DAVE DAVIES, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. HBO's "The Rehearsal," in which Nathan Fielder stages elaborate recreations or anticipations of events using a mix of actors and real people, just started its second season and is available to stream on Max. Our TV critic, David Bianculli, says it's even more surprising, disturbing and fascinating than Season 1. Here's his review.
DAVID BIANCULLI, BYLINE: Viewers of the first season of "The Rehearsal" already know what a weird, unpredictable, often unsettling show Nathan Fielder's HBO series is. His concept is to prepare people for some upcoming life event - a marriage proposal, a financial confrontation with a relative, even the prospect of parenthood - by allowing them to rehearse it in advance and play out the various possibilities. He trains actors to observe and approximate the other people involved, then throws his subjects into an improvised conversation. And because he digs deeply into HBO's budget, like John Oliver on "Last Week Tonight," Nathan stages and photographs these rehearsals on elaborately detailed replicas of actual locations, from bars to bedrooms.
BIANCULLI: Last season, some of these social experiments were extremely funny and astoundingly original. At the same time, though, sometimes they came with an occasional, unavoidable cringe factor, as when Nathan would insert himself into the narratives and his subjects' lives and get way too close for comfort. Part of the delight of watching "The Rehearsal" when it premiered in 2022 was having no idea what to expect from week to week, from the format or from Nathan. So I approach Season 2 with a bit of wariness. How in the world could Nathan Fielder, with a new batch of episodes about rehearsals and recreations, recreate the show's original mystery and unpredictability? Well, he does, and he does so right from the start. I'll discuss only the opening installment of this new season of "The Rehearsal" because the show's twists and turns are a crucial part of the plot, and also most of the fun. But because it's established right in the opening scene, it's fair to reveal what differentiates the new season of this quirky comedy series. This time, the rehearsal is no laughing matter, at least not at the outset. The first subject of this new season is deadly serious. It's about airline crashes and some of their possible contributing factors.
Using transcripts from cockpit recorders and elaborately constructed flight simulators, Nathan and his team restage the last moments of several commercial airline disasters. His thesis is that a lack of chemistry and personal communication in the cockpit between the pilot and the first officer may have played a significant role. And when his research uncovers the findings of a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board who suggested that advanced role-play between pilots may help that interaction and prevent crashes, Nathan goes to him and tries to be taken seriously, even though by profession he's a comedian.
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NATHAN FIELDER: So I've been going through thousands of pages of these documents, and I noticed that one of your recommendations in the aftermath of this crash was to teach first officers to assertively voice their concerns. You recommended role-playing exercises...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Right.
FIELDER: ...Should be done, and that they should be required by the FAA.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Right.
FIELDER: But the FAA...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Said no.
FIELDER: Why?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I don't know. For whatever reason, they're just not going there, and we couldn't push them to go there. And we tried formally, we tried informally.
FIELDER: And this was 15 years ago. And since this point, nothing's been done.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And it might take another 15. Who knows, right? Getting Congress to do anything? Difficult.
FIELDER: I do have some experience with creating elaborate role-playing scenarios.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: OK.
BIANCULLI: Before long, Nathan is on the case. He enlists as his initial test subject a young first officer who lives with his mother and has a somewhat shaky relationship with his girlfriend. Nathan tries to shadow the junior pilot, going through his everyday routine. But when Nathan and his camera crew track him through the Houston airport, they're denied access to the exclusive pilot's lounge. That's when Nathan places a phone call, and halfway through the call, walks into an adjacent office to deliver a message in person.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: You said this is for HBO?
FIELDER: HBO, yeah. And the focus of the project is aviation safety. So, you know, we're really trying to make a somewhat sincere effort to explore and develop new ways to improve pilot communication in the cockpit. So that's the main thrust of the project.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: OK, OK. Could you tell me more about the project? You said somewhat sincere?
FIELDER: Well, I only say somewhat because it's a television show, so we're also trying to make it entertaining. So there's dual goals, I guess.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: OK. And you said it's a documentary?
FIELDER: Yeah. I mean, I would use that term loosely, but yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Like, when you say that it is hybrid, you mean - I'm just trying to get a sense of the tone and what the end product is going to look like. We're happy to work with media projects. We just want to make sure...
FIELDER: I think that's good. Yeah, I think I'm going to call them for real now.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: OK.
FIELDER: But thank you, yeah, great.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Cool, cool, cool.
BIANCULLI: Think of how meta that is. Before Nathan places a call to United Airlines, he stages his own rehearsal with a hired actor to ad-lib her responses to his request. And then when he calls the real United Airlines representative and she doesn't play ball, Nathan uses HBO's money to build on a vast sound stage, a replica of a long stretch of the Houston airport terminal, including the pilot's lounge, as described by the first officer. An actor is hired to play the senior pilot. And we, along with Nathan, get to observe how they interact before a flight, or more precisely, how they don't. I encourage you to take a ride with Season 2 of "The Rehearsal." It's like a magical mystery tour because you aren't given any clues about its final destination. But I can promise you this, "The Rehearsal" doesn't crash at the end. It sticks the landing.
DAVIES: David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the second season of HBO's "The Rehearsal," now streaming on Max. On Tomorrow's show, we hear from Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ryan Coogler. His films include both "Black Panther" movies and "Creed." His latest, "Sinners," was No. 1 at the box office this weekend and received rave reviews. It's a vampire thriller about twins, both played by Michael B. Jordan, opening a juke joint in Jim Crow Mississippi. I hope you can join us.
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DAVIES: Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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