The Rehearsal: Apocalypto
August 13, 2022 1:05 AM - Season 1, Episode 5 - Subscribe

After a visit from his parents, Nathan struggles to stick up for his values.

-Nathan's mom admonishes him for going along with things instead of facing tension.
-Nathan claims he didn't want to do other Rehearsals so he could focus on the Child Rehearsal. Then he starts doing Rehearsals for the Child Rehearsal.
-Nathan trolls the shit out of Angela by making a very funny sketch based on a concept from the 6 year old child actor playing his son. The sketch was satanic.
-Sure, there was the antisemitism, but Angela not taking the Rehearsal seriously 24/7 is what turned me against her. Also why are Nathan's cats in the basement? Was that Angela too?

No idea what will happen in the last episode. Will Nathan promote fake Angela to real Angela for the rest of the Child Rehearsal? Will he need another actress to play fake Angela when he has to do Child Rehearsal Rehearsals? Will he reveal his true feelings on Israel?
posted by Hume (11 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This is like a Russian doll, but I love the Jewish babushka who just doesn't give a shit about the concept of the show and just wants to raise another Jewish boy.
posted by geoff. at 3:20 AM on August 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


Sometimes I feel like I have no common ground with Angela, but actually there’s drug use and watching Key and Peele.
posted by snofoam at 11:57 AM on August 13, 2022 [5 favorites]


Single dad Nathan is best Nathan.

Dumping the manger decoration? Hilarious. A dozen little moments every episode like that just get me. I love that Fielder & Co. nail the high concept stuff and the little moments. It really is brilliant art.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 12:39 PM on August 13, 2022 [1 favorite]


Also, anytime as a parent of a little kid that you get a chance to lie down, you take it. He figured that out quick.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 12:41 PM on August 13, 2022 [3 favorites]


He figured that out quick.

In regular time. Within the rehearsal, it actually took him over 20 years.
posted by snofoam at 10:21 AM on August 14, 2022 [2 favorites]


FYI, The AV Club has amazing recaps by someone who does not understand the show at all. (Or maybe are ghostwritten by Fielding himself.) For example:

“We don’t always get to choose what happens in life,” Fielder notes toward the end of the episode. “We do get to decide if we rehearse for it.”

The whiff of self-help rhetoric should give us all pause. Not because the idea of preparing for key events in our life is not a feasible approach toward self-improvement. But because rehearsing, for Fielder, feels like more of a crutch than anything else. Also, that royal “we” being used is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Very slowly, as we’ve learned, The Rehearsal has become less a show about helping a collective “we” (or a singular “they”) cope with what may happen in life but an excuse to allow Fielder to grapple with his own life decisions (and hangups and insecurities and anxieties).


And basically all the comments are people telling the writer they don’t have a clue. It kind of works as bonus content for the show.
posted by snofoam at 11:09 AM on August 14, 2022 [6 favorites]


FYI, The AV Club has amazing recaps by someone who does not understand the show at all. (Or maybe are ghostwritten by Fielding himself.)

I can confirm that they're not ghostwritten by Fielder, unless he happened to choose the extremely distinctive first and last names of someone I went to grad school with as a pen name.
posted by Ragged Richard at 7:19 AM on August 15, 2022


unless he happened to choose the extremely distinctive first and last names of someone I went to grad school with as a pen name.

Um, have you seen the show?
posted by geoff. at 7:41 AM on August 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Um, have you seen the show?

Fair! I suppose there's no degree of too much effort I could cite to make this implausible.
posted by Ragged Richard at 9:08 AM on August 24, 2022


I love the Jewish babushka who just doesn't give a shit about the concept of the show and just wants to raise another Jewish boy.

I think this puts her well within the concept of the boy. Rituals that make people.
posted by argybarg at 6:27 AM on August 26, 2022


Concept of the *show*, I meant.
posted by argybarg at 7:30 AM on August 26, 2022


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