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    ‘The Rehearsal’ Argues That Cringe Comedy Can Save Lives

    The second season of “The Rehearsal,” Nathan Fielder’s ambitious exercise in comic social experimentation, ended on Sunday on HBO. It focused on one topic — air safety — but did so with an astounding array of props and stunts, including replica airport terminals, cloned dogs, a fake singing contest and enormous, breastfeeding puppets. James Poniewozik, chief TV critic for The Times, and Alissa Wilkinson, a Times movie critic, discussed all of the above and more.Spoilers and some simulations of Fielder’s simulations follow.HOW TO IMPROVE COMMUNICATION To help airline first officers navigate challenging interactions with co-pilots — and potentially save lives — a simulation recreates a typical day on the job.Steps: Build full-scale replica of airport terminal (fig. 1). Hire actors to portray actual crew members likely to interact with first officer (fig. 2).Simulate real-life cockpit scenarios with actors (fig. 3). Optional: Amplify tension by casting significant other as captain (fig.4).Simulation may reveal deeper emotional and relational challenges.JAMES PONIEWOZIK Alissa, the last time we convened to discuss a Nathan Fielder project, “The Curse,” it ended with his jaw-dropping ascent into the air. Today we’re talking Season 2 of “The Rehearsal” and I will not bury the lead: Our boy flew a damn passenger jet.I will say that the ending, which reveals that Fielder has been moonlighting as a commercial jet pilot, caught me by surprise (though not eagle-eyed Redditors, who noted weeks ago that Fielder had obtained a commercial pilot’s license). It also assuaged my worries that this audacious premise would fizzle out. The previews for this season suggested that it might build to Fielder bringing his ideas before a congressional subcommittee. Instead, that scene proved be a rehearsal, and the host only managed an awkward meeting with one actual representative, Steve Cohen of Tennessee.Turned out there was nowhere to go from there but up. I don’t know if the final flight of “The Rehearsal” proved the thesis — essentially, that cringe comedy can save lives. But just as Season 1 was a striking exploration of how to live with doubt and regret, Season 2’s high-concept stunts, and its combination of social commentary and personal (quasi) revelation, suggest that what might have been a one-off is in fact a spectacularly repeatable format.How well did it work for you? Please be Blunt. I’m Allears.ALISSA WILKINSON Co-pilot Blunt here, clocking in for duty. Or whatever pilots say.

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    ‘The Rehearsal’ Is an Awkward, Dazzling Ride

    For Season 2, Nathan Fielder’s focus is commercial airline safety, hardly a typical topic for comedy. But his approach is never typical.The first season of HBO’s “The Rehearsal,” which aired in 2022, was an entrancing experiment. Created by and starring the comedian Nathan Fielder, the show began with a relatively simple but absurd premise: What if you could rehearse for events in your everyday life — like, for instance, having a difficult conversation with a friend? Eventually, the experiment turned into a large-scale simulation in which Fielder “rehearsed” raising a kid, a feat that, because of child labor rules and an accelerated timeline, involved a rotating cast of child actors.The second season premieres on Sunday, anticipated by the question: How is Fielder is going to top that first brilliantly uncomfortable season? His answer is to turn his attention to the world of commercial airline safety, and what results is both sidesplitting and one of the most stressful television watching experiences in recent memory.The season revolves around Fielder’s personal research into the causes of aviation disasters — a premise he admits isn’t particularly ripe for a comedy. (“So far, I was failing,” he narrates in what is perhaps the show’s first joke. “We were over 10 minutes into this episode with zero laughs.”) He has concluded that a primary cause of crashes is a lack of communication in the cockpit, where the second-in-command feels too intimidated to press his or her concerns with the captain.Fielder’s solution? Getting the pilots to open up through his rehearsal methods involving professional actors. But in Fielder’s universe, nothing is that straightforward.Working with real pilots and building a full-size replica of a Houston airport terminal, Fielder takes bizarrely hilarious detours. One involves a singing competition called “Wings of Voice.” Another uses oversize puppets to examine the life of the “Miracle on the Hudson” pilot Chesley Sullenberger.Fielder’s life-or-death subject is distressingly topical, but “The Rehearsal” is interested in more than aviation. It is a study of human behavior and the masks people wear, investigating the psychology not only of the pilots but also of the actors Fielder employs and, ultimately, of Fielder himself.Fielder draws from his own life more than ever — including in references to his other shows “Nathan for You” and “The Curse” — all while keeping the audience guessing about how much of what he is showing us is just a character. But his typically deadpan persona takes on new weight here. “The Rehearsal” remains one of the best comedies out there, but what’s at stake is no joke. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Ending: What Just Happened?

