 10 to 30 hours.

Nathan reconnects with John G and pitches him on his idea to fly a real 737 with real passengers at 25,000 feet and place cameras in the cockpit for the first time.

The way he does this is finding a legal loophole where paid actors are used as the passengers instead of paying customers.

Nathan embarks on finding a 737 by going to airplane graveyards, learning how to fly a big aircraft in a simulator and convincing 150 actors to be his first passengers.

When Nathan has to pass a medical exam to be clear to fly, he gets tripped up on a question that asks if there's a history of depression, anxiety, autism, et cetera.

Nathan takes an fMRI scan of his brain to help answer this question, but doesn't get the test back in time.

So he decides to fly anyway.

Nathan successfully flies to 737 along with Aaron, one of the judges from Wings of Voice, and Nathan leaves us with the ominous quote: No one is allowed in the cockpit if there's something wrong with them.

So if you're here, you must be fine.

With all that out of the way, Jodi,

take me through, because it was jolt, like it was a jolt for me.

Take me through when you finally got the

two years ago, because that was like, that was the moment where I was like, oh shit, it's about to hit shit's about to hit the fan.

Yeah, we talked about, I think, a couple of episodes ago, like how gratifying it feels to get like just ahead of a reveal.

And I think when it's Nathan Fielder, he is also mapping that for you.

He knows when you'll get to the reveal.

He knows if you'll get there a little bit before he actually reveals it.

But I think the second that two years earlier

time card comes up, you know, you know, this man is about to learn to fly a plane.

I have lingering questions that I will never get answers to about

how he did any, let alone all of this in

two to three years since season one one of the rehearsal, like how

loophole or not, he was able to fly, learn to fly a 737 as a particularly slow learner, identify a 737.

He could fly, put other people in a different plane that would be filming them and freaking out his co-pilot organize the wings of voice, a singing competition show that we know at least to a degree was real, find pilots, interview them, get them to participate in a sociological and anthropological experiment.

I just don't, that was my main takeaway is like, I do not understand how this is happening.

How the foresight, I mean, Charles, one of my weaknesses as a writer,

one of my general life weaknesses is organization.

It affects me as a writer when I am trying to write something particularly big and ambitious that I need to start far out ahead of time.

No matter what I do, I'm I'm always going to end up finishing it like in the last analysis.

I simply can't understand how he organized these thoughts.

And yet what I know about Nathan Fielder is that this is a concept, maybe not organized around air flight, but this sort of study of this.

thing in humanity of like what we do to maintain the feeling of feeling fine and the things we don't speak up about and how just one person speaking up can affect things much bigger than ourselves.

Like this is something he has been thinking about for a very long time.

If I may go on a tangent, I saw on

the rehearsal Reddit, someone had found

an interview he did, Fielder did with the AV Club in 2015, where he's talking to the journalist and the journalist's mom because the mom, the mom had been very outspoken.

They had the journalist John Teddy and his mom have a podcast together.

And the mom had been very outspoken about not liking Nathan for you.

This was not for her.

She couldn't understand Nathan's whole deal.

Is it really him?

Is he a character?

That classic question we're still asking.

And he basically tells her within the interview, what if there's no clear answer to that?

What if...

I'm just interested in human nature and the struggles of very minor situations.

And then he goes on to tell her, you know, the mortgage thing that happened in 2008 when the housing market collapsed?

I got really obsessed with it because it was kind of the first big recession of my lifetime.

And he basically tells her that he became obsessed with this idea that it all came down to these minor interactions that people would have with each other where someone would know something's wrong or unethical, but the other person just wouldn't want to speak up because the social environment wasn't conducive to that.

So all these terrible terrible things that happened, these big world events came down to basically two people in a room or a cockpit with one person being too uncomfortable to speak their mind.

2015, he said that.

So, I guess that's how we organized it by being

just like a true studier of human nature, but also by profession, a comedian.

And this is how it's come out.

I mean, it is

that is actually a fascinating quote because there was a moment in this episode where

Aaron, the pilot that was a judge who's flying with him, is almost like realizing how fucked up this situation is where he's just like, wait, but

you're the, you're in charge of this whole thing and you're the comedian and.

you're doing this, but you're also flying the plane.

But these are all, and he's like, you could see him in that moment being like, what did I sign up for?

And I had a similar kind of emotional thought process that you did where i was like

how was nathan able to create a show where so much of it is found in the edit where so much of it is him letting this one woman go on a tangent about how she has wet dreams about einstein and that's not something you can just like write like you can probably write a joke that gets close to that humor, but that is a very, that's a reality show moment where you're like, this is, this is just magic.

You find this person

and you just let them cook.

how does that exist

when he's like sitting down and he's like studying there was like

i was like wait is this real like this seems real this this seems like real footage he's actually flying these planes

i don't know if i could devote two years of my life to studying how to fly a 737 but also have that other side of my brain that is like kind of good in the gray and good in like letting spontaneity happen and chaos happen and not control it.

