BEEFING

Nathan Fielder’s HBO Series ‘The Rehearsal’ Compares Rival Streaming Service to Nazis

Nathan Fielder brings up a past beef with Paramount+ in the latest episode of “The Rehearsal.”

It can be hard to tell someone that you disagree with them. It can be even more difficult to do so when that person holds more power than you, and speaking up could lead to negative repercussions.

That theory is how Nathan Fielder ended up calling streaming service Paramount+ Nazis on the latest episode of his HBO series, The Rehearsal.

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In The Rehearsal, Fielder transforms people’s everyday problems into elaborate psychological experiments.

Last week, Fielder took on aviation safety, showing viewers how one of the leading causes of plane crashes is poor communication between captains and their co-pilots due to imbalanced power dynamics.

This week’s episode digs deeper into that same issue, drawing from two different experiences from Fielder’s own past—including the professional exchange that led to him accusing Paramount+ of antisemitism.

First, he revisits his time as a 23-year-old junior producer on Canadian Idol, where he spent long days rejecting hopeful contestants—an early lesson in the personal toll of saying “no” to authority and wielding authority himself.

Hoping to find a solution to the issue of poor communication aviation safety, Fielder hires a group of real-life co-pilots to judge and reject participants on a fake aviation-themed singing show. Following their rejections, Fielder gives contestants a survey to rate the likability of their judges.

Of all the co-pilots, one named Mara receives the highest likability score. Her success comes from using words like “fantastic” and “beautiful” to make the person feel good before rejecting them.

Curious to explore her method further, Fielder places Mara in a cockpit simulator with a captain named Jeff, a man whose inappropriate behavior with women has resulted in him getting kicked off most dating apps. During the simulation, Jeff begins to ask Mara a series of inappropriate questions about her dating life. Unlike in the singing competition, Mara struggles to shut Jeff down, as now there is a power imbalance between them.

This interaction reminds Fielder of that exchange he had with executives from Paramount+ in late 2023, after the German version of the platform removed an episode from his 2015 comedy series Nathan for You. During the episode, Fielder, who is Jewish, partners with a rabbi to create Summit Ice, a Holocaust awareness-themed outdoor clothing line.

The stunt was intended to troll a popular jacket maker that had published a tribute to a well-known Holocaust denier. In the end, Summit Ice sales have raised millions of dollars for Holocaust awareness organizations.

Germany’s Paramount+ told Fielder they removed the episode because they felt “uncomfortable with anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the Israel/Hamas attacks.” Their decision led to the episode’s removal from Paramount+ globally.

“Before long, the ideology of Paramount+ Germany had spread to the entire globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable,” Fielder narrates as a graphic showing the Paramount logo taking over Europe plays on screen (a metaphor for the Nazis and their ideology taking over the continent).

And so, for the second experiment of the episode, Fielder decides to recreate his interactions with the company. Fielder’s emails are overly friendly and passive, despite his frustrations. Realizing he needs to try role-playing himself, Fielder builds a replica of the German Paramount offices, but in the style of a Nazi war room and hires an actor to play their executive, with the hopes of getting to say what he wished he had back then finally.

“Look, I know you guys probably feel a lot of shame about what you did in the past, and now you’re trying to overcompensate by being the world leaders in fighting antisemitism,” Fielder says to the Paramount executive. “But when it comes to art, I think you have to know your place, and you have to let us Jews express ourselves.”

(Paramount has not commented on the episode.)

At the end, Fielder returns to his time as a producer on Canadian Idol. Despite finally being honest with the Paramount, Fielder can’t seem to be as sincere with the new contestant. He tries to let her down nicely, but the interaction doesn’t go as planned.

He scores a 6 out of 10 on the likability survey.

Clare DonaldsonEditorial Intern

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