After only six episodes, the first season of Nathan Fielderthe last show, Repetition, unfortunately ended. On the bright side, however, it proved successful enough for HBO to renew it for a second season, which guarantees that there are sure to be more goofy, hilarious and oddly heartbreaking episodes for fans of the quirky humor of Fielder and the honest exploration of difficult emotions.
It’s an unusual but gripping show that sees Fielder help people through difficult situations in their lives by painstakingly rehearsing difficult events with all sorts of variables to prepare for all possible obstacles and outcomes. It gets a lot more as it goes along, and while it’s impossible to list all the moments and scenes that made the first season great, some do stand out.
Sneakily cheating in Trivia
The first episode of the series introduces us to Fielder’s first client, Kor. He’s a man with a passion for quiz/trivia nights, but he’s anxious to tell his quiz team that he doesn’t have a master’s degree, which he lied about years ago. saying he had one.
Fielder realizes that Kor won’t be able to focus on one of his teammates’ confession if he focuses too much on trivia. Therefore, he finds out what the questions of the night will be and orchestrates a series of events that will give Kor the answers without him realizing that he is cheating, as Kor would strongly object. The way Fielder gives Kor the answer to a question about who invented gunpowder is particularly hilarious and may be the funniest moment of the season.
Kor’s Confession
After most of the first episode was spent rehearsing, we see Kor finally talking to her teammate, Tricia. Despite preparing for the worst, things seem to be going relatively well, and it’s really nice to see Kor losing weight on his chest, as it was clearly something he felt he had to do.
The natural, unrehearsed conversation is perhaps the longest time Fielder has been offscreen in the first season. We sit down with Kor and feel his anxiety as we watch him agonize over when to tell the truth, and it’s an emotion very rarely captured in film or television. It’s a long, drawn-out scene and captured from just one real angle, but as the episode’s highlight, it’s gripping television.
The “confrontation” with Fake Kor
As Kor walks away from Repetition first episode in addition, the last scene we see with Fielder is not so optimistic. At first, he appears to be confessing his lie to Kor (about how he faked the trivia by stealthily revealing the answers), but it is revealed that he was talking to “Fake Kor”: an actor that Nathan himself used to repeat his interactions with the real Kor.
It’s a shocking and deflating moment. The episode ends with Fielder unable to tell the truth about the real Kor, which casts a shadow over the rest of the series regarding Fielder’s motives and ability to speak the truth when needed. Kor’s story ends in the first episode, but the dark and unsettling ending for Fielder reveals that his “story” for the season has only just begun.
Robin
The second episode sets up a storyline that unfolds for the rest of the season. Angela is a woman who hires Fielder to help her train to raise a child from birth to adulthood, as she wants to be a mother but doesn’t know if she would be able to handle all the challenges that come with the being a parent.
But inevitably, it is a secondary character, Robbin, who inadvertently takes the spotlight for the second episode of the series. He’s an unusual, hilarious and unpredictable figure who sees weird patterns in numbers, argues with his roommate, and can’t stop talking about when he totaled his Scion TC at 100 mph for some reason. Like it or not, it almost steals episode 2.
In search of gold
In the series’ third episode, Fielder worries that Patrick—who wants to rehearse a conversation about his grandfather’s will that he must have with his brother—is not getting enough into his rehearsals. Fielder thinks something needs to be added to rehearsals to better practice something with high stakes.
He ends up asking the actor playing Patrick’s brother to introduce Patrick to another actor, playing the actor’s grandfather. It involves searching for gold, which Patrick finds with this fake grandfather, who then has a fake inheritance split between Patrick and the rehearsal brother to make Patrick feel more nervous during rehearsals. It’s outrageously funny and complex, but unfortunately Patrick suddenly quits the rehearsal process before a conclusion can come.
Nathan’s “Fielder Method”
Nathan Fielder takes a detour in Episode 4, away from Angela, and starts a weird and unorthodox theater studio in Los Angeles. His so-called method is to learn how to act by observing strangers and nailing their mannerisms, which one student (correctly) points out sounds a bit like harassment.
Things take a turn when Nathan introduces a fake Nathan who sets up a rehearsal Fielder Method studio, in which Nathan plays the role of one of his students from the real studio’s student body. Things keep spiraling and getting weirder and more meta, making this perhaps the most dizzying and giddy episode of Repetition the whole first season.
Adam teen
Eventually, in Episode 4, Fielder realizes he’s spent too much time on his theater studio project. He returns to Angela and her rehearsal son, Adam (who Fielder said he’ll start living with at the end of Episode 2), only to find enough rehearsal time for Adam to “achieve” his teenage years.
Teenage Adam brings a whole new level to the show, and the actor who plays him during rehearsal is also really good. Things get shockingly dark at the end of the episode, at which point Fielder decides he wants to “go back in time” and effectively brings the repeat kid – Adam – back to his six-year-old self, which means that the rehearsal goes up with the help of a child actor.
Dr Pet
Nathan Fielder settles into life with six-year-old Adam in the fifth (and penultimate) episode of Repetition. Gone is the difficulty and tension of living with a teenager, and in his place is a more carefree child with whom Nathan seems to genuinely bond.
They even play a doctor/patient game, in which Adam becomes Dr. Fart, whose medical advice is questionable at best. But as funny as the storyline might be, it leads to some of the episode’s heaviest moments, as Nathan clashes with his rehearsal co-parent, Angela, when she’s offended by the toilet humor. , which Nathan and Adam otherwise enjoy.
Nathan’s parents
Nathan Fielder’s real parents appear in the series’ dramatic fifth episode. They provide perspective on what Nathan does – being understandably confused and alarmed by certain things – and help add to the episode’s main subject, parenthood.
That’s because Angela and Nathan – as co-parents repeating Adam’s upbringing – get into several surprisingly tense arguments (including the Dr. Fart debacle) about their parenting styles. It’s enough that Angela decides she wants to back out of her rehearsal, at which point Nathan decides to continue on his own.
Nathan and Remy
Repetition The final episode isn’t devoid of laughs, but the more serious moments end up being the most memorable. Much of the episode deals with one of Adam’s child actors, Remy, and how he grew attached to Fielder and struggled to tell the real Nathan from Nathan during rehearsal.
It explores the aftermath of Fielder’s ambitious child-rearing rehearsal and all of the themes the show had touched on throughout its first season. It’s a low-key but dramatic finale where everything about the show seems to fall apart, which makes the prospect of it rebuilding for a second season all the more intriguing.
