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Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Yeah, I was just getting ready to post about the Jasmine AMA on reddit. It's a good one. It's kind of fascinating though because most of the interactions are real in the sense that they don't feed them lines and a lot of the editing that she mentions was just for clarity or reframing events (I think she said that there was a second date that they ended up cutting, so they had to ADR part of his good to her to fix the timeline). Like, I wonder if the fake dating game was originally a concept on the episode that they cut because it just wasn't that interesting, they didn't have enough time, or they decided it was repeating a concept they'd done before.

The AMAs seem to confirm that the only big fake thing with Nathan for You is that just about everyone knew that they were going to be on a TV show which is going to shift their behavior and make them put up with a lot more silly stuff. Then again, at some point that was part of the meta joke for the show. In the Finding Frances finale they even kind of address that by taking a little time at the start to acknowledge this "in universe" and explore what makes a person pretend to be a Bill Gates impersonator just so he can be a weird guy on a TV show.

It also adds some humor to the kid stuff when you know that the parents agreed to put their kids through all this out of desperation for an acting credit so that their kid can be a star. Or that the rabbi arguing that it's in fact very respectful to put a full-scale crematory display in a clothing store is probably doing it because he thinks that this could be his big break on the TV expert circuit.

I would love more behind the scenes stuff though. The end of Eric Andre's Bad Trip featured a lot of footage of the actual filming and prep process, and it was really interesting. Especially because they let you see how many times they just had people who quietly bailed or didn't react in funny ways (or just got angry for real). It takes a lot of screening and prep to actually make funny spontaneous stuff.

Also loved this episode. Great start and it was a little more sweet than I expected. Going off of the previews it looks like next week might be more off the rails. I'm curious how weird they're going to get with the show.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Jul 16, 2022

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Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

No Mods No Masters posted:

The vulture article interviewed some people who were not happy about their NFY experiences at all and honestly some of the allegations there were borderline yikes. NFY always walked a fine line, and even nathan in the article admits not perfectly at that

Interesting read and about what I expected, it's also tricky since Nathan is in character as a souless consultant and nails it at times based on the people who I met who were going into consulting. Nice to hear that he and the judge got along at least.

And yeah, How To was really good at walking the line between making fun of people and knowing when to back off. I remember the segment on the puppet guy that was nice, and weird and regular funny until the black puppet came out, but Wilson excused himself rather than ride it out.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Oh, good. I kind of remember that interview too but didn't know where to find the link. Yeah, I think the first description made it sound a little more negative. It was more something that the interviewer was poking at when I think it was just part of Nathan's research into fleshing out a character with trouble relating to people in social settings.

Here's the relevant bit:

quote:

When a server comes to take our order, he looks genuinely panicked when I ask for a turkey sandwich. “Will you be offended if I get a breakfast thing?” he asks with unblinking, stone-faced sincerity. “Should I match you?”

He eventually felt comfortable enough to go for oatmeal, but the question of just how weird this guy really is – and how much his TV persona matches his real self – lingers. “There’s only about a 10 percent difference between the Nathan on the show and real-life Nathan,” says Nathan for You co-creator Michael Koman. “The character is just an amplified version of him. He’s awkward socially. Most people in comedy are awkward socially. But he’s a guy with a very solid, wonderful group of friends, who is a loyal, ethical person. He’s a very sweet man, and he’s very concerned with your well-being.”

“The scariest thing about the show is that [character] is Nathan,” says Tim Gilbert, Fielder’s college roommate and a fellow comedian. “It’s not super-put-on.” Gilbert is quick to qualify, though, that the real Fielder always had plenty of friends – and female admirers. “For as long as I’ve known him, women have loved him. I think it’s because he [seems] hard to get.”

Fielder researched Asperger’s syndrome while fine-tuning his TV persona, but he rejects any suggestion his character is on the spectrum. “There’s a lot of social disconnects that people experience all the time that have nothing to do with autism or anything,” he says. When I ask if he’s ever wondered whether he has a developmental disorder, he’s genuinely horrified. “Please don’t tell me this is the angle of your piece,” he says.

