Warning: The review of the season premiere of The Rehearsal will contain spoilers.

Before pressing play on episode 1 of season 2, I wondered “what the heck does airline safety have to do with The Rehearsal?” I had not watched the trailer but had read the headlines and was left confused as to how this conceit would track with what was previously established in season 1. Even after watching the darkly comedic cold open, where creator-writer-director-star Nathan Fielder watches as two actors recreate a plane crash from black box transcriptions, it’s not entirely clear where the season will be headed. But then Fielder has a meeting with John Boglia, a former board member of the National Transportation Safety Board, and it all clicks into place.

For the uninitiated, or for those who can’t recall back to 2022 when season 1 aired, The Rehearsal is all about providing regular people with the opportunity to “rehearse” potentially awkward or difficult situations as a way to feel more comfortable in their own skin. Or, at least, that’s how Fielder puts it. But anyone who saw season 1, or his previous Comedy Central series Nathan For You, knows that Fielder has many plates spinning at once, all threatening to spin out of control at any given moment. Once Fielder reveals to Boglia that his “research” has shown that a lack of communication between the flight crew features prominently in most recent plane crashes, it becomes clear what the end goal will be. But, with The Rehearsal, the fun lies in getting to that final destination.

Nobody knows reality television on a fundamental level like Nathan Fielder. For every genuine human emotion we see on shows like Survivor or The Kardashians, Fielder knows that the scene was likely the result of elaborate set-ups and careful editing from the producers behind the scenes. It’s a sentiment that made audiences go a little insane with season 1 of The Rehearsal, as viewers couldn’t stop wondering what was real and what was a set-up from Fielder. I can absolutely buy that Fielder would spend his free time researching plane crashes, but the show can’t hide its credited writers (this episode, it’s Fielder & Carrie Kemper & Adam Locke-Norton & Eric Notarnicola).

Season 2 makes the lines between fiction and non-fiction slightly less blurry, but episode 1 still introduces us to the season’s first great “character”, Moody, a twenty-something airline pilot who lives with his parents and fears his long distance Starbucks barista girlfriend will leave him for one of her customers. Another criticism levied at Fielder with The Rehearsal was whether he was looping in these people because of how intrinsically weird they were, or if it just progressed naturally and he just knows people and entertainment well enough to bring it out of them. With Moody, it’s important that we’re not laughing at him; in fact, Fielder almost goes out of his way to make the experiment about himself whenever possible to make himself the target of the humor.

Human connection lies at the heart of The Rehearsal, and season 1 quickly morphed into Nathan inserting himself into his experiments to comedic effect. While relatively light on laughs, episode 1 contains everything great about the show in a nutshell. It all begins around the halfway mark, as Fielder calls United Airlines to try and get permission to film past the security line and into the pilot’s lounge, only for it to be revealed that he was rehearsing with someone down the hall. Fielder likely knew there was no way he would get access, but it nevertheless makes for a series of real, hilarious moments.

Thus begins the recreation of the Houston airport, down to every last detail, populated by around 70 actors “trained in the Fielder Method”, who studied their real-life counterparts. This even goes so far as to hire a team of travel agents to be on-call 24/7, so the actors can book a flight and follow their subjects, with some going all the way to their hotel rooms. Would it have been just as easy, and less costly, to simply have the actors imagine what a real team of airport staff would do? Probably, but that would go against Fielder’s entire ethos. 2025 has already seen a great deal of impressive production design elements in TV, from Severance to Hacks, but The Rehearsal is nothing if not a feat of art direction.

For as fascinating as it is in introducing the thrust of season 2, there’s an inherent sadness at the heart of the final part of episode 1. Nathan sets up another rehearsal for Moody with his girlfriend as a way for him to build up confidence. Their conversation, as he confronts his fears about her receiving gifts and flirting with customers, is The Rehearsal‘s cringe comedy working perfectly. Did we just see the end of a relationship at the hands of Nathan Fielder? I’m not sure how much Moody will factor into season 2 going forward, but if this is the last we see of him, he burned bright in the season premiere. Even more unclear is where the show will go in these next 5 remaining episodes, but if this week’s installment is any indication, we’re in for a doozy of a ride.