So there was like, there were two competing things where I'm like, this is still a very off-the-cuff show, but it was planned so perfectly.

Well, and then the third competing thing is the lens through which you tell that being Nathan and this character of Nathan.

And how does that, how is that balanced in this finale?

And, you know, we've been talking about it all season, kind of like, how is Nathan portraying himself to us?

Is it real?

Mothers have been worried about this since 2015.

We're still thinking about it now.

And when you get down to that moment in the cockpit that you're talking about with Aaron,

Nathan, the

creator, has put him in a situation where he is hopeful that they can portray on camera how a co-pilot might speak up when they're uncomfortable in a flight scenario.

He's also put him in a situation as Nathan, the character, where he might need to speak up about being uncomfortable with the character situation he's been put in, with the creative process he's been put in.

And he clearly is uncomfortable with it.

But the whole thing is about at what point does being uncomfortable become a scenario where things are not fine.

Because in this case, Aaron being uncomfortable with it, but pushing through kind of for the bit, like kind of for the comedy, for the creativity.

This is a guy we're told has interest in television production and wants to be a part of this.

It that still shows us something.

And yeah, this whole study, I mean, we'll be talking about it the whole way through, but this study of

what

of how many situations that we're put in where we're kind of like,

well, this will be fine because it's always fine.

Yeah.

And how we push forward in that and how that is just a part of human nature.

And really, what we're rehearsing in those moments over and over and over, each time we do that is perhaps not to speak up when the stakes are actually high and things won't be fine.

But we as humans and pilots have to

decide at what point, you know, it's situational.

It changes every time.

I mean, what's the act, what does he say to the actor who's just like, wait, so

all of them have said yes to getting on this plane.

And Nathan's just like, yeah, not one, not one person has questioned it.

And he's just like, he just shakes his head.

He's like, actors.

Wow.

Actors, that guy says.

Like, how does, how, and that's like, you know, Nathan has that storyline the whole way through, through all of his work.

Like, wow, won't, what won't an actor do?

That's like our, that's like our e-plot in this series, you know?

It's like this other thing that the actors are commenting on, too.

I mean, the thing, like the skeleton key for this episode for me, at first, it was jarring.

And I was like, wait, why is this in here?

Is that Nathan has, I think it's in the middle of the episode, a home video of him as a, as a child magician.

And he tells this story about basically people were like, we don't really believe you and the sleight of hand that you need as a magician because you don't move naturally.

You don't move like a magician.

They're basically saying, like, you're too weird for this.

We don't,

we're focusing on the wrong thing.

And I mean, being told you're too weird to be a magician is, it's a tough, that's tough to take on.

It's, I, it was a moment where I was like, oh, this is a skeleton key for just like the Nathan Fielder project of like, yeah, at a young age, people just being like,

magicians are weird, but you're taking this to another level, buddy.

And it was that moment where the magic trick of the Nathan, but the rehearsal in general, is

getting to the final episode of him, like this is him becoming like, oh, I'm showing you how this moment in my life as a child has almost shaped my comedy, shaped who I am.

And I'm going to show you what it takes on the grandest scale with an HBL budget to do a sleight of hand.

So by the time you get the two years earlier and you, you're like, oh, Nathan's going to learn how to fly a plane.

The whole time I'm having the feeling that that you were talking about of Aaron being like, all right, well, he's getting his pilot's license and that's okay, but it's going to stop at that.

Of course, John G is going to stop him.

Of course, he's not going to fly a 7.

Oh, he's flying a 737.

And then he's like, oh, he says something like, I am the least qualified or I am like the North American pilot with the least amount of hours logged who is basically licensed to fly a 737.

I'm like, somebody's going to stop him.

Somebody's going to stop him.

And you end up as the viewer feeling like the co-pilot, the first officer.

You end up feeling like the person being like, wait, is any, are any of the actors?

Is anyone is HBO?

Is it, I was waiting for like an HBO lawyer to just like walk on screen and being like,

we, we don't have insurance.

Like, we can't do this.

And that's the magic trick to me of like, oh, he is making, he is.

To your point, there is like an A, B, C, D, E plot, but it all funnels into like the

final reveal.

And

I left being amazed, but I also left being like,

I don't know how, ethically, I don't know how to feel about this.

Emotionally, I don't know how to feel about this.

This is fucking insane.

And it's so interesting, the different things we see in these different, sort of like obviously pivotal scenes, but how they play for each of us.

You know, we talked about the Aaron in the cockpit scene.

And for me, that magician, you know, sort of like side bit,

what it showed to me is we're hearing Nathan say,

I was told I was too weird to do this, that my movements were too strange.

And so I took on the behaviors of other people.

