The Rehearsal”>
Nathan Fielder in The Rehearsal. Photograph by John P. Johnson/HBO
The first season of Nathan Fielder’s HBO series The Rehearsal was a reality TV experiment that saw the comedian construct elaborate stagings of specific scenarios unwitting participants were afraid of facing, in order for them to feel better prepared. The first trailer for the show’s second season debuted on April 3, and through a hilarious cosmic twist, it appears to be focused on one of the crises du jour: plane crashes, and how rehearsals may somehow help prevent them.
I’m not quite sure what theory could look like in practice: the trailer shows Fielder talking to an important-sounding former employee at the FAA, who pitched the agency on integrating rehersals to improve airline safety. That was rejected, but Fielder swoops in to pick up the slack. What follows in the brief clip are shots of pilots in increasingly ridiculous scenarios (fake congressional hearings, synchronized dining outside of Panda Express, etc). Fielder himself gets in on the weird fun to, suggesting that the hilarious show’s emotional core of deep loneliness will remain.
