The Stinger Conversation is a series in which the site's co-creators (Sam and Aero) discuss a series of topics that are often the center of internet discourse. This conversation has been edited to be more concise.
Aero: Welcome to the Stinger Conversations! This is the 2nd edition of this new format – we hope that you are enjoying it so far. This week we’re going to be talking about Nathan Fielder.
Nathan Fielder got his start in comedy television. He had a segment on a show called This Hour Has 22 Minutes, which is like The Daily Show in Canada. He worked with Jon Benjamin on his show before landing his own show: Nathan For You. He recently created and stars in The Rehearsal on HBO. This week, we’re going to discuss what makes his work so special and why some people are so divisive about it. His comedy really isn’t for everyone, but nobody’s comedy can appeal to everyone. I think it should be pointed out that if you think his comedy is exploitative or cruel, that’s clearly not the intent.
A profiler for New York magazine reached out to Fielder’s clients from Nathan For You to ask about their experience, and Fielder apparently seemed genuinely upset when he found out that some people had felt exploited or made a fool of in the show. We personally don’t think that what he does is malicious but it is worth looking into his approach to making comedy. We’ve both been really enjoying The Rehearsal so far, and Sam, you just watched the new episode, right?
Sam: Yes, and my two cents on this debate about Fielder’s comedy can be simplified as: I think Nathan fielder is a genius. I don’t usually idolize a lot of people, but what he’s doing with comedy is so innovative. It’s definitely something we need right now in this world where comedy is used as a coping mechanism. I feel like his newest series is super healing to watch, and his work is just great, to sum it up.
Aero: I’ve really liked The Rehearsal so far. I’ve only seen two episodes and the third one just came out as we’re recording this, but I think that you’re right. It is really innovative. There are a few people, his contemporaries, who are doing similar things, but those people are not doing it the same way he does. He essentially created his own genre of what is now called “reality comedy”. People like Sacha Baron-Cohen seem to want to humiliate people, and that’s not what Nathan does on his show. The Rehearsal just seems so… earnest.
Sam: The thing about his comedy is that it comes from a place of good intention. Even in his Nathan For You days, his intention wasn’t to humiliate people. He literally says in the opening sequence that he wants to help small businesses thrive. So you know from the beginning that he wants to help people. Some people interpret his show like he’s trying to hurt people, but it’s just that he comes up with methods that aren’t traditional or might seem a little outlandish. That’s where people start drawing the line where they’re kind of like, “Oh, this is not what we’re used to seeing so we’re going to be apprehensive about it.” Even though, deep down, Nathan’s just trying to help.
Aero: As people, we often instinctively think that anything we’re not familiar with is a threat. Yeah, his methods are unorthodox when he’s helping them; like, poo-flavored frozen yogurt isn’t a thing people make, so when people immediately see that, they get tunnel vision and think he’s trying to just prank these businesses. But in reality, you can see on the show that it worked. I think the means justify the ends in this case because the shop gets publicity, and it genuinely helped them even before the show came out.
Sam: The whole shtick of Nathan seeming – and obviously, on the show he amps it up – where he seems like he doesn’t understand why his suggestions might be seen as crude, but I think at the core, the show just wants to provide visibility for small business. The nature of the medium, of television, is to capture people’s attention and give visibility to something. So, even though it seems like Nathan might be sabotaging businesses on the show, he ultimately wants to give them more publicity just by including them in this show.
Aero: He understands that his show is a platform where people can grow more aware of the small businesses around them. It’s really clear because Brian Wolfe, the private investigator, had a show for a bit. The ghost realtor, Sue Stanford, also pitched a show that got a pilot. So, Nathan’s providing a platform for these people that they otherwise would not have gotten. I don’t get why people on the internet are so pissed about his methods when none of them are harmed. They’re all only gaining from this experience, even though it didn’t seem like it when they were doing the episode.
Sam: Another reason why people might feel like these people involved could feel exploited is that a lot of them seem like they don’t know what’s happening. But I do think another point to address is how the show as a medium factors into this because these people, for the most part, know that they’re being filmed, so they know that this is probably not real. When you see something being filmed, you never assume that the end result is going to be 100% what is happening in reality. That’s the assumption you make when you see that you’re being filmed or when you see something else is being filmed because you know that the edited result will be different. Even if they didn’t have any idea of what exactly was going on, they still knew that this was something that was going to be put out there on the Internet.
Aero: It’s not like the people didn’t know they were going to be on the show. Robbin Stone, the star, the scene stealer, of the second Rehearsal episode was approached by a producer and asked if he wanted to be on a TV show. Naturally, like everyone who’s on a TV show, he had to sign a release form, so he knew and consented to the camerapeople, to the producers, and to Nathan himself to show what he’s like. These people on the show know they’re being filmed when they said and did those things. It’s not like it’s going to be a huge shock to them when they see the final edit because they knew they were going to be filmed hitting a bong or admitting that they don’t drive with a license plate, you know?
Sam: People can also say no to being involved in this. If someone’s really uncomfortable, they can absolutely say no, so it’s not like they’re being forced into this. To be fair, a lot of them feel pressured to say yes because of the camera. That’s a huge part of the show: people are agreeing to do these things because they want to be on TV. The whole purpose of this show is to satirize the extent of what people do for the sake of the camera.