I studied other people.

And who's to say which teen Nathan we're seeing before he practiced or after he practiced?

But what I'm seeing in chubby-cheeked teen Nathan when he's doing his magician act is very skilled.

He seems charming.

The kids are laughing.

Like what we're seeing doesn't exactly show us what he's saying.

And that's often the case in the rehearsal.

The voiceover Nathan that we're hearing, who's sort of explaining the funny thing to us, doesn't always match what's being shown to us on screen.

And I think that plays throughout.

And it's like the lens through which we watch this and the lens through which we sort of decide where we land ethically.

And this episode certainly had at least two kind of zoom out moments of, okay, I know this one is actually going to freak you out.

Like, I know that much like in the Sully episode, when right as you're thinking it, Nathan is like, okay, things are about to get pretty weird.

In this episode, it starts with him talking very clearly, very directly, seeming more so as his like real creator, Nathan self, to the actors saying, you can opt out of this.

That will be no problem.

You are in no way like tied to getting on this plane with me, but I want to state very clearly that I will be flying it and you will be an actor on the plane and these will be your lines.

And we hear them, at least the ones we see and presumably anyone on it, consent to it.

There's also the moment before he's actually going to fly the plane when he kind of films himself in his hotel room and is like, okay, I want to be very clear about why I'm doing this.

And there are still the beats of humor, but it's a little more direct than we usually get because this is a little bit wilder of a stunt than dumb Starbucks.

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So can I ask you this because my writer brain on a structural level was also really amazed because i was like if you start the pilot of season two

with or the first episode of season two with this is a season about nathan fielder learning how to fly a plane i actually don't think it lands it's something that only like and this is so weird after

Wings of Voice, after the Sully episode, after all of this just like silly recreations of airports and everything,

you're just like, oh, you feel like you understand this show, where you're just like, oh, it's going to make me feel uncomfortable.

He's going to get a little bit wild and crazy with everything.

But to end, like, to end on this note,

there were even moments where, like, this might be a character, but we're like learning weirdly things about either real Nathan or at least Nathan, the character, where he's like, oh, yeah, well, um, I was flying in this plane, and then they show a crash that kills a pilot and a student.

And I'm like,

wait, wait, what?

What's happen?

And he still, he starts flying again.

He's like, yeah.

And then I moved to Nevada for a year.

And I was kind of worried because I've had some trouble.

10 years ago, I had some trouble with gambling.

And it's just like, once again, it's like the F plot.

You're like, I'm like, am I going to watch Nathan Fielder relapse into gambling a day?

Like, he's just like throwing all this shit.

And there's that, like, did you, during this episode, did you ever have a moment where you're kind of catching yourself being like, well, I believe that Nathan is learning how to fly a plane, but like,

is he actually worried about going to Las Vegas or is he trying to throw me off the scent?

Is John, like, what is, did you find yourself kind of like going ping pong being like, wait, what's real and what's not anymore?

I can't even tell the difference.

Of course, non-stop.

Because I mean, even, even John G entering back into the scene, all of a sudden you're like, oh man, last episode we were trying to go to Congress.

Like, remember that?

We're so far from that now.

And what we know

in knowing that Nathan spent two years learning how to fly a 737 and finding legal loopholes to get to that is like, I guess we were always far from Congress.

I guess that was never where this was going to end.

And it just keeps bringing me back to that meta idea of like,

at what point does Nathan Fielder know what he knows?

At what point did he come up with this concept?

And then this kind of becomes a real world issue, aviation safety on like a much more public level.

At what point does he decide he's going to learn how to fly a 737 and that becomes the ending of the series?

Simply the creative mapping of this show,

I kind of think like whether you're a huge fan of this kind of comedy, of this kind of absurdism or not, if you can take it on not being a fan, you have to marvel at the ambition

and at the ability to waffle back and forth between those things.

My instincts would be like, Nathan never had a gambling problem because that moment.

of him just sort of loitering near the tables was just so funny that I'm like, yeah, that's something you can write in as a joke and you don't have to prepare for it for two years.

But maybe it's real.

Things I've learned about Nathan in this season, possibly.

He was a Canadian idol junior producer.

He had a gambling problem and he was a teen magician.

Who among us?

I think the other thing that we kind of have to touch upon, I know we have to touch upon is

There's a moment where, and this was also, it also goes back to just the larger larger project when he has to take the medical exam.

This is something that, once again, this is a plot that's been running through the entire season.

And when he gets to the question, Nathan blows it up to such an absurd degree where you're just like, this is, once again, it's a great bit of comedy writing where you're just like, just check the box, man.

But he's just like, I could go to jail for five, prison for five years, blah, blah, blah.

And when we see the doctor and the doctor is essentially like, if you take this scan, we will know everything that's wrong with you.

We are going to know like autism, spectrum, all this shit.

