One of the many confounding pleasures of The Rehearsal, the comedian Nathan Fielder’s elaborate social experiment/docu-reality series for HBO, is how often the show exposes its own illusions.
The central concept of the series is straightforward enough, if typically absurd: what if you could rehearse fraught conversations or situations in advance? How much could you control if you had every resource available to prepare? The show depicts both the tedious constructions of facsimile – building a replica bar, hiring actors, stress-testing potential conversations – and the unnerving, at times sublime suspension of disbelief.