    The season finale of Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s horror-comedy arrived on Friday. Three New York Times critics discuss the show’s curses, blessings and confounding conclusion.On Friday, the first season of “The Curse,” Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s cringe horror-comedy on Showtime and Paramount+, came to an audaciously unpredictable end. Three New York Times critics — James Poniewozik, chief TV critic; Alissa Wilkinson, movie critic; and Jason Zinoman, critic at large — discussed the confounding conclusion, the show’s religious themes and the sublime inscrutability of Emma Stone’s performance.JAMES PONIEWOZIK Greetings, “Curse”-heads! We have seen the finale, and I can now confidently say: lol wut?Ten uncomfortable, ingenious episodes ended with one of the biggest literal and figurative upendings in TV history (spoilers ahead). Asher Siegel (Nathan Fielder) has his personal field of gravity reversed like a horror-comedy Fred Astaire, hurtling off the Earth to an apparent frozen death in orbit, while his wife, Whitney (Emma Stone), goes into labor and gives birth to their child. All this, and Vincent Pastore cooks meatballs!I haven’t seen an episode of TV this audacious, confounding and transfixing since “Twin Peaks: The Return.” I haven’t seen a series so thoroughly and unexpectedly shift direction in its finale since … ever?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): ‘Saltburn,’ Jacob Elordi and the New Heartthrob Era

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan, the two stars of “Saltburn,” who offer two different modes for the leading man of the momentElordi’s work in “The Sweet East,” in which he pokes fun at and downsizes his public imageJeremy Allen White, star of “The Bear” and the current Calvin Klein underwear campaign, as heartthrob rookieThe anti-heartthrob heartthrob Nathan Fielder, who’s been toying with his public image through canny character work as Asher on “The Curse”New songs from Starlito featuring NoCap and Playboi Carti featuring Travis ScottSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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    What to Watch This Weekend: Catch Up on ‘The Curse’

    The second-to-last episode of this cringe dramedy starring Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie arrives this weekend. There’s still time to watch before the season finale.Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone in a scene from Episode 5 of “The Curse.”Richard Foreman Jr./A24“The Curse,” a nightmare-tinted drama about aspiring HGTV hosts, starring Nathan Fielder, Emma Stone and Benny Safdie, is approaching its finale; the show’s ninth of 10 episodes arrives this weekend: Friday on Paramount+ and Sunday at 9 p.m., on Showtime. The show’s discomfort is so intense it becomes mythical, its white awkwardness so potent that those in its blast zone question reality.The show centers on Whitney (Stone) and Asher (Fielder), a brittle couple trying to sell a show called “Fliplanthropy” under the tortured guidance of Asher’s former bully turned reality producer, Dougie (Safdie, who could repurpose both costume and demeanor to play the disgraced megachurch leader in a recent Hulu documentary). Whitney is the heiress to her parents’ slumlord fortune, a fact she pretends to distance herself from but can’t quite. Asher is her largely dutiful acolyte whose strained encounter with a Black little girl in a parking lot ends with her declaring, “I curse you.”Does your culture believe in curses, Asher asks her father, Abshir (Barkhad Abdi). No, he says. “But if you put an idea in your head, it can become very real.” That’s one of the pillars of the show, this self-imposed reality of imagination. Whitney believes people want her arty, eco-friendly “passive” houses, though no one really does. Asher starts to believe he really is cursed, the rare character to recite Shabbat prayers and also experience backyard stigmata. If you see yourself as a savior, doesn’t everyone look like someone desperate for saving?A lot of art centers on a similar idea, that perception and fate are often the same. Where “The Curse” becomes more interesting is its exploration of the inverse — that when you take an idea out of your head, it can become very surreal. The jokes Asher scripts for himself become, in performance, tortured and grotesque rather than just flat. Whitney thinks her chiropractor could help Abshir with his neck pain, and when put into action, the result is as disturbing as any horror movie. Dougie nudges Whitney to envision the show with a more cynical, Bravo-ish tone, and suddenly a disenchanted cruelty springs forth, like a summoned demon.The line between surrealism and revulsion is often thin, and on “The Curse,” that emerges most often as “recontextualizing” — which the characters themselves discuss as an artistic concept and vaguely mock. But a loss of context is what drives some of the most jarring facets of the show: A heap of poached chicken would be normal and welcome in a packaged meal kit, but sitting on the lip of a sink in a firehouse, that same chicken is terrifying and revolting; Dougie shocks Whitney with how easy it is, with reality TV editing, to turn one fleeting glance into marriage-threatening contempt; the sound of a car horn hangs on too long, until the tone melts into a panicky wail; an expensive stove is an emblem of green living, unless it’s chucked out to the curb as trash, in which case it’s a $7,000 icon of waste.Cringe comedies abound, but the cringe drama is a rarer specimen, perhaps because its discomfort just compounds; scorn does not discharge cringe the way laughter does. On “The Curse” especially, cringe is so intertwined with surveillance and recording, the paranoia that every misstep is on tape forever — which isn’t even paranoia, it’s just reality. But reality for the characters is also warped by reality TV, a phony interaction made “real” by dint of its record, and round and round it goes, every reflection distorted, every interaction a setup. More