And then the reveal that this is going to take months, actually.

And for us to push back all of this shit, him seeing, even at the end, seeing the cell phone, being like, hey, we have the information and then still never get it, giving it to you.

And then just being like, yeah.

And then I just started.

flying 737s in my in my free time.

There was this moment where it reminded me of the thing that you said

from that interview, which is like Nathan is so good at like just luxuriating in the gray, where this was never really a season of TV about whether Nathan Fielder was autistic or not.

It was never a season about like airline pilots.

It was never really about any of this.

It was like.

How comfortable are you guys with me giving no answers?

With like this being just,

hey, we watched the biggest HBO budget blown up to to the max.

Bye, guys.

And then, if you're not comfortable with it, what do you have to say about it?

Like, to me, that really is the through line: is

the theme of this, and it makes sense because it's transportation-related, like, the theme of the series is see something, say something.

That the scene that really stuck out to me in his sort of discovery of this

is the scenes of him in the Uber with all of his drivers texting, actually scrolling through Instagram reels.

We are put in these scenarios daily

where we're put at risk or we see someone else put at risk, but it's also kind of just like something that happens.

And that's what we're learning about this cockpit scenario is,

yeah, it seems kind of crazy that people up there together wouldn't know each other that it is in fact sort of encouraged for head pilots to have this like really authoritarian essence about them it is encouraged maybe for co-pilots to demur to that but that is actually

fine, fine, fine, fine, fine until it's not.

And how do we draw that line?

And

for Nathan Fielder to lead us to that, which is a very like common situation, that is something that you could feel in your relationships.

That's something you could feel in an Uber.

That's something you could feel at work.

The creative decision to bring an audience there by way of aviation safety and by way of him learning to fly a 737

and putting himself in that seat as the least experienced 737 pilot in all of of North America is frankly just unhinged.

And I tip my hat.

It's unhinged.

And there was a moment when they land, and all the actors are clapping.

And it was a voiceover where Nathan essentially was like, you know, as long as you get the people there safely,

how much of this matters?

And that was something where it was like that sentiment, it's not exactly what he said, but that sentiment of

as a society, as humans, these actors

almost didn't care.

Like, the actors are just like, hey, we're clapping and you should, you should fly more 737s.

This was your first flight.

It's like, as long as everything is okay, as long as your Uber driver gets you there safely, your mind just kind of blinks out the danger of like, we never think about it.

We're just like, I actually should have said something about you scrolling on your phone while you're driving me.

I actually should have probably said, Aaron should have probably said something about,

hey, man, this seems a little odd.

Are we sure we want to do this?

But we just kind of put ourselves in like precarious, dangerous situations.

And as long as you're alive at the end of it, your brain does do something where it's just like, yeah, that's just normal.

That's just how we are.

And it's,

I guess what it left me with was this odd feeling of, if this is all, if a majority of this is true, and if Nathan Fielder actually did learn how to fly a plane in two years, and those were real 150 actors, I did still feel a little creepy being like a little just like

about like, these are people's lives.

These are people's lives for what is essentially a bit.

Like this is a very, this is a bit backed by millions of dollars of HBO's money.

But I'm like, if this is all true, there were moments where I was like, that might actually be a very real person who crashed in that plane and died.

And this is an emotional moment.

And it's played for a beat.

And then we're on to the next.

And I was like,

yut, I was like, what the

i didn't

i have a lot of envy for nathan fielder as an artist but there this gave me the same kind of feeling i had at the end of season one i was like i don't know if this is too far am i being a prude about it

I don't think you're being a prude, but I think you're sort of, again, describing something that we experience in real life that then Nathan Fielder is just kind of putting on screen.

Like, yes, it is a little different to physically

watch a plane fall out of the sky while Nathan uses it as an example of him sort of realizing the stakes and the risks of flying.

And that's maybe why it's taking him so long to learn how to land this plane, longer than any other student at the flight school, so long that they have to bring in different teachers to, as he says, try to diagnose his issue.

But, like,

we experience this way of only learning a lesson through watching things not be fine for someone else all the time.

We hear about someone getting in a bad accident in an Uber because their Uber driver was texting.

And then that reminds us to see something and say something, to look out for ourselves, to look out for other people.

And

I would, I think that a lot of the point of Nathan Fielder's work in this sort of area of

two people in a cockpit, one of them is unable to speak up because of the social circumstance that they found themselves in, and that actually leads to the loss of 200 plus lives is not an uncommon scenario.

It is very niche in aviation safety.

It is very niche in this world.

Catastrophic flight events do not happen all the time,

but the broader idea of this thing does happen all the time.

I think we talked about that at the end of the last episode, of our last episode, that like things really do often come down to two people's ability to understand one another,

have basic human empathy and be honest with one another.

