#of other reality tv is similarly unethical. we just don’t usually see those parts

[tomwambsmilk]

Gonna write briefly about “The Rehearsal” on my succ blog bc why not. But I think it truly is brilliant, in hindsight of the finale, that the show turned out to actually be an effective criticism of itself, of reality tv as a genre (even and maybe especially the shows that are framed as being helpful for their participants), the use of child actors, and even, to a certain extent, Nathan Fielder’s own brand of comedy. All of that is 100% intentional - they could’ve shown anything they wanted and deliberately showed things that would make us deeply uncomfortable for ethical reasons, and deliberately highlighted the ways in which participants may have felt pressured into participating and how the presence of cameras impacts behaviour.

I’ve already seen the claim that the finale’s big twist is that it’s a “scripted narrative” and I don’t think that’s true at all. It’s pretty clear that Nathan and the team had an idea of where they wanted the show to go, but all the people they featured were real people. They didn’t script so much as… well, manipulate what happened by introducing certain elements, as all reality shows do. While they might have had a general sense of where they wanted the show’s “arc” to go, they were reliant on the participants behaving in certain ways or raising certain issues to dictate just how they went about achieving that arc. The brilliance here is making it fairly obvious to the audience what they’re doing, whereas most reality shows will try to hide it.

(And this premise is built into the pitch! We all expected to get a show about Nathan running these little rehearsals, and that idea is built on the premise that human behaviour is predictable and manipulable, if you control enough variables. And then we watched this exact premise play out entirely differently - and in a way that was much darker - from how we expected.)

There are so many more things to unpack about the show, obviously, but personally I just keep coming back to the fact that they made a reality tv show to say “hey, maybe even ‘helpful’ reality tv is somewhat unethical because these people are being helped for our own voyeuristic benefit, and those motivations will determine how producers approach the participants and the arcs they deliberately try to set up, even if we don’t see that on our screens.” It’s a bold move but I think they pulled it off well

#I keep thinking about this episode of queer eye I watched with a friend #long story short the guy they were helping had dropped out of school and hadn’t told his parents and they encouraged him to and had him #do it on camera #and my friend was horrified. they were from very similar immigrant communities with similar cultural norms #and she said ‘that’s so awful of them. this is going to make his life miserable for a while’ #‘the only reason his mom isn’t beating his ass right now is that the cameras aren’t there’ #and you could tell she was right. everyone except the queer eye guys was so uncomfortable with this #but they wanted their ‘happy ending’ arc so they pushed it #but even aside from that. isn’t there something inherently exploitative about ‘we’ll help you fix this problem but only if you let us #showcase it on national tv’? #and I think the rehearsal critiques that so well by showing Nathan derailing the rehearsals for his own purposes #the only difference is that he’s motivated by his own issues rather than being motivated by audience response #the rehearsal #nathan fielder #not succession #anyways. I think everyone has realized by now that the point of the show is that it was unethical. but I don’t think the takeaway is meant #to be just that the rehearsal was unethical but that a lot #of other reality tv is similarly unethical. we just don’t usually see those parts