In cringe comedy ‘The Rehearsal,’ discomfort is the point
In “The Rehearsal,” the critically acclaimed 2022 comedy series from Canadian Nathan Fielder, the subjects aren’t being pranked exactly.
They apparently willingly signed up for Fielder’s social experiment, in which he helps ordinary people rehearse potentially difficult moments in their lives, but there’s a level of manipulation going on that belies the supposed benevolence of Fielder’s interventions.
“The Rehearsal” really falls into the “you have to see it to believe it” category.
For instance, in the first “rehearsal,” a man wants to confess to one of the members of his bar trivia team that he lied about having a master’s degree.
Fielder not only has the man rehearse the conversation over and over again with an actor playing his teammate in a meticulously detailed replica of the Brooklyn bar, he secretly digitally maps the man’s apartment and then builds a replica apartment in which he rehearses his own conversations with the man using a look-alike actor.
And, naturally, neither Fielder’s interactions with the subject nor the subject’s with his teammate go the same way in real life as in the rehearsals.
That’s even more true for the rehearsal that plays out over five of the series’ six episodes, in which a woman who wants to try out motherhood is set up in a house in rural Oregon with a series of child actors playing her “son” at various ages.
Fielder steps in to play father to the fake kids, a delusion that seems to have real consequences when Fielder and the woman fall out over religion, and one of the child actors develops an attachment to Fielder.
At points like that, it’s hard to call “The Rehearsal” a comedy but, given that it’s Fielder pulling the strings, the so-called “king of cringe,” the discomfort is undoubtedly the point.
A second season of “The Rehearsal” is reportedly in the works.
ALL EIGHT EPISODES OF “JURY DUTY” ARE ON PRIME VIDEO. ALL SIX EPISODES OF “THE REHEARSAL” ARE ON CRAVE.