Nathan For You

[hogarth]

Has anyone else been watching the show “Nathan For You”?

I’ve been finding it a bit hit-or-miss, but there have been some parts I thought were hilarious. (Not unlike “Tim & Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job”, unsurprisingly.)

[ul][li]The poo-flavoured yogurt.[/li][li]The hidden gasoline rebate box on the top of a mountain, where you have to solve a series of riddles to find it.[/li][li]The “Claw of Shame”, where he had to escape from a pair of handcuffs within 90 seconds to avoid exposing himself to an audience of children.[/ul][/li]
His deadpan acting is awesome! Are there any other fans out there?

[GrandWino]

Yeah, I loved this show when it first aired - are they re-airing it or are you catching it on-demand?

Nathan Fielder is hilarious. I saw him perform in Chicago as part of the Jon Benjamin Has a Tour live show (based on the short-lived JB Has a Van show on Comedy Central) and he was great.

The show is hard to watch sometimes due to the amount of uncomfortable cringe involved, but it’s really really funny.

I found that gas rebate episode quite touching actually, the way these strangers that were hell-bent on getting the rebate bonded through their time together. It was strangely moving.

[hogarth]

@Bob Ducca

Yeah, I loved this show when it first aired - are they re-airing it or are you catching it on-demand?

I’m watching it in the middle of a time warp known as “Canada”.

@Bob Ducca

I found that gas rebate episode quite touching actually, the way these strangers that were hell-bent on getting the rebate bonded through their time together. It was strangely moving.

I thought it was heart-warming too, although it’s never clear how much is “real” and how much is staged. (I hope, for the love of God, that the possibility of exposing his junk to a group of kids was staged, for instance.) One of the biggest laughs in that episode was when he was talking to the gas bar owner about drinking pee and the guy said “Yeah, of course – you drink a little kid’s pee if you get scared” as if that was the most natural thing in the world. WTF??

[colander]

Nathan Fielder is a genius and I love his show, but goddamn Comedy Central is stingy with free online episodes.

@hogarth

(I hope, for the love of God, that the possibility of exposing his junk to a group of kids was staged, for instance.)

Everything I have heard from his fellow comedians suggests that it was legit. It’s not really all that big a deal if you think about it–the children’s parents presumably all gave their permission and the nudity wouldn’t have been in a sexual context. I’m more impressed that they got an actual cop to agree to stand by to arrest him.

[hogarth]

@colander

Everything I have heard from his fellow comedians suggests that it was legit. It’s not really all that big a deal if you think about it–the children’s parents presumably all gave their permission and the nudity wouldn’t have been in a sexual context. I’m more impressed that they got an actual cop to agree to stand by to arrest him.

You know, you have a good point there. It’s probably pretty harmless for a kid to see some guy’s junk, all things considered. That doesn’t mean that the show doesn’t stage things, though.

[GrandWino]

I’ve read some interviews/stories about the show that say that it’s all 100% legit. I’ll see if I can dig one up.

I really liked the sky-diving one, the lengths he went to to pretend he wasn’t chickening out was fantastic.

[GrandWino]

This interview in Rolling Stone doesn’t address the authenticity directly, but this bit about the gas station rebate segment seems to imply that the bit was going to places he hadn’t expected it:

His favorite segment and a clear highlight from the first season is “Gas Station Rebate,” where he ends up camping out overnight with three people who have agreed to hike to the top of a mountain for a discount on gasoline. Fielder recalls, “I just remember the morning after, it felt so weird and it was almost surreal that we were still making the show.”

Also, this Hollywood Reporter article has this:

Out in the “real world,” beyond the insular little fiefdoms of TV networks, Fielder has had better luck, thanks in part to a general public that he has found to be way less cynical than industry types. In one particularly memorable excursion, he helped an independent gas store increase traffic by advertising incredibly low prices – after rebate. To cash in, customers had to hike up a mountain, answer a long series of riddles and camp overnight.

He didn’t expect anyone to follow through with it – hence, the trick behind the money making scheme – but a whole busload of people decided to take the hike. By the end of the evening, three were left, opting to camp out so that they could net their $15 rebate check.

“The funny thing is, those three people, when I was up there on the mountain with them, around the campfire, it was interesting because they had very similar back stories,” Fielder recalls, “where they had been in very difficult relationships, I think they had all been through a very terrible divorce. You kind of got the sense that, Oh, these people aren’t just doing this as a rebate or for a show, this is exciting for them because their home life is kind of tough.”

