I’m going to do a couple of posts over the next week or two (or three) looking at some of my favorite things from the last year. It was, overall, a nice year. At least compared to the last couple of them. I started going out more, I did a lot of traveling. And yet, somehow, I actively watched more television and movies than I can recall. I say actively because 2020-2021 was all about watching whatever helped passed the days away. This year I went back to being selective. That’s a nice feeling.
My favorite shows of the year will probably show up on plenty of “Best of” lists, but I’ll also mention I didn’t get to everything I wanted to watch. I didn’t catch the last season of Atlanta, for instance. That has been one of my favorite shows of the last few years and I want to prepare myself for its final season. I also have been meaning to start Reservation Dogs, but just haven’t yet. I will! That’s a big goal for the rest of 2022. But besides those, I loved Severance. It’s incredible. The first season of Mo was so well done and I really, really hope there’s a second season because…that ending! I talked to Mo Amer recently for The Hollywood Reporter. Give it a read. I also loved Winning Time and Minx. Both shows hit the sweet spot for me, but something I appreciated about them, especially Minx, is they had this sort of gritty, early-1980s dirtbag feel. You saw boobs and…dick! And in Minx it was especially gratuitous given that it’s a show about a men’s porn mag, but it was done with humor and in somewhat good taste. The second season of The Righteous Gemstones was spectacular. Everybody in the main cast is a national treasure. I also loved The Bear because of course I did. How could I not?
But if I had to pick one show that stuck out to me this year, the one I’m still thinking about, it’s The Rehearsal. Nathan Fielder is a genius. I feel OK saying that.
I was late to Fielder. I watched Nathan for You earlier this year and enjoyed it. Fielder’s whole schtick is weirdly familiar to me since I also went to Hebrew school. But he plays it so well that you can’t tell if he’s fucking with us like Andy Kaufman or playing an amped up (or down) version of himself like Larry David. At some points, I felt like I was watching the Canadian cousin of a Sacha Baron Cohen character because he’s so in the character and the people he ropes into his world seem genuinely unaware they’re being messed with. I know some viewers feel like his humor can be cruel, but I don’t necessarily see it that way. At least I didn’t with Nathan for You. He doesn’t seem like he’s picking on people to me. With The Rehearsal, I could understand it a bit more. But then I really started to think about it and that’s where I got obsessed.
I had to think and think and think about Nathan Fielder and The Rehearsal. The show sent me down a little “What does it all mean” spiral and that’s honestly refreshing given the fact that a big piece of the debate was whether or not it was “real.” I saw people actually getting upset about the show. Some were saying they were mad because he was screwing with the lives of the people involved, especially the children that are part of the show. And then there was the other half complaining about how it was staged. I really tried to think of it from both sides, and eventually, I ended up in the middle. If it is real and he’s truly messing with people, maybe some of those people deserve to be messed with, save for the kids. And if it’s staged, then it’s basically a reality television show as an art project. Because you know most “reality television” is staged, right?
In the end, I have no idea what it is. And in this era where we can find out anything about everything just by Googling for an answer on our phones, that’s what’s most fascinating about The Rehearsal. I’m sure the answer is as simple as “It’s real” or “Everybody signed NDAs,” but in the end, I watched the show and I was left thinking about how maybe we’re all just living through one big Rehearsal, and we’re all part of a bigger take on the Fielder Method and there’s something very unsettling about that.