Although I swear there was another interview where he said that he mainly looked into it because people kept asking if his character (even pre Nathan for You) was meant to be on the spectrum.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Jul 18, 2022

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
^You're making me flashback to the old porn Ask/Tells that would always have multiple people who needed to be sincerely assured that BangBus wasn't really ditching the girls at the end.

JAMOOOL posted:

amusing find from Reddit, Kor was on an an episode of Cash Cab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BADGSUbWfMk

according to the person who posted it, he did tell the team he had a Masters, and also apparently Cash Cab is fake? (it's a real game show, but they don't just pick people up off the street like they say they do)

Since I know this one from being an old Cash Cab fan, they supposedly didn't tell people that it was Cash Cab. They'd post an ad for a related TV thing, a lot like Nathan for You does, and get applicants that they could sort through. I assume this also rules because they can get the paperwork signed early. I heard that it was often an ad for "Go in a taxi and drive around New York and talk to the driver/camera about historic sights around the city that you like and your personal experiences and stories." They must have had a similar one to get tourists locked in.

They did supposedly pick up the occasional person for real and a few of them are in the show. The problem is that if you grab random people off the street they usually bust out in 3 questions and it makes for bad TV or they'd say that they didn't have an hour or so to gently caress around with being on TV (from start to finish of the whole process).

Also the cash at the end was fake, they got mailed a check later :).

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Yeah, Nathan for You was kind of fun as a layered thing, since if you nerded out hard and started spotting the "reality TV" efforts you could still enjoy people putting up with absurd stuff because they were desperate to get demo reel footage for their pitch for an Investigation Discovery show or putting up with Nathan's nonsense since they getting their business on TV might help (or they were just having fun, which is nice too). Or like I said earlier, you had parents putting their kids through some really weird stuff all because they thought it'd help make their kids a star.

At times the show even acknowledges that this was the case. Like when Nathan tried to pitch his own TV show about the security guard who was easily distracted by big breasts, or again, parts of Finding Frances.

And also with probably a few exceptions it didn't feel like Nathan was truly "cruel" to people in a way that they couldn't wiggle out of once filming was done. Hiring a strange ghostwriter off of Craigslist and publishing a terrible book of his wasn't the thing that was going to ruin that guy's dream.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
^ Strangely a lot of people don't really research things, unless I'm falling for a lot of kayfabe around it in interviews with different people. A lot of business rescue shows say that people just kind of blindly apply and don't get the nuance of the show that they end up on. Eric Andre swears that at least for the first 3-ish seasons a lot of the people either had no idea what they were getting into or just thought he was a "weird comedy show...you know like The Colbert Report." For that matter, old Colbert regularly had people show up with no idea of what to expect. Craig Ferguson interviews devolved into trainwrecks from agents not prepping people. So on and so on.

TychoCelchuuu posted:

If they were all actors, yeah. When it's a real guy coming clean to his real friend about a real lie he told, then surely it's not just a show, right? If Kor were Brad Pitt then fine, whatever, gently caress with some celebrity because it's funny. But he's just some guy from Brooklyn. I get that he signed a release, so maybe for some people that means it's open season on the dude, but it still makes me feel weird the way all reality TV shows make me feel weird. You don't "gotta" do certain things to a person's life to make an entertaining TV show. If you must do these things, then make a fictional show where you can do whatever you want with zero ethical worries!

Nathan Fielder should really make some type of series that explores the nature of reality TV, how it exploits people and the mixture of scripted and real. That might be a lot by itself so maybe he could add in some type of commentary about American capitalism culture. Use a business rescue show as the framing device. It could probably run for at least 3 seasons. I'll hit him up on Twitter.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jul 20, 2022

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
To not just gently caress around, Nathan For You was also kind of extra funny if you were into business rescue stuff since I don't know if all goons appreciate how close some the jokes were to just regular rear end episodes.

