The Rehearsal is an HBO documentary series in which the comedian Nathan Fielder guides strangers through an overwhelming domestic problem. The first episode opens with a man on a trivia team who wants to confess he lied for a decade about having a masters degree. Fielder has him practise the admission on an actor cast to look – and sound – like the team member he’s most intimidated by. To make it even more realistic, it all happens in a replica of the bar he plans to meet her in.
Every possible outcome of their discussion is imagined and accounted for. In times of unknown global turbulence, people have tended to surrender to the madness of ectoplasm, seances or, 100 years later, QAnon. But in allowing people to rehearse their own lives, Fielder guides vulnerable souls to emotional breakthrough via the pursuit of order. Using his blank presence he is, like a psychiatrist, their “tabula rasa” – a clean slate on to which these people can project.
