Excellent again. Thanks. Pre-streaming felt more would have been talking about this series. But this season was excellent. Your point about letting instinct matter and that winning through - it’s also reflected in the Congressional hearing when he can’t really get the extras to laugh right at his opening joke.
Further loved your point about the silliness of the DS humor having its limits. You can’t shame the shameless - so it’s lost on the MAGA crew - and it makes dangers laughable. That’s likely why despite excellent comedians, writing, and biting satire - we are still under MAGA rule in the courts, in each section of government.
But at least Fielder is trying to do go somewhere regarding his comedy -- he’s evolving. This season will be tough to really top - a 2yr acquisition of a new skill was needed for that conclusion.
And it had genuinely funny moments - the nascent recreation of the cloned dogs environment, the fake singing contest and the variations of Amazing Grace, the boundaries pushed for the actors getting physical and how their exes were like ok.
We are so past Shane Gillis railing against wokism.
Felt he did land that plane though - his copilot was certified to do so and that might have been enough for HBO and the consents to allow.
I’m surprised by how differently we interpreted the conclusion of season two. I thought the last line was highlighting a dysfunctional thought process that assumes ability when it may not be warranted. I also thought the final line was alluding to the fact that Nathan (and others) may very well have truly disqualifying diagnosable conditions that he chose (and others choose) to neglect.
One minor note, it was not clear to me he actually traveled to Germany for that one scene, but I may have missed that.
As interesting as all the recursive meta-humor of "The Rehearsal" is, by far the funniest part of the second season was the older woman from one of the early episodes describing her wet dream about Albert Einstein—just a moment of (seemingly) unscripted weirdness.
Very interesting piece. I wonder if you could elaborate just a little on this comment from your piece; it’s something I think about often: “The whole “clown nose on, clown nose off” aspect of The Daily Show and its successors has been deeply damaging to the general discourse.”
I've heard this argument before and haven't found it very convincing. I think the gist is that "The Daily Show" et al led to the irony poisoning of society, and ultimately to a people so unserious that we'd elect a crass, racist reality TV host as president. That through-line never made much sense to me, but I'd also be interested in hearing Sonny's more detailed take on it.
Same. I remember seeing research showing that regular viewers of the Daily Show actually did know facts about the real world news than those who didn’t. Sure, it’s biased to some degree, but it’s not complete fiction.
Trump playing a brilliant businessman on a reality show, however, was fiction. The *actual* brilliant businessman was Mark Burnett, who created that show and many others.
I adore this show. Nathan does an incredible job of weaving fiction with reality to engage God honest questions. I'm glad to know that I will one day be able to tell my kids where I was when the Miracle Over the Mojave happened.
I have mixed feelings about this season. It is certainly all in keeping with what is real, what is production from Nathan, but him revealing he was a licensed 747 pilot the whole time felt like a contradiction to his worries all throughout the season about being a comedian talking about aviation. He lied to the audience about his experience. He is not just some outside observer, but an on-the-job participant with first hand knowledge. This season didn't feel as cohesive and thought out as the first. I will be coming back for more because I love behind the scenes commentary and I appreciate that Nathan is not afraid to go dark or take big swings. His process analysis and reconstruction skills are impressive and as a process nerd, I just want to know more.
Excellent again. Thanks. Pre-streaming felt more would have been talking about this series. But this season was excellent. Your point about letting instinct matter and that winning through - it’s also reflected in the Congressional hearing when he can’t really get the extras to laugh right at his opening joke.
Further loved your point about the silliness of the DS humor having its limits. You can’t shame the shameless - so it’s lost on the MAGA crew - and it makes dangers laughable. That’s likely why despite excellent comedians, writing, and biting satire - we are still under MAGA rule in the courts, in each section of government.
But at least Fielder is trying to do go somewhere regarding his comedy -- he’s evolving. This season will be tough to really top - a 2yr acquisition of a new skill was needed for that conclusion.
And it had genuinely funny moments - the nascent recreation of the cloned dogs environment, the fake singing contest and the variations of Amazing Grace, the boundaries pushed for the actors getting physical and how their exes were like ok.
We are so past Shane Gillis railing against wokism.
Felt he did land that plane though - his copilot was certified to do so and that might have been enough for HBO and the consents to allow.
Thank you for this write up.
I’m surprised by how differently we interpreted the conclusion of season two. I thought the last line was highlighting a dysfunctional thought process that assumes ability when it may not be warranted. I also thought the final line was alluding to the fact that Nathan (and others) may very well have truly disqualifying diagnosable conditions that he chose (and others choose) to neglect.
One minor note, it was not clear to me he actually traveled to Germany for that one scene, but I may have missed that.
As interesting as all the recursive meta-humor of "The Rehearsal" is, by far the funniest part of the second season was the older woman from one of the early episodes describing her wet dream about Albert Einstein—just a moment of (seemingly) unscripted weirdness.
Hey, I love Burnham's Inside, but for a simple reason: a few of those songs are jams. Namely, the Post Malone parody.
Very interesting piece. I wonder if you could elaborate just a little on this comment from your piece; it’s something I think about often: “The whole “clown nose on, clown nose off” aspect of The Daily Show and its successors has been deeply damaging to the general discourse.”
I've heard this argument before and haven't found it very convincing. I think the gist is that "The Daily Show" et al led to the irony poisoning of society, and ultimately to a people so unserious that we'd elect a crass, racist reality TV host as president. That through-line never made much sense to me, but I'd also be interested in hearing Sonny's more detailed take on it.
Same. I remember seeing research showing that regular viewers of the Daily Show actually did know facts about the real world news than those who didn’t. Sure, it’s biased to some degree, but it’s not complete fiction.
Trump playing a brilliant businessman on a reality show, however, was fiction. The *actual* brilliant businessman was Mark Burnett, who created that show and many others.
I adore this show. Nathan does an incredible job of weaving fiction with reality to engage God honest questions. I'm glad to know that I will one day be able to tell my kids where I was when the Miracle Over the Mojave happened.
I have mixed feelings about this season. It is certainly all in keeping with what is real, what is production from Nathan, but him revealing he was a licensed 747 pilot the whole time felt like a contradiction to his worries all throughout the season about being a comedian talking about aviation. He lied to the audience about his experience. He is not just some outside observer, but an on-the-job participant with first hand knowledge. This season didn't feel as cohesive and thought out as the first. I will be coming back for more because I love behind the scenes commentary and I appreciate that Nathan is not afraid to go dark or take big swings. His process analysis and reconstruction skills are impressive and as a process nerd, I just want to know more.