Like, there was an episode of the generally decent Hotel Impossible where they show up at a struggling Niagara Falls motel. Since the show didn't want to just say that they were screwed, they obsessed about making a cheap-looking wedding chapel and kept insisting that adding a little fake stained glass window arch into a room onsite would definitely drive big money and "convinced" the owner into it with about the same enthusiasm as Nathan's "And I knew that they were in." And the guy just had to kind of go along and nod while it was clear that that thing was coming down as soon as the cameras left.

The Profit went to a toy company, politely told them that their toys sucked and kids wouldn't like them, then forced through an idea about making branded NASCAR racetracks (because The Profit guy is associated with NASCAR) and maybe NASCAR would advertise them because they were desperate to get credit for promoting STEM and maybe that could trick people into buying these cheap cars. And the owner objected every step of the way until they had a big blowup because he didn't want to do the show's idea.

Or probably like, most of Bar Rescue, I didn't watch that one much.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jul 20, 2022

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
The makeshift walking laptop desk was perfect too.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Gorman Thomas posted:

I wish it was the grandson piss guy, that dude rocked

It's kind of incredible that I think Nathan only broke character twice in the show that I can easily think of. The grandson piss guy and the exorcism.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

sticksy posted:

I don’t remember the episode but also the brothers when he followed them back to their apartment and they talked about boning down in the same room with random chicks.

Right. I was going to look up the name of the episode but apparently it was just "You Break It, You Buy It." The one with the antique store. And not just the same room, I'm pretty sure they said that they had Eiffel Towered at least once.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
I was sure that Robin was an actor that Nathan built based on her failed dates right up until the car ride. But holy poo poo, they actually found a Christian numerologist for her.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Help Im Alive posted:

I would like to hear more about the government's sasquatch liaisons

It's probably a lot more wild than you'd think. If I'm guessing my theory right he's into the Missing 411 stuff, which is the theory that organized sasquatch clans are being allowed to abduct people from national parks with the government's assistance :).

Again, Nathan's pretty great at just letting people talk and getting crazy material out of them.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

roomtone posted:

I'm not from the US, but I've never watched any finding relatives type show, so I didn't have that basis for comparison - but a lot of what makes Finding Frances work so well is that Bill isn't portrayed neutrally. His flaws are focused on as much as his desire to find some old love from his youth, and there's the thread of Nathan being lonely running alongside it. There's this constant skirting between ridiculous and sad which I doubt you'd get in some straight faced find my grandmother type of show starring a presenter and some Normal Person.

the whole thing was permeated with this feeling of futility and loss, of throwing your life away for a deluded fantasy and then trying to scramble back to where you started, in yet another deluded fantasy. and it also managed to still be funny when it wanted to be.

Yeah, just to back this up, having seen/heard the occasional show/podcast about reconnecting with people, part of what Nathan did that was interesting was push back on the narrative. A lot of times the shows just kind of run with what the lead is saying. For example, they'd neither just rip off the bandaid and point out that Bill and Frances weren't kept apart by circumstances or other people, but because he was a young, arrogant horny guy. Nathan keeps poking at it, which creates room for exploring some interesting points about the usual topics (lies we tell ourselves, fake history, dreams, longing, second chances, etc.). And it also kind of has fun pointing out the false reality of those other shows.

And it gives room for Nathan to kind of contemplate his own show. At the time, it was the endcap to 4 seasons of pretty crazy TV and conveyed a sense of Nathan kind of wrapping up what he set out to do. There's a cut line (or maybe an easter egg) in the subtitles at one point where Nathan narrates to the audience that he's worried that he's just clinging to the show because he's scared to let it go and that maybe he'd only followed Bill this far into his questionable story because he was running out of interesting ideas. Which of course kind of tied into the story. It was a good cathartic end...that's not really going to hit if you're literally watching his new show.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

goferchan posted:

Huh, that last pic with the masks makes me think this happened after the show finished filming but I guess who knows how long filming took. Episodes 1 and 2 had to have been in 2019 though

