Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste
Last week, the big scuttlebutt swirling around The Rehearsal was that Wings Of Voice “contestant” and real musician Lana Love made it very clear to Variety that she didn’t appreciate being set up as a “lab rat” in one of Fielder’s complex social experiments. And this week, in the season’s penultimate episode, “Washington,” our host receives an implied diagnosis of autism. So yeah, there is a lot going on in Fielder Land at the moment.
This breezy installment picks up with Fielder taking point in the House Congressional subcommittee rehearsal room of his own making. As he always assumed, making any relevant change to aviation training means “all roads lead to Washington,” so he’s immersing himself into a fishbowl of Fielder Method faux congresspeople. His goal is to perfect making his case about how to save lives by identifying and solving the cockpit communication impasse between co-pilots and pilots. He’s also got John Goglia sitting shotgun providing instant feedback, along with all those extremely well-researched “congressional” actors picking him apart too.
Let’s just say Fielder is about as comfortable as pilot Colin at a mixer when it comes to conveying the nuance of his theory and call-to-action. But at least the guy knows he’s falling short and seems genuinely pained by Goglia’s frustration with his less than confident delivery and the congresspeople not taking him seriously.
When his complex video examples of Colin learning to be less Colin-y when he takes on the scripted “role” of a more confident Colin gets too convoluted even for a room of actors, Fielder decides to follow in the footsteps of his fellow clowns-turned-congressional testifiers (Seth Rogen, Jon Stewart, and Hasan Minhaj) and open his presentation with a killer joke. Of course, Fielder chooses one about publicly masturbating on a bus that I’d bet money was slipped to him by pilot Jeff. Watching it land like a lead balloon, and then watching him scramble to pressure the room to authentically laugh at it when he tries it again amply fills the cringe quota for this episode.
Mercifully, that path is left behind after Fielder’s proposed meeting with Louisiana Congressman Garret Graves is rejected for not being the “right fit” for the elected official. Worried his “wacky” persona is working against him, Fielder does what we all should never do: He googles himself. What comes up are pages of videos and images of embarrassing kindling for any Congressional aide researching Fielder for a potential meeting with their boss. And then Fielder finds his potential pivot in a stash of real articles written by autistic journalists about how profoundly they connect with The Rehearsal because Fielder’s methods have helped them navigate society’s confusing expectations for “normal” social interaction.
Baffled by that unintended outcome from his show, Fielder instead chooses to focus on senior aviation committee Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who is also a supporter of the autism caucus. If he can get Cohen to take him seriously because of their shared support of a serious cause (autism), then maybe he can exploit that to further his preferred serious cause (aviation safety).
Fielder then takes a field trip to meet Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, the founder of Center for Autism. She welcomes him into her office a bit starry-eyed, like she’s welcoming an autistic celeb into her bosom that is clueless about their own standing. In truth, Fielder getting shadow diagnosed as autistic by autistic critics, Dr. Granpeesheh, and a group of autistic kids he welcomes into his fake airport terminal so they can rehearse preparing for a flight is both uncomfortable and poignant. If Fielder’s comedy stylings via rehearsing have inadvertently done good for the autistic community by giving them a way to mainstream themselves into societal norms, that’s a pretty incredible outcome (intended or not).
All of this ends up prepping Fielder for his ultimate goal: a meeting with Cohen in Washington to lay out his aviation-communication theory and resolution to someone who can actually make it actionable with the FAA. He goes into the meeting cold and looks like he’s going to tank it. Fielder haltingly explains the pilot/co-pilot problem, but slowly gains momentum and confidence as he connects autistic masking with pilot masking. Fielder then snaps the seemingly disparate topics together when he shows Cohen recorded examples of real pilots using “scripts” before flights as a tool to break the ice, which improves cockpit communication in several rehearsal scenarios. Fielder triumphantly lands his theory that by purging “ego, fear, and judgement” in the cockpit, lives will be saved.
Unfortunately, Cohen gives him crickets in return. It’s absolutely gutting to watch Fielder’s slightly outside-the-box approach get summarily rejected when Cohen impassively says that airlines should be the ones to encourage better relationships, not Congress. If anything, his response to Fielder is proof that “ego, fear, and judgement” aren’t just problems for pilots, but toxic mindsets that have infected our leaders as well. The rage I felt watching him be summarily dismissed so rudely is the kind of perfect underdog turn that every storyteller hopes for when walking their audience into a finale.
Stray observations
- • In the scene where Fielder is on his laptop reviewing comedians testifying before Congress, he’s sitting at a desk inside a WB Studio building shop. I couldn’t stop laughing at the idea that Fielder took an office there so that he could invest all of this budget into his sets.
- • Can you imagine Warner Bros. Discovery’s D.C. lobbyists trying to set up genuine meetings for Fielder?
- • When Goglia infers Fielder spent his money on this endeavor, the speed in which the comedian countered, “Not my own money…” was perfection.
- • The Google image archive of Fielder at work is peak self-made misery.
- • Per a new banner, Fielder’s rehearsal “Houston” Airport Terminal has been renamed “Nathan’s Airport.”
- • Fielder musing about not wanting to be a punchline while he’s staring at the faux airport terminal punchline he got HBO to build is some Russian-doll level of comedy.
- • “Captain Allears” and “Captain Blunt”: the greatest icebreaker names of all time?