And then, this, and then a lot of the back half of this season has been about

sort of the discrepancy in the way that people see that, in the way that our brains are organized, in the way that our chemistry is organized, and that for a lot of neurodivergent people watching this show, this really speaks to a somewhat personal experience that Nathan often voices when he's like,

and we all feel like this.

We all feel like, and it's like, well, everyone doesn't feel like anything, but getting to have that viewpoint of a lot of neurodivergent people,

and including in our inbox, have spoken to this feeling of that Nathan is clearly having of, well, why wouldn't you just say something?

Like there, what, what social constructs are keeping you to this?

And there are people who feel those social constructs.

There are people who don't.

There are people in the gray area in the middle.

And our inability to sort of vacillate and

move between the idea that everyone's not just like us

often lands us in a cockpit of our own making.

Can I actually,

because you brought up that we got like a lot of really, really good emails about the nerd from the neurodiversion community, some people who have autism.

And I want to read, do you mind if I read one right now, maybe two, about exactly the thing that you're saying?

Let me see.

This email is from Dan.

And it kind of speaks to what you were talking about.

He goes, The rehearsal has been life-changing for me when season one came out.

I just started exploring the possibility that I might be neurodiverse.

Watching Nathan rehearse social situations, I turned to my wife of 10 years, who is very much neurotypical and struggled to explain what my diagnosis means, and said, this is what I want.

She stared at me, completely bewildered as to why anyone would see rehearsals as a good thing, as it gives her great anxiety.

And we got another really good email.

We had a bunch of them were amazing.

We can't read them all.

This comes from Reese, and

it was titled The Rehearsal as an Autistic Fan.

I'm a longtime fan of Nathan Fielder's work, and I often direct non-autistic people to the rehearsal as an illustration of how my brain works.

The flowcharts are the best visual metaphor I've seen anywhere.

I got emotional when the latest episode addressed autism directly, as it was my favorite show validating and acknowledging my experience of the world.

I didn't feel like autistic people were the butt of the joke.

Rather, I felt like I was in on the joke.

And what I liked, I liked all those emails, but something that was interesting is that when Nathan and Aaron are in the air, you start to see the whole premise that we've been building towards this rehearsal just not work, where he's like, well, you're going to be first officer blunt.

And you can just see like so many times Nathan is failing

to get the truth out of his first officer.

He's failing to get the truth out of Aaron.

And I'm just like, this rehearsal is not working.

It is not working.

And then there's this light bulb moment where Aaron is just like, actually,

something went wrong with the takeoff.

And even Nathan is like, oh, and I actually thought, I was like, that might be a real moment where he's just like, wait, did I fuck up the takeoff?

And I was like, it was illuminating to me where it was like, oh, part of this project does feel like

what is the gray area of,

to your point,

people feel like this all the time.

It's not just.

the neurodiverse community, like neurotypical people as well, do hide information, do

have to play masking, Do have to do all of these things.

And it was this moment where I was like, oh, this pilot didn't want either to hurt Nathan Fielder's feelings.

He wants to be in show business.

So he looks at him as a mentor.

He's trying to do his best to be like, I don't want to crash this plane, but I also don't want to piss off Nathan Fielder.

And I was just like, oh, is this kind of Fielder's way of being like,

you don't have to be

neurodiverse or autistic to go through these same things and for it to be a life and death struggle.

And I thought that that was actually a very nuanced way to land the plane, no pun intended.

Quite nuanced because yes, Nathan Fielder and his writer's room make the bold decision to set up in six episodes that they are going to solve aviation safety and very much not do that.

Like Nathan Fielder learns how to fly a 737.

He presents that as opposed to going to Congress and convincing them of something, he will create this other proof by putting cameras in a 737, flying it, creating a representation of what it is like for a co-pilot not to speak up.

And he kind of does all those things.

But can you imagine like any decision makers watching this episode or even just the scenes from the cockpit and being like, yes, we will

instill the Officer Blunt and Officer All Ears into aviation training.

Like that is still kind of the leading theory that Nathan is going with.

But I thought like a really interesting point within his process of becoming a pilot and I love the expediency with which he starts referring to himself as a pilot and referring to pilots as us.

Like, well, as a pilot, I do know this.

When he finds out that the like the 737 training, like the kind of last step of his training before he could technically get into the cockpit of a 737 is all simulator based, he's in there with his teacher.

And he said he's talking about that kind of the biggest adjustment for any pilot is learning how to work with another person because these big jets are meant to be flown, designed to be flown by two people.

And that's like a big change to go from flying your own plane to working with a colleague, obviously.

And he asked the teacher, what if there's a disagreement between the captain and the first officer?

Is there a setting in the simulator to practice for that?

And he says, no, that's just personalities.

And like, that's the thesis.

That's what we're dealing with here is how do you adjust for personalities?

How do you create simulations for personalities?

