On The Rehearsal S2 Finale
The subject of Nathan's potential autism has proven a hot topic in the wake of the finale. I weigh in as an autistic person who finds Nathan relatable.
Last night, the second season of Nathan Fielder’s acclaimed comedic documentary series, The Rehearsal, aired its season finale. Spoilers abound for those who have not seen it, though the reaction to the ending has proven somewhat divisive. Nathan, who many have publicly speculated for years has autism, decides not to get the results of an autism test so that he has plausible deniability about being medically cleared to fly Boeing 737s. Articles are already popping up criticizing his recklessness. However, this demonstrates a deep level of media illiteracy about what he has created.
In the final moments of the show, Nathan admits that he now works part-time for a company that is called in whenever jumbo jets need to be moved between airports outside of regular flights. We see him on several of these jobs, narrating about how being in the cockpit of such a big plane proves he’s among the best and smartest. Obviously, he says this with a self-aware sense of irony, though that does not make his statement false — he passed very rigorous training procedures to prove he was capable of flying that plane.
The core thesis of Season 2 of the Rehearsal is that communication issues between the pilot and first officer on planes is at least a secondary cause of a lot of crashes, and that, by addressing that problem, aviation safety could be improved. Earlier in the season, we see him proposing a seemingly silly exercise between “First Officer Blunt” and “Captain All Ears” to try to encourage open communication. While kind of intentionally over-the-top to fit the deadpan comedic tone of the show, we see this tested in a real world example in the finale.
On Nathan’s first 737 flight, he flies as captain with a more experienced first officer. After takeoff, the first officer shows some visible signs of emotional discomfort, and, when gently prodded about it by Nathan, insists that he’s fine and nothing is on his mind. However, when Nathan suggests that exercises, even as both of them laugh at how absurd it is, as “First Officer Blunt,” his co-pilot quickly admits that Nathan made some minor mistakes in takeoff. Clearly, he was reluctant to say this at first since, on the whole, Nathan was showing a high degree of flying competence and, after all, they did take off safely. But it is these sorts of mistakes that are realized and not addressed that Nathan seeks to prevent.
Much of what Nathan seems to try to show with this season is that what autistic people experience is simply an amplified version of the human experience — that we all, to some extent, do not say the things that we really should because of fear of making the situation awkward. The “First Officer Blunt” exercise is directly inspired by similarly silly-seeming exercises created for autistic children to practice overcoming fear of social situations.
Nathan reminds me a lot of myself. I did not even consider the possibility that I might be autistic until my twenties. My father was averse to getting me diagnosed with anything for fear that it might ruin future job prospects. He chocked up issues that he and I both had to Generalized Anxiety Disorder — but refused to get him or myself formally diagnosed with that.
I spent much of my grade school years literally studying how human interaction works to better understand it. My childhood best friend often would coach me about how to act in a given situation. I have particularly vivid memories of him explaining to me that “sorry” when someone died was appropriate, even if I had no reason to apologize. I took piano lessons from a wonderful instructor who had incidentally a reputation for working well with neurodivergent students, but despite the fact I felt comfortable with that teacher on a level I did not with most adults in my life, I refused to consider that there could be something “wrong” with me. Once out in the real world, I quickly climbed the ranks in the tech industry, further proving I clearly was fine.
The thing is, in the way that mattered, I was fine. Nothing about my autism prevents me from doing most jobs well. In fact, the tendency to want to pick apart and analyze things that capture your interest can lead to a higher degree of technical skill. Likewise, other conditions that can ground a pilot — ADHD, depression, anxiety — are not themselves barriers to being able to do a job well.
However, by creating perverse incentives for people to never get properly diagnosed and get help for these conditions, they can become a problem. Though much of the last couple of episodes focused on the fact Nathan potentially has autism, much of what the season communicates overall is that everyone is susceptible to these dynamics to some degree, and by making them an object of shame, we get in the way of solving them.
In many ways, Nathan’s saga of learning to fly reminds me of how I once took a job driving a speed boat around the Tennessee River for a crew coach who wanted to be able to keep a close eye on the athletes while ensuring that the boat’s wake did not disrupt the ships. Initially, I got a lot of negative feedback. It was not that I was incapable of safely driving a boat, but I stoically sat there not trying to communicate with him about how well he could see things, often second guessing myself about how close I needed to be that — quite literally — rocked the boat. However, by the end of that job, I was deftly maneuvering the boat and found it strangely calming instead of stressful, even looking forward to that part of my day. Because, after all, how could there be anything wrong with me if I was clearly able to handle the safety hazards of speeding a boat around such a major waterway?