Each co-pilot is coached by Fielder to have high standards. They need to look for real “star potential” or those who are the “best of the best.” It’s not a challenge for many. But for some, like a female pilot who gives everyone a golden ticket, it is. Fielder corrects her leniency and further defines his goal of identifying a Holy Grail methodology of rejection that will allow the singers to walk away happy.
Obsessed with collecting comparative data, he installs a ballot box for the rejectees to rate their judges and even puts himself back in the judging seat so he too can be rated. Fielder discovers that just one co-pilot, Mara D., consistently averages a nine or above on her surveys while he earns low scores. He must discover her dark magic!
After multiple rounds of observation and Fielder even adopting her signature moves of repeating “fantastic” or “beautiful” to the singers, he can’t match her high ratings. He even ridiculously brings back rejected Austin, a lace-vested singer who rated Fielder a three. Our man lays it out cold, telling Fielder that he has no aura and questions if it’s even possible to “control what your natural energy is.” Offended, Fielder rebuts, adamantly, that “every human quality can be learned, or at least emulated—it just takes time.” (And HBO money.)
Fielder then puts Mara and Jeff in the cockpit simulator and observes his first real co-pilot/pilot “on the job” interaction and summarily witnesses Jeff, the pilot who self owns that he’s been banned from every dating app, verbally sexually harass Mara about her romantic life with clueless abandon. A conflict avoider, Mara dodges and deflects like an avoidant pro, and her behavior triggers Nathan to spiral down a meta rabbit hole regarding his own recent capitulation.
Fielder’s desperate attempt to deconstruct these co-pilots triggers within him a PTSD digression that touches on two other chapters in his career. Fielder brings up the Summit Ice clothing brand that he created for a third-season episode of Nathan For You. He says the clothing that he’s gifting the co-pilots for judging continues to raise millions for Holocaust awareness and is his proudest achievement. But in 2023, Fielder realized that that single episode had gone missing from Paramount+. He emailed an “extremely cordial” query about why and the eventual reply was that it was taken down intentionally for “sensitivities” flagged by Paramount+ Germany. The service was uncomfortable with anything touching on antisemitism in the wake of the Israel/Hamas attacks, so the episode was taken out of rotation. Their actions then triggered all the other Paramount+ services in Europe to follow suit and that ideology of censorship spread to all the Paramount+ services around the globe. As Fielder explains, “We’ve been erased.”
Is this a cogent metaphor for how even small actions can have far reaching consequences, or is this just a personal grievance to Fielder? This guy knows how to hold his characters and audience in a space of constant discomfort. And tonight he unleashes that out of nowhere on his Faux Fielder self (Alexander Leiss, the actor who played him in season one) to dissect his memories of that correspondence with Paramount+. Then he goes into full rehearsal mode in set dressing his imagined approximation of the Paramount+ German home office—complete with a blonde, German-accented executive—so he can practice a confrontation about their overcompensating censorship while not compromising the chances of a renewal for The Curse.
And we’ve come full circle again with Fielder stealing focus from his initial intentions to bring The Rehearsal back to his own weaknesses. At one point, he observes, “Why do I expect them to get the hint when I didn’t say what I felt?” and the link between himself and those co-pilots who self-censor becomes even stronger. Is this brilliant base reduction of the problem to its core source, or is this narcissism given a budget?
Just when you think it’s the latter, Fielder turns the tables again by marching back to a judging desk when he admits that some people are born to be great performers but for the rest, it will always be a struggle. Nathan then proceeds to execute the performance of his life as he gives Sophia, a 15-year-old singer that he rejects, the pep talk of her young life. As if channeling a confident Nathan from another plane of existence, Fielder gives her compassionate, sincere and hopeful reason to keep going as a singer. Who is this Nathan and where has he been hiding? Then, he creeps out to the ballot box to find his rating is a six…or is that a nine?
Stray observations
- • Nathan gave us photographic proof that even in his twenties he looked like a sociopath in training.
- • Jeff the pilot says he has no idea why he’s been banned from every dating app, Instagram, and even new accounts using his mom’s email. I think he tells on himself when he says, “I don’t remember saying anything too offensive….”
- • I wonder if Jeff has ever noticed that he also buys his dress shirts two sizes too small?
- • When Nathan is observing Mara and Jeff in the cockpit simulator, he says he couldn’t tell if she was enjoying the pilot’s incessant, unprompted grilling of her romantic life. Hot tip: No, she did not. Every woman will recognize that she’s performing an internal primal scream like we all do when trapped by clueless men.
- • The imagined Paramount+ German security force is no joke, huh?
- • Summit Ice brand clothing still has a website, but it’s “down for maintenance.”
- • Actor Alexander Leiss played Nathan last season in “The Fielder Method.” (Check out his phone’s wallpaper photo.)
- • Nate’s Lizard Lounge is indeed a callback to the season-one episode “Apocalypto.”
