How Nathan Fielder briefly revived Canadian Idol in the name of flight safety

Vancouver's own Nathan Fielder is making some of the most original, tender and absurd comedy on TV.

In the second season of The Rehearsal, Fielder's critically acclaimed HBO comedy series, he uses "a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources" in an effort to improve flight safety, of all things.

But his approach is anything but straightforward. For instance, in one particularly memorable episode from Season 2, Fielder brings back the reality singing competition Canadian Idol in order to help co-pilots improve their communication skills. As awkward and mind-boggling as it sounds, the episode — and the series on the whole — prove to be both hilarious and extremely watchable.

Today on Commotion, culture critics Amil Niazi, Angelo Muredda and Adam Nayman join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the bizarre yet addictive second season of The Rehearsal.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Amil, the second episode of this season does something quite extraordinary, which is that Nathan Fielder goes back and mines his past work as a Canadian Idol junior producer. And he does this in the context of getting a whole bunch of co-pilots, and realizing they have a hard time making somebody else uncomfortable. And so, they're gonna have to let down a whole bunch of people by creating this fictitious singing competition, and have these co-pilots turn down as many people as possible. How did it feel to see a resurrection of Canadian Idol, out of all things, in the context of flight safety?

Amil: I thought it was amazing. First of all, I didn't know that about him, but it makes so much sense. He is a master of this genre. He has such a — now we know — insider's knowledge of how best to make people reveal who they are in a very short amount of time. And certainly that is what these reality singing shows do remarkably well: people come, and you think they're just going to sing a little song, and then they ultimately bear their soul. And then we judge them for the rest of time.

To see him talk about what he learned, or what he didn't learn, and how he was gonna mine that with the pilots, I thought, was such a great device. And then to see that ultimately it really was about him and his own discomfort with the way people perceive him, and his inability to still come across likable and sincere when he's trying to deliver good or bad news, was just so, so funny to me.

And so he is having these people come in and sing their songs. The co-pilots are supposed to deliver bad news, but still maintain an air of likeability and collegiality, because they're gonna recreate this in the cockpit. But then … the singers are rating the judges on how they perceive them. One woman gets incredible ratings, and they just love her.

Elamin: Mara'D! Yes.

Amil: Mara'D, and she was great! Fantastic, I should say. Nathan is so impressed with her ratings that he tries it for himself. Because of course, he was in that chair, and could he improve upon how he was perceived back then? And of course, it's Nathan, so he gets, like, two's and four's. And you get this great moment where he disagrees with one of the people's judgements on how you can't really change your aura. And therefore, Nathan can't really change whether he's likable or not. And to tie it all to Canadian Idol is just, like, chef's kiss.

Elamin: There is something at the core of this, Adam, about the idea that if you are feeling disconnected from people around you, and if all you're seeking is connection with other people, and you're having a hard time saying, "Hey, there's a thing I need to say to you. And I don't know how to say it to you, and still get you to like me" — this is the stuff that Nathan is trying to play with.

It's the undercurrent of the entire season. Yes, the aviation safety is a real issue that arises from this. But also, it could just damage a lot of relationships, including business relationships. One of the throughlines of this season is Nathan has a bit of a hard time saying to his bosses at Paramount, "Hey, I really disagree with the decision that you're making." Do you want to explain that? Because that is also one of the genius, I think, turns of this season.

Adam: Yeah. Paramount+ had a bad morning last week, where they were under fire on the one hand from 60 Minutes, and on the other from Nathan Fielder. He talks about how an episode of Nathan for You where he found out— it takes so long to explain. The short version: he found that a clothing manufacturer was actually including Holocaust denial in their publicity materials — not fabricated as a comedy stunt. It was a real thing. So he responded to it with an equally real thing, which was he decided to donate the proceeds from his own line of bespoke winter wear, Summit Ice, to a Vancouver Holocaust museum … which he actually launched, and was taken up by a lot of prominent Hollywood celebrities, especially a lot of Hollywood Jewish entertainers.

And then he found the episode had been removed from Paramount+ because of "sensitivities around Jewish content," which is something that he leaves as a euphemism on the show. Because what it's euphemizing is something most comedians won't touch, even very left-leaning comedians now, pertaining to the larger global political situation. So he decides to burrow in, in his typical kind of solipsistic way. But not flippantly solipsistic. I think sincerely, like, how do you get mad at them for pulling this?

And the pettiness that comes out is basically comparing Paramount+ not allegorically or metaphorically, but directly to Nazi Germany, creating their headquarters in a parody of the sort of scene you'd see in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Inglorious Basterds…. Narcissism expands into a real question about censorship, and expression, and if we try and express ourselves about an issue sincerely, and then that episode gets taken away, who's that on? And can he be more confrontational about it, or less confrontational? And of course, the actor enlisted to play the Paramount head, who has this German accent, stops halfway and starts saying, "What you're doing is ridiculous. Actually, what you are doing is flippant and somewhat inappropriate."

Elamin: Because it's a TV show.

Adam: Because it's a TV show. So he keeps all those things kind of in play. So there is media critique. And I think that it's as a media critic — both of the way that corporations function but also the way his own medium functions — that's the throughline in his work that I think matters the most. He is ambivalent about his own medium…. That's why the Canadian Idol as the primal scene of what he does is so interesting: because it is very self-critical. It's like Canadian Idol made him this way, and that's why he's dealing with it this way.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jane van Koeverden.