Nathan Fielder, whether you consider him a genius or a sociopath, is a man who always commits to the bit. The question of whether the bit is always as humorous or thoughtful as he wants it to be is another one entirely, but there is something perpetually fascinating about seeing him spend days, months, and even now seemingly years setting something up. The creator of the series “Nathan for You,” “The Rehearsal,” and “The Curse,” Fielder has been increasingly expanding his aspirations for what this can look like. Where “Nathan for You” was about largely confined episodes with him offering “solutions” for a variety of struggling small businesses, the first season of “The Rehearsal” saw him focusing more on people by providing them with the opportunity to rehearse parts of their lives before they happened. This then became about Nathan himself going through a more lived-in extended rehearsal that felt like him launching into new, often potentially ethically fraught, territory for himself. However, this is nothing like what he’s now done with the show’s second season. 
Over the course of six episodes, all of which were provided for review though won’t be spoiled here even as the final one is the best of the bunch, Fielder takes on the timely question of commercial aviation disasters. Specifically, he reflects on how, in his mind, many of them could be avoided if the pilots were put through rehearsals that encouraged them to open up more to each other. This is established in a darkly comical yet quite eerie opening sequence where we see actors reenacting real recent crashes in a simulator and begin to understand how critical communication can be to averting disaster in these final moments. As the simulated fire consumes them, we see the bleakly comical image of Fielder staring directly through the front windows at what he has created. It is as if he is both the creator of these disasters and the only benevolent being who can stop them. This is all Fielder’s world, with him recreating an entire portion of an airport to better conduct these rehearsals and get into the very real issue of pilots not discussing their mental health for fear that they could be grounded for doing so. God is not coming to help anyone who gets caught up in it as, in this weird little world, Nathan is the only deity that matters (for better and for worse).
READ MORE: ‘The Rehearsal’ Season 2 Trailer: Nathan Fielder Returns To Solve Airline Safety On April 20
From there, he then expands outwards to try to convince people this is a serious proposal that could actually save lives just as he goes on various tangents along the way. Many of these prove to be a mixed bag of gags that never feel as funny or insightful as they need to be. Where the first season brought generous comparisons to the breathtaking yet shattering Charlie Kaufman film “Synecdoche, New York,” this one also feels like it owes a debt to “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” in terms of how a recreation of childhood is constructed while also drawing from a late-period Clint Eastwood film that won’t be given away here as it’s one of the more absurd extended jokes Fielder throws himself into. It’s in these stretches where you almost forget what the original conceit was, but that’s exactly what makes them so oddly interesting. The series is about the bizarre experience of seeing what weird connection he’ll make and how, to consistently haphazard results, he’ll try to fold them back together. Not everything works, but just enough does.
At the same time, Fielder is no Kaufman. He’s often more blunt in how he spells things out and is less willing to skewer himself, frequently turning the camera outward in a way that feels distancing. The moments where we see him poking fun at himself as well his own career, namely in one prolonged aside surrounding his communications with Paramount about both “Nathan for You” and “The Curse” that becomes about him making himself into an easy hero, is far more engaging than when he just puts other people in awkward situations. It’s not just the ethical questions that come with manipulating others, with Fielder potentially putting them in compromising and borderline unsafe positions, but the fact that it’s not nearly as interesting. Even worse, it’s oddly predictable.
We know that they will likely go along with what he wants them to, but we don’t get as full of an insight into their mental reasons for why. It’s in stretches like this that play out over the middle couple of episodes where the show becomes fixated on straining to make people uncomfortable and suffers as a result. It doesn’t feel as natural as much as it is the creator straining to instill the overarching experience with forced tension when the players are not nearly as uncomfortable as he seems to want them to be with what he’s doing. Thankfully, this all gets left behind when Fielder sets his sights on the sky and his own much more complicated personal place in it near the end. 
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What he specifically does will not be given away here, as to do so would be to rob the “The Rehearsal” of its best development, but it makes the entire experience worth it. That much of the buildup to this moment felt like it was wandering without a driving direction holding it together is entirely forgotten when we see Fielder reveal what it was that was on his mind all along. Just seeing him trace back years to learn what it was that he was doing in the background of all this is a trip as we witness him committing more fully than he ever has before to the bit.
Even as many of the middle episodes remain table-setting for this and aren’t quite as engaging on their own, the final reveal of it all is one of the best things Fielder has ever done. There is something terrifying about it when you realize what he’s doing, but it sees him proving his point: flying is only as safe as the flawed systems we lean on to hold it together. That Fielder gets as far as he does in piecing this all together is still more than a little ridiculous, but it’s also the most effectively audacious thing he’s ever accomplished. Let it never be said that he doesn’t see his ideas through the bitter end, no matter what it takes. [B-]
“The Rehearsal Season 2” premieres on HBO and Max on April 20.