How do you train for this?

And you can really imagine in that giant, amazing piece of technology, that simulator that they're in, that they could train for personalities and that maybe.

Nathan is on to something and that him having the cameras in that cockpit and recreating all of these situations where something did go wrong and where personalities not

existing together well did lead to fatality.

Sure, that could happen.

We're not there yet at the end of episode six.

We haven't solved for that just yet.

But it was interesting.

To quote Nathan, I'm not sure what it was, but it was interesting.

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Do you feel like the

show ends on

like a positive beat or a nihilistic beat?

Where it was like, it was funny where it was like the bow tie is him essentially being like, well, if you're in the cockpit, you're fine.

Because he has that scene essentially where he's like Googling.

what other people have done who might be autistic neurodiverse when they're taking this test.

And you see a lot of the pilots be like, why would you tell the truth?

Why would you tell the truth?

And you're also, that's also kind of

balanced with what we realized in the beginning of the season and what a lot of pilots wrote into us is like the personality of the person who was in that first chair.

The almost the doggedness, the arrogance.

We had those pilots who walked in to the bar, to the lizard lounge, and everything, the co-pilots, everything changed.

The energy changes.

And you're almost, I think we pointed out through the season,

is that actually Nathan Fielder?

Is Nathan Fielder, Nathan Fielder, the pilot of this entire project of his?

Where, like, even if he does not have the same type of like arrogant swagger, I do think that there is an arrogance to his comedy and not in a bad way.

There is almost a like, I'm going to push this as far as possible until somebody tells me to stop.

And because y'all haven't rehearsed, no one's gonna tell me to stop.

And there is just a moment of his character where I was just like, oh, it was always gonna end this way.

It was always gonna end with, like you were saying, Nathan now referring to himself as a pilot.

Now I'm a pilot.

Now I don't like now actually,

whatever I got back from the test, whether this is a real test that is scientifically backed or some bullshit, I don't know.

Seemed a little weird to me.

But like Nathan being like, fuck it, who needs a test?

Like when you're in the like, we're fine.

I'm a pilot.

I was like, that is a very dark note.

It felt dark to me, but funny.

And I loved it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, to

actually talk to you about how it ended for me on a theoretical level, we'll get back to.

I will say I was watching this finale after kind of a tough day.

And when sweet Isabella, the winner of Wings of Voice, broke out into evanescence bring me to life

i had one of the more therapeutic laughs of my life it was so funny like that beat drop of her absolutely just taking it away on bring me to life on this tiny platform inside a recreation of the houston airport with Nathan over in the corner doing his devil in the spotlight thing.

Mary Dee doing the little clap.

Mary D is back, happy to be there, thrilled to be co-piloting.

Nathan's over in the corner looking at a transcript of a voicemail that may tell him whether he could technically be a pilot or not, which he has presented as a thing that doesn't matter.

Like, as a thing that he can do this, he can get up in this cockpit and potentially present a situation that would suggest he's not cut out for it because this isn't his career.

He doesn't have the things to lose that real pilots have to lose.

And maybe that creates sort of like a different way to study this thing.

But once he becomes a pilot, once he becomes one of us, it changes what fine means for him.

And I think like that's what I walked out of this finale,

you know, understanding from this season is that fine is ultimately very subjective.

And if you are comfortable being like, Uber drivers have texted before, they'll text again.

And it's always been fine.

And I'm not going to disrupt this social fabric to kind of save myself from something that might happen is the same as Nathan receiving the affirmation of the collapse of 150 paid actors to tell him that he's fine.

He doesn't need a test to tell him he's fine.

These other people have told him he's fine.

And maybe some people need a test.

It's different for everyone.

I thought that was really sweet too, what the,

what the doctor, I guess, psychiatrist told him when Nathan is clearly very concerned about taking this test.

He's like, I ultimately, I tell people that this test is ultimately good

because no matter what, because it teaches you something about your truest self and you will learn something from this.

And I guess that's.

what any of these endeavors are for us is that to learn something true about yourself is a gift and it might affect what you think is fine,

but that's fine too.

And Nathan Fielder has made a whole insane television show about that.

I mean, that was so beautifully put.

And I think that kind of brings me to maybe my final question.

I'm going to be a little hyperbolic because I'm such a,

I'm on the train for anything that Nathan Fielder wants to do.

Where does this rank in Nathan Fielder's kind of filmography for you?

And then in the larger context of HBO shows, reality shows?

Because for Nathan Fielder, I think this might, these two seasons of the rehearsal together, I think are the best things that he's ever done.

I think it is, it is, as, as to your point, like as someone who like

writer who loves studying like structure and how you put together something and how you plan something, I was almost like taken aback and jealous that someone could plan this much

and still make the magic trick work.

So on that level, I think it is the best thing that Nathan Fielder has ever done.