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    The Creepiest Moment Onscreen This Year Occurred in a Comedy

    “The Curse” has been described as cringe, but look closely and you’ll see it plays with the classic tropes of horror like jump scares.There’s telling a bad joke. There’s bombing. And then there’s what happens to Nathan Fielder’s character, Asher Siegel, at the end of the fourth episode of “The Curse,” near the halfway point of a series that goes to disorienting extremes.Siegel and his wife, Whitney (Emma Stone, in a remarkable comic performance), are making an HGTV show about eco-friendly renovations. After a focus group takes issue with Asher’s sense of humor in the show’s pilot, he finds himself in a comedy class where an instructor assigns an exercise: Get laughs without saying a word.In the episode, which premiered last weekend on Showtime and Paramount+, the camera swirls around a circle of students mugging for chuckles until it focuses on Asher, looking nervous in anticipation of his turn. You feel for him. In his finest performance to date, Fielder plays a guy who prides himself on being funny but deep down has doubts. Suddenly, in a quick flourish, he grabs his ears and flaps them while emitting a piercing squeak that could be described as unholy. No one laughs. But this face is more than unfunny. It’s unsettling, almost feral, working like a jump scare more than a punchline. It’s a gesture gone so wrong, it’s destined to become a meme.The year began with hit movies like “M3gan” and “Cocaine Bear” that pushed horror into camp comedy. It’s ending with a nervy television series that moves in reverse. It’s been called cringe comedy, and there are funny moments, but they set up something darker and dread-filled, potentially supernatural. Fielder has always toyed with genre, elevating prank comedy and using reality television to make unexpectedly moving drama. He’s leaning on the tools of horror here. With “The Curse,” the jangly sound design, manipulative cinematography and periodic bursts of oddball monstrousness offer a few of the creepiest moments of the year.While the plot is involved, with several threads, its engine is a classic horror trope: Is this supernatural-seeming thing of the title for real?Action commonly takes place through windows in “The Curse.”John Paul Lopez/A24, Paramount+ and Showtime“Rosemary’s Baby” and “Get Out,” among other movies, both invite the viewer to ask this question along with their paranoid protagonists.Asher possibly enters the realm of the fantastical after balking at the criticism that his plan to “consciously rejuvenate distressed homes” is gentrification. “We don’t believe the G word has to be a game of winners and losers,” he tells a journalist. Rattled by this exchange and concerned about his image, he summons his camera crew to film his giving a $100 bill to a small Black girl. Then when the camera stops rolling, he asks for it back. She responds by saying she is putting a curse on him, which he initially brushes off but gradually becomes obsessed with. Whether Asher is actually cursed hovers over the entire 10 episodes until a twist in the final episode that should polarize the audience.In “Psycho,” Alfred Hitchcock proves that the easiest way to make us empathize with a killer is to keep the camera on him. Even when Norman Bates is trying to cover up a murder, audience members will eventually, if managed right, find themselves gravitating to his side. Fielder has always been preoccupied with this emotional power, the distorting impact of the camera, not only on its subjects but on viewers, too. It’s easy to sympathize with Asher’s struggles as he navigates a skeptical press, his troubled new marriage and a bullying father-in-law as well as his craven producer, played by Benny Safdie. “The Curse” keeps complicating this identification, subverting and questioning it.In Episode 3, Asher’s stern face is cast in a shadow at an auction as he buys a home he didn’t realize is housing the girl who cursed him. A scene in which he uses a drill to open her door is played for terror, focused on her cowering inside. The rumbling power tool and the fear on her face cast this as a classic home invasion scene with Asher as the terrifying intruder. His stated good intentions are repeatedly mocked in the ominous way his scenes are shot.This draws attention to the Siegels as privileged outsiders casually entering and destroying a new neighborhood in the guise of liberal do-gooder assistance. The focus doesn’t just hit the theme of gentrification, but also, in a subplot involving an Indigenous artist, the genocide and exploitation that built this country.Fielder in “The Curse.” By filming frequently from outside windows and doors, the show creates an alienating effect, as if we’re only seeing part of the picture.Richard Foreman Jr./A24, Paramount+ and ShowtimeIt’s heavy stuff but not always on the surface. “The Curse” has many long, mundane set pieces that double as metaphors. Take the physical comedy of Asher helping Whitney to take off her sweater as they fall over each other. They try to recreate the funny moment for the cameras. But it doesn’t work, so they try again, emphasizing more strain and resistance. It’s a sharp satire of how people fake struggle for clout and approval.The show is full of goofy humor about tragic subjects, a cartoon about oppression, a Holocaust joke. The main plot is just the old story of vain fools trying to make a show, but grim subtext comes through in the formal qualities of the show.For instance, shots are commonly filmed through a window from the outside looking in. Instead of bringing us into a vehicle where Fielder and Stone are talking, the camera is placed beyond the closed car window, in traffic. Most of a scene in a hospital room is viewed through the door or window. So much of “The Curse” takes place outside planes of glass that the mirrored glare is a signature of its aesthetic.This has an alienating effect, giving the sense that we’re only seeing part of the picture, a distorted one at that. But there’s also something creepily voyeuristic about the shot, a cool detachment, the sense that everyone is under a microscope. It evokes the most famous shot in all of horror: The classic slasher point of view, used most famously in “Halloween,” where we share the perspective of the serial killer looking through a home’s window.But there’s something about a peeping-tom perspective that adds authenticity. It comes off as less staged and slick than most television and thus more real. Does that make it more fake or less? Fielder has always loved exploring this question. “The Curse,” his most scripted show yet, is continually shifting between comedy and horror as well as naturalism and the fantastical. The lines are much blurrier than we think, but on this show, that’s where the action is.After his monstrous face in class, Asher looks humiliated. But also taken aback, as if he revealed more than he wanted or knew was there. More

