The Rehearsal takes on first-time parenting

As far as teasers go, you can’t beat a scene in which a baby gets swapped for another without their carer being any the wiser (as sweeping, really tense orchestral music builds and builds). Even if, after catching episode one, you’re armed with enough information to know that Nathan Fielder is likely orchestrating another “rehearsal” for someone eager to practice something within the safe confines of his show, the moment cannot help but feel somewhat off. It more than teases. It disturbs.

Actually, even when you find out what it is we’re rehearsing this time around, there’s yet again an unsavory aspect to the entire affair.

Fresh off his successful turn at helping out Kor last week, Fielder is now set on helping Angela with an ambitious milestone: having a kid. Not just having a kid but raising them. And in a way, what Fielder proposes to Angela does sound kind of instructive: Shouldn’t all would-be parents test out what it would mean to child-rear for a few weeks before eventually pulling the trigger on starting a family? Would having a few days with a crying baby make you rethink your choice? Would struggling with a toddler make you second guess your conviction of bringing another kid into this world?

Kudos to Angela for deciding to work through such questions in a sped-up “rehearsal” that will find her living in a large country house and taking care of a baby who will grow in quick succession until they’re 18 in the span of a few days. So far it’s all very straightforward and in keeping with the rhythms we witnessed in episode one: Here is yet another person who truly could use some coaching and who, it seems, will benefit from the guard rails Fielder and his crew will provide as they take part in this experiment. (Honestly, you have to be a very specific kind of person to agree to this, no?)

And even as Angela’s demands end up ballooning into implausible territory (she’s yet to find someone she’ll have a baby with, but she wants to practice what co-parenting will look like), The Rehearsal moves at a nice clip trying to keep up. Enter some dates where we watch maybe why Angela’s been struggling with such a proposition. As someone who grew up with Dismissed, ElimiDate, and Next, it will never not surprise me how folks—on camera!—interact on first dates. And while there’s plenty of cringe to go around, The Rehearsal skids right past it when it seems Angela’s met her match…until it’s clear that it’s no match after all. The entire date sequence-sleepover (the way Angela was not about to be hamstrung by something like production logistics, how Fielder got to witness in real time her date Robin’s living situation, and that roommate fight alone) took me back to early MTV reality-television days.

At a time when every reality TV contestant slash “cast member” feels camera-ready, in the sense that they are obviously already workshopping merch-ready catchphrases and viral-moments-in-the-making, there is something refreshing about this kind of unscripted chaos. It’s the kind that was rampant in the early days of so-called reality television—which, in fairness, The Rehearsal isn’t. But it’s also not not reality television. After all, isn’t this the most elemental version of reality television—of turning reality into television, the kind you can cast, produce, rehearse, and therefore improve with every iteration?

Except in hewing so close to “real life” there was always going to be a moment when The Rehearsal would rub up against a moment when its strictures would be tested. Which is perhaps what explains the way this week’s exercise so goes off the rails—or rather, how it so goes off script, with Fielder eventually deciding to join in and help Angela co-parent for the duration of her rehearsal. (See? I told you this was headed in a Synecdoche, New York direction last week!) I really did enjoy watching the awkward exchange between him and Angela:

“It’s gonna be fun,” Nathan says.

“It will be, yes,” Angela responds.

Never has a line been delivered with such earnest if indifferent insincerity. Needless to say, I cannot wait to see how this all turns out.

Stray observations

• Watching Fielder run up so many calls with parents to make sure he had consent over what was to take place during the rehearsal now that he’d become a co-parent made my head spin. So many logistical issues to work on! So many waivers and contracts and bureaucratic nightmares that we never get to see! It truly takes a village, which made me wonder why it is that Fielder was doing these calls and not some underling. But maybe it just speaks to how hands on the creator-director-host-producer is.
• I’m going to need a deep dive on the casting process for a show like this one. What does that even look like? And how on earth did casting director Simon Max Hill and his team so handily find characters that feel both unabashedly authentic and specific and yet seemingly pulled out of a Christopher Guest mockumentary? Hearing Angela say, earnestly, that she wanted to name her child “Adam” because “I knew a guy named Adam…and, uh, Adam is a strong name” or regale her date with a line like “I mean, I’m not saying that all extra-Biblical texts are bad…” are moments that would make me otherwise wince in a scripted show for they would feel a tad overdetermined, examples of character beats that are supposed to tell me exactly how to feel about Angela in the narrative. Only these are spontaneous actual real-life snippets of dialogue. A casting feat.
• “Sometimes I’m not sure why I make the choices I do.” Even when Fielder’s voiceover teeters on twee, it really captures what he’s trying to get at with this most absurd of premises. I thought the show would be taking a dark turn but maybe it’s going melancholic instead?