I don't actually know where to situate it in the larger TV conversation because I'm like,

I don't even know if I call this T, like, it's like performance art at this point.

And I know that's a very like cliche thing to say, but I'm like, what other show on TV can I like actually really

is it competing with?

You know what I mean?

I mean, I guess I'd put it up there with like season 10 of Vanderpump Rules in terms of rocking my world

with, you know, the Scandoval.

But like, it doesn't, if we, you know, if we're, if we're comparing it to reality TV and the study of human behavior, but it, it's so hard to compare it to anything else.

It's hard to even compare it to anything else that Nathan Fielder has done because you're right, like the magic trick of being able to do this.

This amount of like a

brain simulation in six episodes, like this amount of making me think about the world, but also making me laugh and also making me like unhinge my jaw with like just absolute confusion and absurdity.

It doesn't, it's so honestly like kind of dissimilar from Nathan for you, from the curse, from other things he's done.

It is, I think that it season two can be compared to season one.

And for me,

I think season two pulls off the magic trick a little bit more, but so much of that is because we have the foundation of season one.

And

for as strange and disparate as the sort of thematic topics of these seasons are,

they are chapters in a book.

And we've talked, you know, I think we talked about this from the first episode.

Like I'm very eager for that book to continue and for that camera to keep pulling out and out and out and showing us one more weird thing and the mechanics of of how it works.

And if that weird thing is just Nathan Fielder's brain, then that works too.

Yeah, it's hard to compare, but

I bet I'd rank it at the top.

I would say to your point,

hey, this is one of my, just one of the best and greatest things I've ever just seen witness on TV.

I think it's hard for me to really just like contextualize it because you put it perfectly.

This just seems like chapter two.

And my brain goes to like, what is chapter three?

Because obviously the story for Nathan is just getting bigger.

Like what I thought the rehearsal was going into the first episode of season two is not what I think of the rehearsal now and what the project is.

If I think rehearsal season one was like

Nathan probing something very, very personal about himself and where he ended up about fatherhood and family.

And it was very much like what resonated with me is I'm like, oh, this is a man kind of grappling with, can he be

a type of nucleus of a family?

Can he, can he show these emotions and rehearse his way through something that is a lot easier for other people?

And then season two is like, I'm going to show you how this is not just a me problem.

This is actually something that is, can be not only a worldwide problem, but is the cause of deaths.

And I'm going to show that by devoting two or three years of my life to learning how to fly a 737.

For season three,

what, like, what's the next step?

How does the Russian nets dollar, like, what's the bigger doll?

What is the bigger thing to tackle?

Like,

that's, like, is he going to go to fucking space, like, fast and furious?

Like, what is, what is he going to do?

I mean, I think we've talked a lot about the sort of like reality TV construct of this.

And

if season one was kind of about the characters and season two was kind of about making something in the edit, then perhaps season three would be about producing something like this.

And not, I don't know, I'm not a genius.

So not in the way of just

showing how, you know, this sausage gets made.

That is not something Nathan Fielder is ever going to do.

But in some way, showing how the study of human behavior makes its way to screen, I think would be something that I'm interested in.

In terms of how he might do that,

truly going to space is not off of the list.

Anything the Fast and the Furious franchise has done, Nathan Fielder might do as well.

I mean, that is actually, now that I'm thinking about it, because there was, once again, when we're talking, like the Z plot of this fucking finale and this whole, like, this whole season was kind of the HBO paramount of it all.

Like he's constantly ribbing like, well, HBO says that I can do this as long as I make it entertaining.

And that's actually, that's such a like an apt observation of, is the only way for this show to get bigger is to get more meta.

And the thing that I was talking about earlier of like, when does an HBO lawyer step in?

When does David Zasloff step in?

When does anybody step in and be like, well,

what's happening?

What's this show?

Like, that is actually where I'm just like, oh, this show just has to get more meta,

which I would say for most shows, I'd be like, please don't.

I'm like fucking done with your, y'all's meta bullshit.

But for Nathan Fielder, I'm like, sign me fucking, like, sign me up, sign me up.

And I, yeah.

And is it, do we have an Easter egg in this episode when he's searching for his perfect 737?

And I would say, in like, other than the evanescence, the sort of funniest montage of the finale, and maybe sort of the only distinctly funny montage of the finale is when he is looking, going to meet different 737 brokers who are all just like different variations of Robert Durst from the Jinx, just like deeply weird old men.

And he's at an absolutely decrepit looking plane that a decrepit looking man is trying to convince him is totally fine.

You don't need that button that's fallen off.

He's like, should that burden us be there?

And the guy's like, yeah, no, that's, he's like, there's another one over there.

It's, uh, it's totally fine.

But you're, you're, it is clear that this is, these are not reliable narrators.

And Nathan says, when you're in HBO show with money to spend, the challenge of deciphering the truth can be difficult.

