re: Nathan Fielder - The Rehearsal - new show on HBO

I feel like the exact target audience for this show. The humor is so absurd, the situations so meta and macabre. I connect with it yet cringe at such a fundamental level.

For me, I grew up not knowing about autism or “the spectrum”. I did not realize that was what was wrong with me. I had a very difficult time understanding social cues, making friends, and connecting with people. I did not understand them nor them me. I often felt detached, like an observer more than a part of society.

To try and connect with people, I first turned to comedy, but that didn’t work how I’d hoped. What I found funny just wasn’t funny to most people l. Next, I tried mimicry. I was essentially raised by a television set, so I sought out behavioral role models that I felt people would connect with. I started adapting those characters’ mannerisms in my regular life to see how people would respond to them. Over time, I learned what worked and what didn’t in order to have a sorta successful social life. I was still somewhat awkward, but came across as relatively “normal” in most surface level conversations.

This technique became increasingly challenged when I found myself in my first real long term romantic relationship. I constantly found myself internally documenting her behavior, studying what made her upset verses happy. Learning how to diffuse conflict. I tried to treat her like some sort of human rube goldberg device where inputs always had set outputs. No matter how much I tried to understand her, her wants, her needs, my data always felt out of date. The same approach that solved the previous conflict would fail disastrously the next time. Much like the French in 1940, I found myself consistently flummoxed fighting the previous war, and learning all the wrong lessons.

I had learned to anticipate my partner’s needs to an extent, but the mental strain of constantly running simulations in my head to prepare for various conflicts was getting too much for even my autistic brain to handle. No matter what I did, it always ended the same way, and in real life, it did too. She left me, and I was broken. After 8 years in that relationship, I had to relearn how to interact with other people. I now live a life full of anxiety and regrets. I can’t seem to live outside of my own head or forgive myself for my mistakes. It is incredibly cathartic watching Nathan play through the same themes. I even once dated a single-mother for a while and had her child get very attached to me, much like that poor child did with Nathan. This show is simultaneously my ultimate fantasy (being able to literally simulate difficult simulations so that I can know before hand if there exist positive outcomes to certain interpersonal conflicts) and my ultimate nightmare (reliving my same mistakes through simulations that are inherently flawed on account of the impossibility of accurately knowing other people and predicting their emotional behaviors).

Watching him play house and basically get an abbreviated parenthood experience of raising a growing child reminded me of dating that single-mother, baby-sitting my niece and nephew, and reminding me of the fact that I am incapable of actually having a child of my own. It is entirely fascinating, horrifying, hilarious, and sobering all at the same time.

In Nathan, I essentially see what would happen if the most selfish, insecure, and controlling parts of myself were given an almost unlimited budget and power to control my life. It’s…unbelievably accurate as to how I imagine it would play out for me. This show is like a wake-up call.