When you hear the phrase “observational comedy,” you probably think of 1990s comics, such as Jerry Seinfeld (“My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned 60 and that’s the law”). Maybe you’re a little more old-school and reach back to George Carlin (“A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it”) or even further back to Lenny Bruce (“The liberals can understand everything but people who don’t understand them”). But no matter the reference point, odds are recalling the observational greats keeps you firmly in the 20th century.
Fast-forward to 2025, the second season of Nathan Fielder’s HBO TV show, The Rehearsal, which just aired its season finale on May 26 on Crave in Canada. Fielder, who is Jewish and grew up in Vancouver, does not tell jokes like Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin or Lenny Bruce. There are no punchlines. His gags (pranks? stunts?) are slow-rolling and climactic in ways that leave audience members (read: me) gripping their gaping mouths in disbelief. But with this latest season of his show, best described as literary in its sociological and psychological genius, Fielder emerges as an unlikely and distinctly postmodern heir to the throne of observational comedy.
The show stars Fielder as a cartoonish version of his awkward self, barely able to interpret human emotions. It’s a character he’s honed since his days on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, when he created a recurring consumer-advocacy segment called “Nathan on Your Side,” which he spun out into Nathan For You, a Comedy Central show linking him with small business owners amenable to his outlandish publicity stunts.
Fielder later lept to HBO, which cut him a large cheque to do whatever he wanted for The Rehearsal, which, in season one, involved building hyper-specific, hilariously elaborate replica bars and apartments on Hollywood sound stages with the specific goal of helping everyday people (and himself) “rehearse” pivotal life moments before they happen. In that first season, which was wildly innovative but lacked clear direction, participants rehearsed difficult personal conversations and milestones in romantic relationships.
With season two, Fielder has perfected the concept. His singular focus is now on airplane crashes, and he spends the season’s six episodes helping pilots rehearse for big moments in an effort to help them confidently voice concerns in the cockpit. You see, Fielder believes he found a common denominator among plane crashes: a lack of communication between the pilot and copilot. The copilot, Fielder argues, is frequently unable to speak their mind or suggest solutions to the senior-ranked pilot for fear of being shot down or embarrassed, even when they are both literally about to die. Pilots, meanwhile, are liable to suffer from any number of psychological issues—anxiety, depression, loneliness—and are equally unable to find comfort in open conversation, for fear of losing their license. In the first two episodes, Fielder sources multiple transcripts of real-life conversations, tragically pulled from airplane black boxes post-crash, that compellingly corroborate this theory.
His solution? If only people could say exactly what was on their mind at any given moment, and if only the person hearing the critique was completely unemotional about it, then thousands of lives could be saved.
This is fertile ground for Fielder, who has spent his entire career crafting a character unable to read paralinguistic cues. He will often respond to comments with blank stares, furrowed brows and confused replies of “Oh, okay.” In turn, his conversation partners don’t know how to react to him, often resulting in awkward silence. Since the beginning, his character has, quietly, been borderline autistic—a theme that he finally addresses head-on in this latest season, as he gets tested for autism more than once.
The best part of any Nathan Fielder project is when he deadpans "oh, okay" after the guest says the most insane thing you've ever heard
— Mike Andronico (@MikeAndronico) July 23, 2022
But while the autism angle is the one that got the most attention, I found it more compelling to analyze Fielder’s unique approach to observational comedy. The poster shows him standing with his strapped-on front-facing laptop, which has become a trademark of sorts. At any given moment, he is in control of several cameras, dozens of actors and an untold number of crew members. He has a complete 360-degree vision of everything. Millions of data points to glean.
This is “observational comedy” taken to its technological extreme. He observes absolutely everything, unemotionally manipulating situations and pushing personal boundaries to elicit reactions. Nathan Fielder, like so many great Jewish comics before him, grounds his humour in social observation from the outside—a common denominator that launched a hundred Jewish careers. Fielder doesn’t fit in. He’s awkward, neurotic and analytical.
In short, he’s Jewish.
The concept feels especially relevant in the 2020s, with society increasingly reliant on machine-learning algorithms parsing big data for efficient solutions. Every month, it seems, some new headline pops up of a sociological study showing how younger generations are less likely to go out and socialize or maintain workplace relationships, and generally suffer from a widespread loneliness epidemic, in no small part due to smartphone addiction. It’s an exaggeration to claim Western society is losing the ability to effectively communicate in-person, but not by much.
As we trend in that direction, Fielder, grounded in his Jewish outsider heritage, enters the conversation, reminding us of the perils of miscommunication. He shows us the threats to public safety, the challenges young people are facing. And he shows us a clear-eyed solution: an inherent comfort of human interaction. A glance, a hug, a kiss, a conversation. He implores viewers, pilots and even a member of Congress to never ignore soft skills like empathy, trust and dialogue. And, on top of all that, he makes us laugh.
