Karl Puschmann: How Nathan Fielder's show The Rehearsal broke my brain

Nathan Fielder and his much meme'd laptop harness in his brilliant new series The Rehearsal, streaming on Neon.

Practice, it's said, makes perfect. However, when it comes to the big moments in life - troubling confessions, difficult conversations or childraising, say - you only get one shot to get it right. But what if you could rehearse these big moments in advance? To identify, work through and eliminate all the potential variables that could go wrong in an effort to make sure such monumentally important events go according to plan.

This is the concept behind comedian Nathan Fielder's new series The Rehearsal, which is now streaming on Neon. Fielder came to prominence with his quasi-reality show Nathan for You. This saw the comedian playing an exaggerated version of himself and posing as a business guru who "helped" struggling business owners get back on track with audaciously bizarre and elaborate plans that were, without fail, absolutely terrible ideas.

Nathan Fielder in "Door City," a joke he rehearsed before meeting Kor in The Rehearsal.

The Rehearsal can be likened to being Nathan for You only for life problems. However, as the docu-series goes on it almost becomes Nathan for Nathan, as Fielder inserts himself into a multi-episodic rehearsal and proceeds to have something of an existential crisis as he attempts to work his way through it.

It all starts off innocently enough when the socially awkward Fielder agrees to help Kor, a teacher and pub quiz enthusiast, come clean to Tricia, a member of his quiz team, about a lie he's been living.

To this end, Fielder perfectly recreates the bar where the quiz is held and begins running Kor through simulations of how the confession may pan out with actors playing various roles. Nothing is left to chance, from the table Kor and Tricia will sit at, to the drinks he'll order them and even Kor's greeting and topics of conversation he'll introduce in the lead-up to the big moment.

Nathan Fielder and Kor, a teacher and pub quiz enthusiast, rehearse what Kor is going to say to his friend.

As Kor runs through the confession time and time again, trying different ways of saying the same thing or troubleshooting things like Tricia interrupting him or what to do if people are sitting at his table; Fielder hovers in the background, his now much-meme'd laptop holster strapping his computer to his chest, as he evaluates and reconsiders how Kor should react as situations arise.

It's incredibly funny, even as it pushes cringe humour into whole new levels of uncomfortableness. The show invites you to laugh at Kor's cluelessness as he bumbles his way through Fielder's labyrinthine Rehearsal plans but also leaves you feeling bad about it. Kor's an odd dude who exceeds Fielder for social awkwardness. Only Fielder is playing a part and Kor isn't.

Unless, maybe, he is?

It's hard to know. Because as the series goes on the line between reality and fiction dissolves like an aspirin in water. Only, instead of curing a headache, this particular concoction breaks your mind.

Nathan Fielder keeps an eye on things in the control room of The Rehearsal.

It all begins when Fielder stages a rehearsal for Angela, a 40-year-old who dreams of having a baby and a quiet life in the country but isn't sure she wants to commit to these life-changing events. She's taken to a house in the country and, with the help of a rotating cast of child actors who are swapped out every four hours so as to adhere to child labour laws, begins to live through 18 years of childraising in two months.

Worried the simulation is incomplete because the religious Angela doesn't have a partner, and after a hugely funny yet disastrous attempt at hooking her up with someone, Fielder decides to join the rehearsal himself. As he begins to struggle with his simulated home life and his real - and I use that term loosely - life as the TV producer running the simulation, he begins to run more simulations to ascertain his best way forward.

This sees him spiralling down into a sinkhole of the human psyche as his rehearsal simulations fold in and over on themselves as he repeats scenarios over and over and descends a layer deeper each time as he tries to grasp an understanding of elusive truths and fights to gain a semblance of control over the inherent chaos of life.

Nathan Fielder deals with an internal crisis in his replica bar during The Rehearsal.

It's mind-bending stuff and outrageously hilarious as his social manipulations get darker and more involved with each passing episode. For example, a rehearsal on how to make fun the acting class he's teaching extrapolates out until he's completely taken over the life of one of his students.

And because all of the participants are, in their own way, as odd as Fielder, you're never sure if they're in on the joke, are the joke or are a carefully constructed comment on the joke. Fielder's bone-dry demeanour offers no answers, and leaves you constantly wondering what is real life and what is fantasy as real people interact with actors while Fielder bounces between both.

Nathan Fielder leaving the simulated family home in The Rehearsal.

Quite brilliantly, The Rehearsal constantly challenges you to question if you should be laughing at any of it. Especially in its final episode that floors you with an unexpected emotional wallop that also blindsides Fielder to leave him floundering.

Unless, of course, it didn't. In a show that has manipulation at its very core, and is constantly showing you the superficiality of its situations, can you believe anything you see? I don't know, but I'm certain that leaving you wallowing in this uncertainty was Fielder's plan from the very beginning.