Simulating Connection in Rehearsal

We can never really know what someone else is thinking; what we understand is always just a perception, flawed and easily twisted by circumstances and emotions. Watching Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal often feels like staying up late alone with your thoughts, obsessively replaying every unhinged moment and bad decision in your life, except with a twist—there’s a camera recording it all, forcing you to face those moments again and again. In theory, that sounds like a nightmare, but as a television show, The Rehearsal might be the best and most gripping work I’ve seen in years.

Nathan, his comedic public persona and his show in general are pretty weird in their premise: he helps people rehearse stressful conversations or life events by building elaborate, super-realistic sets and scenarios that simulate what’s coming, often down to the tiniest detail. But under all that absurdity lies a deeply moving look at anxiety and human vulnerability. Especially in Season 2, The Rehearsal reveals how grief and unspoken emotions—those feelings we rarely say out loud—play out in these rehearsed parallel universes: versions of reality where things happen differently, emotions are expressed, and confessions come out not directly, but through shadows and staged scenes.

In Episode 3 of Season 2, a pilot struggles with crippling anxiety. Unable to face his fears or talk about his trauma openly, his rehearsal becomes a shadowy stage where his inner battles are played out, broken up, and masked beneath layers of performance. His silence and nervous pacing say more than words ever could. Trauma isn’t always spoken; it’s filtered through protective scripts and half-truths. At the same time, Nathan wrestles with the controversy surrounding an episode of his old show, Nathan For You, showing mirrored patterns of avoiding reality through over-control. Instead of facing things head-on, both Nathan and his participants retreat into simulations, parallel worlds where they might be braver, more honest, or less broken.

What makes The Rehearsal so versatile is the way it captures this emotional indirectness: people expressing raw, complicated feelings without ever having a straightforward, honest conversation. The show doesn’t deliver emotional breakthroughs or clean catharsis. Instead, it reveals feelings obliquely, acted out through pre-written scripts and constructed sets. These rehearsals become a kind of indirect therapy or confessional, where the emotional truth isn’t spelled out but lingers in the atmosphere between the words.

I watch a lot of sci-fi, even bad sci-fi, but the idea of parallel universes has always fascinated me. I’m no physicist, but I often wonder: if I hadn’t said that, done this, or experienced that, where would I be now? Would I even be alive? Maybe not. The Rehearsal offers a glimpse of those endless possibilities: what might happen if things had gone differently, only without real consequences. It’s part thought experiment, part dark comedy, part satire, part documentary, and even a bit of sci-fi horror. All the smart genres.

At times, it feels like we’re watching parallel universes side by side—one where the subject goes back to their old life unchanged, and another, messier version full of what-ifs. In that second world, they say the things they never dared to say, face grief they never processed, and experience emotional release, even if it only happens inside the artificial rehearsal. We don’t know if these moments are “real” in the usual sense, but their emotional weight hits just as hard. Nathan’s approach to anxiety on the show is clinical but kind, and that contrast is what makes the show really interesting. Unlike typical cringe-comedy, where chaos rules, Nathan’s deadpan, hyper-controlled persona creates a weird kind of discomfort in everyone else. He seems aware of this and works hard to ease the awkwardness. This shows up in The Rehearsal’s obsessive detail, building entire bars, hiring actors to play family, and later, training to become a commercial pilot just to simulate flying a real plane.

This obsession with simulation mirrors how we all rehearse conversations in our heads, imagining outcomes or rewriting past moments. But The Rehearsal makes that private act visible, awkward, and often painfully funny. But the show never mocks people. Nathan keeps saying, “You’re not the joke. No one’s the joke. The situations are funny, but also interesting.” That insistence makes it clear the show isn’t about laughing at people, it’s about empathy for the anxious, uncomfortable ways we all try to connect. One of the coolest things about The Rehearsal is how it plays with multiple “Nathans.” There’s the real Nathan, the showrunner who stays elusive and guarded, and then “Other Nathan,” the anxious on-screen persona who tries to hack human interaction. Other Nathan isn’t just a character, he's a part of the show’s emotional core, a shield and a window into vulnerability. Watching him, we see a man expressing his fears through layers of artifice. That tension is where the show finds its power.

In Season 2’s finale, Nathan doesn’t rehearse a conversation; he rehearses flying a Boeing 737. After two years of training and getting his pilot's license, he flies the plane with a real co-pilot and actors in the cabin. It’s both absurd and triumphant. Nathan clears a psychological test (or maybe lies about the results), then takes off. The flight, dubbed “The Miracle over the Mojave,” ends with applause from the 'passengers' and concludes Nathan’s ultimate control fantasy. But he never answers the call with his brain scan results. He hits ignore, shrugging, choosing not to know. It’s a loaded moment, after two years of control and illusion, but still avoids something real. The performance, the rehearsal, is enough.

This paradox, trying to avoid pain through control but exposing vulnerability anyway, is what makes the show so heartbreaking. The rehearsals are scripted, emotions are planned, but cracks still show. Nathan’s fear leaks through the rehearsed words and silence between choices. At one point, a character asks, “Do you want to feel something real?” The answer: “Yeah.” Followed by, “That’s sad. You never will.” That captures the show’s core contradiction, a longing for real connection that can’t quite be reached, only simulated. Still, The Rehearsal raises serious ethical questions. In Season 2, the focus shifts from personal drama to professional goals, but Nathan still puts people, like his co-pilot Aaron, into high-stakes emotional situations under the guise of a documentary. Aaron clearly performs for the camera as much as Nathan does, but it’s unclear what anyone really gains besides footage. The stakes shift, but the manipulations remain.

Philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s idea of hyperreality helps explain what the show risks. In hyperreality, the line between real and fake collapses until the difference no longer matters. The Rehearsal builds this space so carefully that the people in it, including Nathan himself, seem unsure where performance ends and reality begins. The flight, the pilot’s anxiety, the brain scan, the ethics, they all fold into the same uncanny loop. Nathan’s dishonesty isn’t just a character quirk; it’s part of the show’s core.

We, the audience, get caught up in this blurry game of reality and performance, stuck between suspicion and fascination. When Nathan does show real remorse or insight, it’s fleeting, quickly overshadowed by the bigger rehearsal machine. But this ambiguity is also the show’s strength: it refuses neat conclusions. It forces us to sit with discomfort, uncertainty, and the limits of empathy. It’s a mirror for life in the social media age, where we all curate ourselves, perform for others, and struggle to know what’s real in a sea of simulations.

The final quiet moments, Nathan flying a plane but refusing to see his own mental health results, leave us unsettled. Did he learn anything? Did we? Or are we stuck watching rehearsal after rehearsal, circling the same emotional ground? Did this all happen in some other parallel rehearsal?

I don’t know, and honestly, my brain hurts, so I’ll leave it here.

The Rehearsal fascinates me because it dares to explore its own ethical gray areas and contradictions without resolving them. Those flaws actually give it depth by refusing easy catharsis or clear morals. If parallel universes exist, I'm sure every version of Nathan is running some similar version of the show, pushing the boundaries of their own subconscious. Perhaps the parallel universe is the rehearsal—just life played out again in different arrangements. Maybe that makes no sense. But sometimes, all we can do is swallow hard, nod, and say, “Okay. Okay. Got it. Oh. Okay. Okay. Okay.”