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    ‘The Curse’ Makes for Some of the Creepiest Horror of the Year

    “The Curse” has been described as cringe, but look closely and you’ll see it plays with the classic tropes of horror like jump scares.There’s telling a bad joke. There’s bombing. And then there’s what happens to Nathan Fielder’s character, Asher Siegel, at the end of the fourth episode of “The Curse,” near the halfway point of a series that goes to disorienting extremes.Siegel and his wife, Whitney (Emma Stone, in a remarkable comic performance), are making an HGTV show about eco-friendly renovations. After a focus group takes issue with Asher’s sense of humor in the show’s pilot, he finds himself in a comedy class where an instructor assigns an exercise: Get laughs without saying a word.In the episode, which premiered last weekend on Showtime and Paramount+, the camera swirls around a circle of students mugging for chuckles until it focuses on Asher, looking nervous in anticipation of his turn. You feel for him. In his finest performance to date, Fielder plays a guy who prides himself on being funny but deep down has doubts. Suddenly, in a quick flourish, he grabs his ears and flaps them while emitting a piercing squeak that could be described as unholy. No one laughs. But this face is more than unfunny. It’s unsettling, almost feral, working like a jump scare more than a punchline. It’s a gesture gone so wrong, it’s destined to become a meme.The year began with hit movies like “M3gan” and “Cocaine Bear” that pushed horror into camp comedy. It’s ending with a nervy television series that moves in reverse. It’s been called cringe comedy, and there are funny moments, but they set up something darker and dread-filled, potentially supernatural. Fielder has always toyed with genre, elevating prank comedy and using reality television to make unexpectedly moving drama. He’s leaning on the tools of horror here. With “The Curse,” the jangly sound design, manipulative cinematography and periodic bursts of oddball monstrousness offer a few of the creepiest moments of the year.While the plot is involved, with several threads, its engine is a classic horror trope: Is this supernatural-seeming thing of the title for real?Action commonly takes place through windows in “The Curse.”John Paul Lopez/A24, Paramount+ and Showtime“Rosemary’s Baby” and “Get Out,” among other movies, both invite the viewer to ask this question along with their paranoid protagonists.Asher possibly enters the realm of the fantastical after balking at the criticism that his plan to “consciously rejuvenate distressed homes” is gentrification. “We don’t believe the G word has to be a game of winners and losers,” he tells a journalist. Rattled by this exchange and concerned about his image, he summons his camera crew to film his giving a $100 bill to a small Black girl. Then when the camera stops rolling, he asks for it back. She responds by saying she is putting a curse on him, which he initially brushes off but gradually becomes obsessed with. Whether Asher is actually cursed hovers over the entire 10 episodes until a twist in the final episode that should polarize the audience.In “Psycho,” Alfred Hitchcock proves that the easiest way to make us empathize with a killer is to keep the camera on him. Even when Norman Bates is trying to cover up a murder, audience members will eventually, if managed right, find themselves gravitating to his side. Fielder has always been preoccupied with this emotional power, the distorting impact of the camera, not only on its subjects but on viewers, too. It’s easy to sympathize with Asher’s struggles as he navigates a skeptical press, his troubled new marriage and a bullying father-in-law as well as his craven producer, played by Benny Safdie. “The Curse” keeps complicating this identification, subverting and