Gold Digger

The first episode was incredible, but the second and third episodes focus on people who are very hard to like. The woman who wants to see what it's like to raise a child is such a caricature of of a half-witted religious fanatic that I'm pretty sure she's just trolling.

This is artifice and reality, comedy and tragedy, birth and death, connection and loss, art and life all touched upon so masterfully that we're left with an illusion that we've been given several complete life stories with an astonishing level of detail, and all of that in under 28 minutes . Sebajmathews said it perfectly in a previous review go read that this is mainly to add another 10/10 to the average.

New heights are reached with this episode's absurdly hilarious yet deeply existential perspective on the worlds we try to orchestrate for ourselves--this time centered around emotion. It's hard to imagine anyone but Nathan conjuring up this smorgasbord of cringe comedy, insights on the human condition, and borderline psychopathic levels of planning. The high-effort production feels seamless while succinctly fitting so much overlapping content into 30 minutes. This fact is absolutely downplayed (largely for comedic effect), but I can only imagine the rehearsals upon rehearsals for the rehearsals. Not every show can juggle this many feelings and remain as cohesive, and I was beyond shocked at the hysterical lengths this episode took to get there. For a less reflective show, lines could have easily been crossed, but already in its third episode, The Rehearsal is shaping up to be an artistic masterpiece. A must-watch. 10/10.

I believe it's in this episode when all the pieces start to connect. It's when Nathan chooses to become a father in the rehearsal for a child growing up, while juggling the rehearsal for a brother who can't access his inheritance. We're also suddenly surprised to learn that Nathan moved the fake restaurant from episode 1 across several states, just for comfort. I can't imagine the costs behind something like that. When even the inheritance story gets more layers as Nathan creates a scenario where he has an actor play a grandpa to offer his inheritance, that's when this show really clicked for me. The comedic moments are great, but what surprised me is how touching parts of it are. This show will go down in history as one of the more important pieces of art in the genre of docuseries.