Why Nathan Fielder is the next BIG thing? If he is not already.

Since the release of ‘You Can See Everything’ a documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, my feed is full of its edits, reviews, and opinions on why it is the best film of the year. Now I’m dying to watch the documentary and unfortunately I can’t because it didn’t get a release in India (nowhere except the US), so here’s me fanboying over Nathan Fielder and his work. I would be focusing on how his shows presents a social commentary and a profound way to do it, how he so effortlessly mixes fiction with reality and everything he does is so much more than just comedy.

I discovered Nathan through a subreddit a few months back. It took me no time to binge-watch all of his content available on the internet. As he plays himself in all of his shows, but no one truly knows how he is in the actual life. He plays a character who is socially awkward, borderline autistic (FAA wants to know) but has some ‘out of the box’ ideas, producer’s money and commits to the bit fully whenever he has to. He encounters people from all spheres of the society and his interaction with them is what makes everything special.

When I say he commits to the bit, i truly mean it. He spent two years learning to fly an aircraft for his show - The Rehearsal’s season two, and he actually flown a real Boeing 737 in the finale and the world witnessed ‘the miracle over mojave’. He founded ‘Dumb Starbucks’ to get easy brand recognition. He orchestrates a sleeper cell to challenge Uber monopoly. He takes genuine real world problems and successfully manages to create absurd situations by taking the solutions to greater heights. But there is more to the lore, while his comedy finds itself in the absurdity of Nathan’s ideas and his awkward interactions with the participants, there are instances where things get real and you suddenly feel that there is more.

The Fielder Method

At first I thought maybe I’m overanalysing here, but as I watched more of him. The choice of filmmaking is conscious, intentional but subtle. You can see the person evolving and delving into social themes more often. Whether it’s showing how actual exorcists and psychics make things up, put on a whole charade, and still have people believing them or how people are so desperate for fame that they pretend to love, care and even fight with each other when Nathan created a fake reality show ‘The Hunk’ just to get over his awkwardness around girls.

In the finale episode of “Nathan For You” - He interacts with Maci (a female escort) multiple times, and we get to see a human side of her, how convincingly she replies back “I love you too” to Nathan because that’s a part of her job. How transactional yet real the relationship felt, all this while also helping a 75 year old Bill Gates impersonator find his long lost love in the same episode (which I won’t spoil for you).

“The Rehearsal” is what happens when overthinking becomes a production. In the show - We see a more evolved version of him. He again engages with complex social themes and tries to solve and surf through them with his bizarre ideas. He gives an orthodox conservative christian lady a chance to live her dream life where she wants to parent a child in her dream house as a rehearsal. But things get serious when she leaves after Nathan jumps in as a co parent and they have issues over interfaith parenting.

Later, Nathan develops a real bond with the six year old child actor (his kid in the rehearsal) and it turns out that the child actor lives with his single mother and now he has started calling Nathan as his dad. So the ‘rehearsal’ was only for Nathan, for the child it was not acting.

Here the bizarre-ness of real situations, the editing, and partially scripted scenes blurs the line of fiction and truth. That is exactly what also raises questions.

Third Side Of The Coin

There have been ethical criticism regarding his shows alleging him of making money out of people’s innocence, ‘‘crossing the boundaries’’ with kids, old folks, and the poor. Understandably it can make you uncomfortable to laugh too much at someone’s expense and after all, it is not fiction. At the same time the shows do not claim to be a social commentary platform, Nathan is a comedian. As mentioned earlier, the humour is situational, and most jokes are on Nathan himself. Nathan tries to put a straight face even when a man casually reveals that he drinks his grandson's urine as a traditional folk remedy to calm himself down whenever he feels scared. The situations are real and with real people and that is what makes it funny. No one can accuse the intent of these shows unlike some infamous Indian reality TV shows.

As people are claiming that the documentary is his best work yet and it is ‘peak Nathan’, I am really excited to see it. Whatever he does is so fresh and beyond the mainstream with his signature style that he leaves an impression on you. One can simply conclude that he is just a guy who graduated from Canada’s top business school with really good grades.