Aero: People are only blasting Nathan For You and The Rehearsal as reality shows because they can see the “exploitation” happening. Other reality shows do the exact same thing, but they hide it from people. They usually don’t include when the producer or host is asking open-ended questions to the people of most other shows. It’s very clear that Nathan’s shows are a commentary on how evil reality shows are.
And I think it is a big conversation about how people just want to be on TV, no matter what they’re doing. That’s why not many people said no to an opportunity like Nathan For You or The Rehearsal. But again, in the end, it’s not like they had a huge loss because of it. Kor (the Brooklyn teacher Fielder helped in The Rehearsal’s pilot) eventually confessed to Tricia that he’d been lying, and it proved that the rehearsals helped him.
Sam: Another thing I wanted to talk about was the difference between The Rehearsal and Nathan For You, which is that The Rehearsal is so much more emotionally raw, whereas Nathan For You was trying to be more comedic. Both of these approaches work so well because Nathan For You is able to satirize how people act on camera, but The Rehearsal brings into question why people would care about acting a certain way in front of a camera. The Rehearsal brings in so many scenarios of Nathan helping people in real-life situations that show the kind of people who want to be on camera or who are willing to be on camera. It’s interesting to go deeper into the causes of the behavior that’s satirized in the first show he made.
Aero: The way Nathan Fielder disarms his guests is also different between The Rehearsal and Nathan For You, where he obviously played a character who’s stilted, stiff, and shy. In The Rehearsal, he seems more human, more grounded; he’s also part of a rehearsal at this point and can’t put up the character 24/7 so he feels more like a real person and more human. That’s how people open up to him more.
Sam: A huge part of why Nathan Fielder is able to pull off this kind of comedy is… first of all: his delivery is always fantastic. He’s the master of deadpan. Second of all, it just goes back to the point that he’s doing this from a place of care and that his priority isn’t making fun of specific people – his priority above anything else is to help people, even if it’s unconventional, even if he may have accidentally misunderstood situations.
In the newest episode, he realizes that there’s an emotional component to what he’s been doing, and this sort of awareness is super new and really interesting.
Aero: What makes The Rehearsal so special is that he has an emotional connection to his rehearsal subject now. You can make that up, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s made-up. He seems so earnest in wanting a family and wanting to know how to raise a child and build a home. That could, in the end, be a manipulation tactic and we could all be wrong and we could take this back as the series finale comes out. But for now, I think it’s genuine in that not only does he want to help people, but he also wants to help himself. That’s what makes it so different, and that’s why it kind of bothers me that people are like, “Oh, Nathan is manipulating guests on his show.” But in this case, that would mean he would have to be manipulating himself as well.
Sam: So many people are just uncomfortable with the fact that he approaches things differently and that he’s able to admit things that we don’t want to. Honestly, given the chance, I think we would all want the chance to feel how it is to start a family before actually doing it. But a lot of us might be scared to actually admit that. Nobody – very few people – would honestly admit that they’re scared to start a family and want to simulate it first to prepare because some people would think that’s a weird or outlandish idea even though a lot of us would secretly want that.
The fact that Nathan is able to confront it head-on is what disturbs a lot of people. He’s able to do these ideas or explores these emotions that everybody experiences, but nobody wants to step out and say that they’re feeling this way.
Aero: What makes him a special person is that he has an acute understanding of why people act a certain way or how funny people can be even without much prompting. He’s observant in the way that John Wilson is observant. They can both see like weird things that people do and capture them on camera. That doesn’t mean they’re manipulative – they just know how to lead people into interacting with them and acting like themselves in front of the camera. So many people usually act fake or act really technical or professional in front of a camera when they don’t need to be.
Sam: I saw a lot of people on the Nathan For You and How To With John Wilson Reddits ask if these shows are really documentaries, and some people pointed out that even documentaries are edited. Documentaries about nature are even edited to follow a narrative about an animal’s lifespan or whatnot. So, we see media through this super filtered, artificial lens that John Wilson and Nathan Fielder are able to avoid as they present their material honestly or in a way that’s true to their nature and doesn’t make us feel blindsided.
Aero: Nathan’s shows make us question what artifice is because we do see more than we usually would in a reality TV show, but also Nathan’s work makes us question what is scripted and what is planned. We know the Daniel scene, where the guy admits to drinking his grandson’s pee, is real because Nathan actually breaks, but other than that, he never breaks. He keeps a straight face so we never know what’s real or not. He makes us question what is real, what is the narrative, and how that fits in the final edit.
Sam: Nathan Fielder approaches comedy in such an innovative way, and some people misunderstand his intentions. People just need to evaluate what he’s trying to do, and once they take that into consideration, they can understand where he’s coming from and what the whole purpose of his comedy is.
Aero: I’m excited that there’s a possibility that the Nathan Fielder discourse has been orchestrated by Nathan himself. There’s a non-zero chance that this could be true.
Sam: Yeah, I guess that would be one of the greatest pranks any comedian has ever pulled on the internet.