That’s part of the reason I found Nathan For You to be kind of hit-and-miss. I liked it better when the joke was on him (like his escape artist routine where he had to escape before exposing himself to a group of children) and less when the joke was on other people (like the woman who said she was raped by a ghost, or the bad Bill Gates impersonator).
I find the show incredibly distasteful because of the cruelty, but I haven’t seen a lot of it because I dislike it, so maybe I’m unfair.
Here is an article about what pilots (or at least one pilot) think of the show.
…I don’t think you can pigeonhole Fielder’s work into any particular genre. Except, as @steronz points out: as performance art. So if you are looking it as a comedy, or a bit like Borat, or as pure satire, or as a genuine critique on airline safety, then you are kinda missing the point.
Like you: I’ve only seen the final episodes of season one and two. Not because I don’t think the show is anything but brilliant. But because my anxiety levels simply can’t handle it. Fielder makes me uncomfortable.
But unlike you, I followed the discourse on Reddit and Twitter as each episode plays out. And with the Rehearsal, it really is the journey that matters. You are missing so much of the context. And without any of that context: if you just watch the finale, it’s really just Nathan Fielder flying a plane. Its like watching only the final scene in the Sixth Sense and going “so David Addison is dead. What is the point of this movie again?”
Fielder is an unreliable narrator. Maybe. Everything is staged. I think. Except for the parts that aren’t. Its a show built on layers, and every week you pull back just a little bit, and then you learn something that completely upends everything you thought you know, and as a viewer its like starting again.
Except…that’s what I think happens. Because I haven’t actually watched the show. I’ve just learned it through osmosis, the community experience of everyone else watching the show.
Which, in a roundabout way of looking at it, is kind of what Nathan Fielder does with the Rehearsal. I’m practicing watching the show by reading threads and blog posts and articles about the show. Maybe one day I’ll be strong enough to actually dive right in.
Or perhaps: I have actually watched the show. Which again is the kind of curveball that Fielder would throw at the end. And that’s what you watched: the curveball. The swerve. The twist.
And the twist only works if you read everything else leading up to the twist. If you haven’t: then all you’ve learned is that I’ve watched the show, which should be obvious because I’m talking about the show as if I’ve watched it. So it doesn’t appear to be a twist at all.
(Except…I haven’t actually watched the show. Just the season one and two finales. Honest. )
For those who don’t like The Rehearsal or Nathan For You, maybe you’ll enjoy one of his earlier shows.
Interesting. I generally dislike TV or art where unwitting subjects are made the butt of jokes or taken advantage of, but I felt like this show was a pretty mild and, at least for me, tolerable level of that kind of thing. Like, I don’t have the impression that anyone was deceived about the fact that they were going to be on an HBO produced piece of entertainment. Within that context, and presuming the appropriate paperwork, I’m much more willing to accept a bit of boundary-pushing around expectations.
I know on his Comedy Central show, participants knew they were going to be on TV, but were not told it was going to be a comedy show. His schtick seems to be punching down to me, making fun of vulnerable people to make his audience feel better about themselves. I don’t know if you read any of the articles I linked, but both authors talk about what they see as Fielder’s cruelty. If you google Nathan Fielder cruel, you find other articles on the topic.
I read them both. The one with the pilot was interesting - toward the end he was, politely, saying Fielder is full of crap for the same reasons I did. He seems to be complaining about communication without knowing how intensively we drill on that, and how important it is historically.
The guy also mentioned in another episode that Fielder was incredulous that pilots usually don’t know each other prior to flying together. Again, anyone with ten minutes of professional experience in aviation knows this is routine and not a problem. In fact, it’s a strength because it provides further impetus to create good procedures.
That’s a good point. I guess my criticism is that he’s not thoughtful, in the sense that he doesn’t care about the consequences of his words/actions. As a pilot, get ready for a lot of people at cocktail parties telling you that they saw this show on HBO and…
The New Yourker used the word arrogant to describe Fielder and that seems to fit.
I did. I think the Slate article doesn’t add much insight in that regard. The New Yorker article is maybe more interesting, but the author brings a lot of personal assumptions about the intent behind Fielder’s actions or interactions. And, much of their issue seems to be with Fiedler’s on-screen attitude- the only use of the word cruel by the author is their own interpretation of his “gaze” in one moment. I don’t buy the “cruel” label. Not every deceit or mis-direction is cruelty. And I don’t feel like the show punches down, because I don’t feel like it “punches” at all… at least not any more than any other reality show crafts an image of its participants for its own ends.
Also, there’s an implication (which, granted, might or might not be true for varying degrees of truth) that Fielder’s obsession with this idea of rehearsing is a symptom of undiagnosed autism. If true, and I believe it is, I think the New Yorker article misses the mark completely about the show. Granted, that article came out prior to season 2, where he addresses the possibility of being autistic directly, but, as someone on a journey around his own psychology, even after watching just one episode Fielder (and/or his character) and his approach to understanding human behavior resonated deeply.
YMMV of course.