questioning it.In Episode 3, Asher’s stern face is cast in a shadow at an auction as he buys a home he didn’t realize is housing the girl who cursed him. A scene in which he uses a drill to open her door is played for terror, focused on her cowering inside. The rumbling power tool and the fear on her face cast this as a classic home invasion scene with Asher as the terrifying intruder. His stated good intentions are repeatedly mocked in the ominous way his scenes are shot.This draws attention to the Siegels as privileged outsiders casually entering and destroying a new neighborhood in the guise of liberal do-gooder assistance. The focus doesn’t just hit the theme of gentrification, but also, in a subplot involving an Indigenous artist, the genocide and exploitation that built this country.Fielder in “The Curse.” By filming frequently from outside windows and doors, the show creates an alienating effect, as if we’re only seeing part of the picture.Richard Foreman Jr./A24, Paramount+ and ShowtimeIt’s heavy stuff but not always on the surface. “The Curse” has many long, mundane set pieces that double as metaphors. Take the physical comedy of Asher helping Whitney to take off her sweater as they fall over each other. They try to recreate the funny moment for the cameras. But it doesn’t work, so they try again, emphasizing more strain and resistance. It’s a sharp satire of how people fake struggle for clout and approval.The show is full of goofy humor about tragic subjects, a cartoon about oppression, a Holocaust joke. The main plot is just the old story of vain fools trying to make a show, but grim subtext comes through in the formal qualities of the show.For instance, shots are commonly filmed through a window from the outside looking in. Instead of bringing us into a vehicle where Fielder and Stone are talking, the camera is placed beyond the closed car window, in traffic. Most of a scene in a hospital room is viewed through the door or window. So much of “The Curse” takes place outside planes of glass that the mirrored glare is a signature of its aesthetic.This has an alienating effect, giving the sense that we’re only seeing part of the picture, a distorted one at that. But there’s also something creepily voyeuristic about the shot, a cool detachment, the sense that everyone is under a microscope. It evokes the most famous shot in all of horror: The classic slasher point of view, used most famously in “Halloween,” where we share the perspective of the serial killer looking through a home’s window.But there’s something about a peeping-tom perspective that adds authenticity. It comes off as less staged and slick than most television and thus more real. Does that make it more fake or less? Fielder has always loved exploring this question. “The Curse,” his most scripted show yet, is continually shifting between comedy and horror as well as naturalism and the fantastical. The lines are much blurrier than we think, but on this show, that’s where the action is.After his monstrous face in class, Asher looks humiliated. But also taken aback, as if he revealed more than he wanted or knew was there. More

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    Popcast (Deluxe): What Is Going on With the Grammy Nominations?

    Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The nominations for the 2024 Grammy Awards, which include multiple nods for the true pop stars Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, but also for the R&B sensualist SZA, as well as the loose-knit indie rock supergroup boygenius and the former talk-show bandleader and exuberant border-crosser Jon Batiste.“The Curse,” the new show on Showtime from Nathan Fielder that continues his philosophical and moral experimentation with the tropes of reality television.New songs from Dua Lipa and Jack HarlowSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More