Nathan becomes more involved than he should be on The Rehearsal (of course)
Season 1, Episode 3: "Gold Digger"
So I was right and wrong. I’ll take it, I guess. Last week, I expressed mild distaste for “Scion” because of its general lack of focus and seemingly wasteful attitude towards a fantastic concept, and I theorized perhaps that it was part one of two. But I was only partly right—“Scion” was one of five. It looks like Nathan’s life with Angela will be half the focus of the rest of the season, as in “Gold Digger”, part of the episode is dedicated to the three year old portion of Adam’s life, and the other is dedicated to another rehearsal, thankfully. One thing I forgot to mention about “Scion” is that I felt it also lacked the emotional aspect that “Orange Juice, No Pulp” gave the audience by making it about an actual person instead of a very cool concept, so “Gold Digger” decides to have its cake and eat it too.
And yeah, it’s a big improvement. Not only does it help pad out what would otherwise be a very short rehearsal, it makes me want to follow more of the Angela and Adam storyline because now I know for sure I’ll be experiencing more of it as the season progresses. I still prefer the one-time rehearsals for their variety and the fact that there’s more of an individual there to focus on, but I have a better idea of what Nathan is trying to do with this whole “raising a child” thing. Nathan For You’s underlying plot was about Nathan trying to find love, but The Rehearsal is about a human connection in general—whether that be through friends, family, or brotherhood.
And brotherhood is what drives the non-familial plot of “Gold Digger”. Patrick, a man who wears his late grandfather’s ashes in a vial around his neck, (right next to his Punisher pendant, of course) is having a problem with said grandfather’s will. He’s poised to receive a large sum of money, but his brother, the executor of the estate and following instructions, refuses to give it over until Patrick dates someone who isn’t a “gold digger.” The whole setup is causing Patrick a lot of stress, as he’s too busy dealing with the legal ramifications, and it’s something we can all feel for—losing a relative is painful enough on its own without a bunch of legal crap, and it’s coming from his brother, of all people.
But of course, it wouldn’t be The Rehearsal if there wasn’t a ton of comedy to be gleaned from Patrick’s mere existence. As soon as Nathan calls attention to the Punisher pendant, it’s all downhill from there. As Patrick and his fake brother rehearse, he drops a line about how “you know how the Jews are.” (Nathan, in the background, takes a second to process it.) When asked about why he would bring that up, Patrick mumbles something about “my brother would say a similar thing if he were here.” Realizing that Patrick isn’t really feeling the emotion of the rehearsal, (because “I’ve been neglecting one key component of every crucial life event: feelings,”) Nathan realizes that he needs to take things up a notch.
So he fabricates another rehearsal within the rehearsal, in hopes of eliciting the real emotions he needs Patrick to be feeling during his own rehearsal. He assigns an actor playing a fake grandfather to the actor playing Patrick’s brother and sets up a treasure hunt involving buried gold—the brother actor is too lazy to help the grandfather, so he takes Patrick out in the woods to dig it up, literally making him—well, I don’t have to say it, do I? The extent that Nathan goes to manipulate Patrick’s situation is debatably even crazier than Kor’s. He creates another story entirely for Patrick to walk through with details he scraped from Patrick’s words thrown in—for instance, in the most uncomfortable scene of the series so far, Patrick having to help the actor change his diaper because he himself did that for his own grandfather. This goes beyond lying to Kor to help him win his trivia competition and converse with Tricia at the same time—Nathan is manipulating not just Patrick’s reality, but his emotional state.
Nathan Fielder is so good at understanding human beings because he gives the impression of not understanding them at all. Part of the fun of Nathan For You was the characters of the business owners he consorted with, and Nathan was especially good at getting them to talk about the most awkward yet funny thing they possibly could because of how much of a non-threat Nathan appeared to be. But it goes deeper than comedy—Nathan understands people in their entirety, and that’s why all this extra work actually pays off. He arranges for the grandfather to “die” and for Patrick to be listed in his will, but because of his gold digger status, there are complications—and that’s all that it take for Patrick to have an emotional breakthrough, saying to the actor playing his brother everything he probably wants to say to the real man. Patrick never returns after that. Earlier in the episode, Nathan referred to the way people approached their rehearsals as “strategies” and took note that Kor only seemed to find success when he took no strategy at all, and Patrick seemed to find more success by abandoning the established matrix entirely. “Maybe for some, the rehearsal itself is enough,” Nathan observes.
But while things seem to be looking up for Patrick’s familial relationships, Nathan’s are in stasis. “Who’s that?” Angela coos to Adam when Nathan returns from their garden. Adam says nothing. “Does he ever ask about me, or anything?” Nathan asks Angela one day. Despite the fact that this rehearsal was about Angela and getting to raise a child, Nathan is becoming more involved in it than a show host should ever be. While helping Angela, it seems his own desire for the human connection has overtaken him, and now he doesn’t just want to be the father to make his show work—he wants to be the father because he wants to be the father. This isn’t Nathan Fielder, the man who would do anything for his art—it’s Nathan Fielder, the man who would use his own art to become something else.
As the episode comes to a close, we see the transition from three-year old Adam to six-year old Adam, marked by him entering his room and emerging as an older actor. Time begins to warp as the sequence progresses. Crop seeds are planted, dug up in the middle of the night by the crew, and replanted as fully grown vegetables. Nathan has digital mirrors installed that will allow him to age with his “son.” To create the illusion of a family history, he has a doctored photo album made, showing him, Angela and Adam all over the world. “I need to go there!” Adam squeals when he sees Nathan holding him up in front of Thomas the Tank Engine. As we see Nathan and Angela playing with Adam and genuinely enjoying it, Nathan, in voice-over comments that his true happiness is “how you know the rehearsal is working.”
With “Gold Digger”, Nathan almost marks himself as one by mining Angela for her experience, feeding both with and off her as he sinks deeper into the role of Nathan Fielder, father extraordinaire. At the start of the episode, Angela expresses her distaste of Halloween, (“because it’s the highest Satanic holiday of the year”) and when Nathan presents her with evidence that it’s not what she thinks at the end of the episode, she ignores it. He expresses envy at this—the idea that someone could live outside of reality and reason and just exist in the rehearsal, and that’s what it seems like he’s trying to do with his new role as a parent. “Not everything is make believe,” Angela explains. “Some things are real.”
Rating: 8/10 (B+)
Still felt like the ending of this episode was a little rushed, even if I liked it.
The grandfather’s actor was pretty excellent at playing his character, right down to him being confused and grumpy about the camera crew.
I like how Nathan was clearly baiting Angela into saying Google is controlled by Satan.
I also like how he let Adam wear his headphones when he came to work.
My favorite photo from the photo album was easily the Eiffel Tower one.
I could watch Nathan’s Batman noise forever.
That robot kid is genuinely terrifying.
Adam seems to think Catwoman is Batman’s mom.
Nathan and Adam are watching an American Christian cartoon called Hermie and Friends, which looks like…a nightmare.
Nathan, emerging from behind the curtains with Adam, dressed as Batman and Robin: “Notice anything different about us?”
“But I couldn’t help but feel sad, knowing this old man would soon be dead.”