Found him addressing whether it’s staged or not in this Splitsider interview:

So working on Nathan For You, how staged were the consulting experiences? Were you heavily scripting your scenes or just winging it?

Before we go in, I have a plan of what I’m going to say, and I have a plan for where we wanna go with it. But because we’re dealing with real businesses and real people, it often goes in an unpredictable direction. Which is really fun, but things can go wrong very easily. We definitely don’t prep anyone to what’s going to happen. We just go in and see what happens and hit the tone right.

[GrandWino]

Sorry for the multiple posts, but I found it pretty hilarious and awesome that one of the segments he did for the show, where he attempted to make a viral video for a small privately owned zoo and it ended up blowing up on YouTube last Fall and garnering something like 7 Million views. It became a legit viral video on its own merit and I don’t believe anybody knew it was fake until the series aired.

Here’s the video… It’s of a goat saving a pig from drowning. You might remember it.

[Pashnish_Ewing]

My favorite was the “King of Sting” caricature artist. Really cringy but a few of the finished products were priceless.

[GrandWino]

@Pashnish_Ewing

My favorite was the “King of Sting” caricature artist. Really cringy but a few of the finished products were priceless.

Everybody seemed to really enjoy their insulting caricatures too!

[hogarth]

I thought some of the caricatures were kind of funny (the frat dude buying a big container of roofies), but the idea that people would be good-natured about insulting carictures wasn’t really surprising. I mean, does anyone pay for a caricature thinking: “Man, he better make me look good!”?

Actually, that’s exactly what some people think, I’m sure. I had some guy make a sculpture of my head at the night market in Hangzhou, China (that’s someone else’s head, but it’s the same guy) and the sculptor said that he hated making sculptures of women’s heads because they often complained “That doesn’t look like me!”

[Frylock]

I’m dubious about the exposing-himself-to-kids thing. Someone said above a cop was standing by to arrest him if his pants came off? I am pretty sure just putting oneself intentionally into a position one knows to be likely to cause the thing to happen would already count as reckless somethingorother. And all the people helping make the show–including the parents–would be conspirators.

[colander]

@Frylock

I’m dubious about the exposing-himself-to-kids thing. Someone said above a cop was standing by to arrest him if his pants came off? I am pretty sure just putting oneself intentionally into a position one knows to be likely to cause the thing to happen would already count as reckless somethingorother. And all the people helping make the show–including the parents–would be conspirators.

As long as it can be demonstrated that the children and their legal guardians consent to it and it isn’t an overtly sexual display of nudity, (for example, erections and masturbation would not be allowed) then I’m pretty sure it’s legal. If it were illegal to expose children to adult nudity, then naturist family camps would not be allowed to exist. You can probably think of some movies that include minors in the same scene as a nude adult, too.

[Frylock]

@colander

As long as it can be demonstrated that the children and their legal guardians consent to it and it isn’t an overtly sexual display of nudity, (for example, erections and masturbation would not be allowed) then I’m pretty sure it’s legal. If it were illegal to expose children to adult nudity, then naturist family camps would not be allowed to exist. You can probably think of some movies that include minors in the same scene as a nude adult, too.

Arguably it’s the nature of the scenario that it is necessarily treating his genitals as obscene (albeit not necessary for sexual reasons). Iunno… seems iffy to me. But you may be right about how they’re thinking about it.

[colander]

@Frylock

Arguably it’s the nature of the scenario that it is necessarily treating his genitals as obscene (albeit not necessary for sexual reasons). Iunno… seems iffy to me. But you may be right about how they’re thinking about it.

Well, I’m not a lawyer, but I will note that in addition to the police officer, they also had an actual certified judge (retired judicial commissioner Anthony Filosa) standing there to supervise the whole thing. It was a pretty classy affair. Anybody who hasn’t seen it should definitely give it a watch. It’s less than four minutes long and whatever you think of the premise, I guarantee* you that you’ll be on the edge of your seat the whole time.

*Well, you might not be, but if not, so what?

[JohnClay]

I’m a fan of this show… his ideas are quite original.
Here’s a short segment that I really liked where he is told what to say by a 7 year old:

[Shalmanese]

Nathan For You Season 3 has started airing and I have to say the premiere might have topped everything he’s ever done. The scene in the psychiatrist office alone had be floored with laughter.

Like Ali G/Borat/Bruno, I wonder just how long he can keep up this ruse before becoming too well known but it seems like he’s still flying enough under the radar to continue his schtick.