You sort of just have to look at someone and decide whether to take them at their word or not.

That feels like the thesis of a season three to me.

Well, we have to accrue enough power and accrue enough money.

Does the truth become different?

Does the truth become just as subjective as fine as subjective?

That is the perfect pivot to our final email of this season.

John asks: One thing I find hard with Nathan Fielder is how much what he says is actually what is happening.

For example, even these pilots, we have to take on his word.

These are actual pilots, but they could be actors.

I find the show very amusing, but still can't always get around the idea that in some of this, we as the audience are being misled in service of the joke.

And that's fine, it's funny, but wondering your thoughts.

Also, maybe this is some sort of meta-commentary on reality TV, which does the same thing a lot of the time.

So, obviously, we've been talking about this the entire season, but to you, Jodi,

does the reality of this matter?

Does the truth of this matter?

Or is in service of the joke,

do you kind of have to like live in the gray area?

And like, I've decided for me,

I do think that Nathan flew this plane.

I do think that he actually was going to

these

737 graveyards.

I do believe that like nathan is just a wild enough boy to just be like now flying 737s him and tom he's probably best friends with tom cruise

to me actually it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if like a lot of our uh listeners are saying like it doesn't matter to me if uh nathan fielder is autistic or not it doesn't matter to me uh if he really has his pilot's license because At the end of the day, the magic trick was so amazing and I had such a good time.

I was just like, I wanted to see done again.

Yeah, I think like through the lens that you just mentioned of

is Nathan Fielder on the autism spectrum or not?

Does it matter if he is or is not?

If a lot of the neurodivergent community has spoken up and said, this series means something to me.

I feel represented by this series in some way, while at the same time, it's fucking hilarious.

It's like, we're not dealing in like, you know,

sappy representation matters territory.

We're talking about being seen and laughing.

Like, how often do you get to do those things together?

I'll tell you a place you get to do it a lot, reality TV.

Like, and, and so, and I think that that's where I come down is, yes, as long as it is being done ethically, which I don't have a lot of qualms about.

I, I think we're in okay hands here.

Um,

if the story is being told

and the story is important,

the reality doesn't matter that much.

As usual, the perception matters.

And if you are enabled within that perception to, like we've mentioned a ton of times, be waffling back and forth between what's real, what's fake, did he really learn to fly the plane?

Did he really go to Ecuador?

Like, what's and that still fascinates you and it fascinates you on a story level and on a creativity level.

That's such a tightrope to walk.

And I really feel like Nathan Fielder is doing it.

I think John, who wrote us the email, feels like Nathan Fielder is doing it.

He's like, I'm fascinated by this.

It's also very funny.

You know, it's not,

I think about it, but I'm not worried about it.

And it, I still come out at the end of this being like, I have thought some interesting thoughts.

I have laughed and I have marveled at the ambition of this project.

And like, what more can you hope for in a television show or a movie?

Oh, I, that is, that is the perfect place to end.

I could not have said it better myself.

I want to say really quick, guys.

Thank you to everyone who has listened this season.

Thank you for everyone who has written in.

It's like Jodi and I were reading y'all's emails.

They were amazing.

They like, they warmed our hearts.

Sometimes you were mad at us.

Sometimes you were on our side.

It didn't matter.

We just liked that you guys were

keeping us company.

I want to say thank you to everybody who's made this possible.

Shout out CT coming in on Fridays, hustling, always like just being like the nicest guy in the room.

Thank you to Kai Grady for stepping in.

Thank you to Justin Sales.

Without him, none of this prestige stuff would be possible.

And the most important thank you in the room.

We do a lot of podcasts here at The Ringer.

Jodi is one of the hardest workers here.

She is constantly like doing amazing stuff.

But for like Jodi,

this has been the honor of my career.

You are one of the best podcasters.

You are one of like the smartest

just people on culture.

And like just, you like blew my mind every day.

Like, thank you so much.

You are the, like a co-pilot could not be more proud of.

of uh his head pilot.

You are, the controls are yours.

Charles, you absolute prince, you absolute sweetheart.

How could I have possibly done any of those things without you creating an environment as our head captain for me to do so?

Thank you so much.

The honor of a lifetime.

Hell yeah.

Guys, the controls are now yours.

We'll see you soon.

All right.

Wait, also, wait, Donnie, Donnie, oh my gosh.

And like, guys, I'm an asshole like Nathan fucking Fielder, the most important person.

Yo, Donnie, an angel.

Here, it's Friday.

It's

Donnie.

I'm so sorry.

No, no, no, Donnie, like, once again, Donnie is the greatest guy at the thronger.

I'm so sorry.

It's, it's almost Memorial Day.

It's been, it's been long for us, but like, shout out, Donnie, as well.

Shout out, you, you all.

We'll see you soon.