Maybe. But also, maybe that process, and the assumption that it is flawless, leads to sub-optimal situations that are direct consequences of that process. Which doesn’t mean the process is wrong (maybe there’s no other good way to get the benefits without the associated drawbacks), but nor does it mean that observations about the flaws are inherently incorrect.
I’m not going to argue with people with actual experience in the field, but given the transcripts from crashes that were shared in the show, the question of communication in crisis moments seems like one that it’s reasonable to be critical of and examine. We don’t know if Fielder’s idea for improvement is the right one without more analysis and testing, but writing off his thesis because people in the field are inclined to be comfortable with the system they learned in is not in the best interest of safety. Or more generally, outsider analysis can be valuable because it shows you your blind spots.
No, he’s just plain wrong.
As the pilot in the Slate article said, Fielder was unaware that some of the accidents he highlighted were the very ones we focus on in training. That training is mandatory, it’s ongoing and its effectiveness is borne out by evidence. BTW: I never said it was flawless or beyond questioning. But this thread is further convincing me that Fielder doesn’t know what the hell he was talking about, comedy or not.
Came across a NYTimes article about Fielder and the FAA training (Gift link)
“The training is someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying ‘If you are a co-pilot and the pilot does something wrong, you need to speak up about it,’” he said. “That’s all. That’s the training.”
I haven’t read the article yet, but that’s complete horseshit. The module I teach on CRM goes two hours, is quite detailed, and is just one of many a professional will be put through. Fielder is even worse informed than I thought if he said something like that.
ETA: @Llama_Llogophile I feel like I’m antagonizing you or unintentionally questioning your expertise, which is really not my intent. So, apologies and deleting my response. Just adding that I am not intending to hold up Fielder as any expert or even accurate portrayer of the current state of aviation.
I have no doubt he does not know what he’s talking about and if he was just doing a comedy show, it wouldn’t matter, but my problem is that he seems to not be in on his own joke. I am completely over people who think they know more than the the experts because they’ve done their own research.
Not at all, and please don’t feel you need to delete anything. I think you’re giving him more leeway than he deserves, but that’s OK. I can take that point and there’s a part of me that wants to say comedy is usually fine. But he’s putting out some stupid information. And worse…
With his platform, he could be putting out some good information. If you asked me what we could do to improve safety… Everyone should wear a seatbelt when on airplanes, and not just for takeoff and landing. A few times a year people get bounced around by unexpected turbulence. It’s even killed some. Keep the seatbelt on. Go to the bathroom, get something from your luggage, but put the belt on again as soon as you sit down.
That would be a positive piece of advice, it would be easy and cost nothing. Might even save a few lives here and there. But no - he’s got to rail about problems that were mostly solved decades ago. It’s irresponsible.
I happened to see that interview, somehow.
I think in general, Fielder is about 50-60 years too late. The industry has known that effective communication is an issue since the 1960s.
The airline industry has been working on this for generations now and it is vastly better than it used to be, but there is no easy fix. You can give the pilots the tools to be good leaders and good followers but you can’t magically change someone’s personality, and if you get an overly assertive personality paired with an overly non-assertive one then it can cause problems in the right (wrong) circumstances.
He misses the point when he talks about the content of a CRM power point. The industry, as I’ve experienced it, has moved past that now. Where I work, effective communication and resource management are a part of everything we do. It’s not just a standalone course anymore. It’s assessed and debriefed in our simulator sessions and route checks, it forms a component of our annual “fleet refreshers”, we discuss various case studies at our annual emergency procedures training, and so on.
Personally I think CRM role-play / rehearsals are next to useless because it is not possible to pretend to be in a certain social situation when you are actually in a different social situation. One of my pet peeves at the moment is that my employer has included “bad pilot” scenarios in the simulator where the instructor sits in the seat, flies like shit, and expects you to enquire, advocate, and assert your way to a safe outcome. I hate that, I’m not good at it in a canned scenario. However, I have been in many real situations that have required these CRM techniques with no issues at all. In fact almost every day there will be a situation that requires one pilot to prompt the other. Little reminders, hints, suggestions, and questions are regularly exchanged between pilots.
Or, say, this:
I like the concepts he comes up with. They’re right up my alley. He is, however, such a void of personality and charisma that anything he’s in I find unwatchable.
Excellent post and it gets at what bothers me about Fielder. It’s one thing to make an absurdist show about airlines. But he clearly wants us to take what he has to say seriously and what he’s saying isn’t important enough to be taken seriously. It’s as if Andy Kaufman wasn’t in on his own bit. There’s an arrogance to Fielder that isn’t warranted given his abilities and that arrogance is the heart of his cruelty.
I’m actually willing to say this is Fielder simply being wrong. He’s had some experience in aviation, but it’s not his vocation. But he’s not a Professional. I think he absorbed the CRM stuff on a superficial basis and doesn’t realize how it’s woven into the field.
What’s irresponsible is him thinking he’s Moses down from the mountain telling us something we don’t know. And that scares people unnecessarily.