Nah, it's more recent than that. The crew are wearing masks in several of the shots and when they move her stuff out of the house.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Based on the teaser poster I figured he'd end up with an all creepy robot family, but I feel like that'll be a fake out.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
I just finished episode 3 and yeah that's a great one. Although it did feel almost a little too personal when Patrick did the final rehearsal. I didn't see anybody mention it, but I kind of liked the meta gag at the end about Nathan wondering how so many people are able to just play along with his weird scenarios.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

MeinPanzer posted:


The thing about Brody is that he doesn’t seem to recognize that what Nathan is doing here, and even more so in NFY, is so obviously satire of media culture, and is thus political. The running theme of the show so far is how you can create true human experiences using deception—in a time when criticisms of truth in media are rampant. He might criticize the show for being cruel, which I get to a certain extent—though a lot of more straightforward documentaries are, too—but arguing that it’s not satire is just bizarre.

I finally read the review and wow it is worse than I would have thought. Like, it pisses me off that this person gets paid to do this. Just genuinely stupid throughout.

It's a "reckless betrayal" for Nathan to scan Kor's apparent with a fake gas company team. Oh, wow. I thought it was cool and good and normal for Nathan to do that. The viewer would never laugh and think that that's a crazy thing for Nathan to do and question what he's doing. Nathan didn't go awkwardly go to a Google PR person and ask if they're run by Satan (like the hilarious Borat movie, so I don't know how to feel about her conspiracy theories. Or the basically stated meta joke that she's well suited to living in his fake world because she's kind of living in her own separate world anyway. Nathan is creating fake emotions in others and noting that he can't create them in himself. I guess he most just be stupid and not realize that he can't do it because he's the puppet master. Yeah. That's it. Nothing to read into or think about.

It just never seems to cross his mind that Nathan's character is supposed to be like this. There's an entire segment in the second episode that's basically him turning to the camera and explaining that he/his character is lonely and happy to have the excuse to live a fake family life. It's not subtle.

The Borat comparison feels kind of bizarre too, because I feel like Cohen can be a lot more cruel. Nathan mostly tends to just let people talk with a few exceptions in Nathan For You. Even with Patrick's antisemitic moment Nathan kind of gave him an off ramp that he chose not to take. Maybe my memory of it is fuzzy for both shows, but Borat 2 was a lot harder to watch since there were more scenes of stuff like "Oh, isn't this a great cage for a wife?." "This propane would be great for gassing Jews" and an uncomfortable person just kind of nervous laughing and not sure how to play along.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Aug 1, 2022

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
efb: But specifically check out the first couple of paragraphs where he frames Nathan as a condescending monster and how Kor must have felt so betrayed. Just a bizarre read of the situation, especially since that's literally the joke.

It's like he watched a different show and I guess that's interesting in its own way. The show has a very heavy-handed conversation about Willy Wonka as kind of a villain and mad man even if he didn't mean to be and they play the song over the end of the episode. I guess that's not clear enough :shrug:.

Honestly given that he liked Borat, it seems like he just legitimately doesn't understand Nathan's whole thing or has just decided to be against it. Either that or its Roomtone's writeup that Brody managed to map Borat as political commentary and since The Rehearsal isn't 101 stuff about Trump/QAnon/Covid it's just not working for him.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 12:20 on Aug 1, 2022

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Terra-da-loo! posted:

Uh also Angela is apparently cool w/ how the cut came out

So like, that... says something. Like, about her as a person

Not too surprising if you've met that kind of Bless Your Heart style Christian before. They're usually happy to just say some Sunday School level stuff, sigh and smile that these people just haven't accepted Jesus' truth yet :shrug:. At least that was my read on her.

The interesting bit is the thing at the end confirming that her exit was sincere and truly because she felt like Nathan had made it his rehearsal. Or at least she's sticking with the story for the interviews.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
It's tricky. On the one hand there are a lot of red flags to the really out there conspiracy stuff, but a shocking amount of that stuff does filter through to the mainstream. I've had at least 2 completely otherwise normal people swear that it's just a known fact that lots of Satanists adopt black cats around Halloween to sacrifice them.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

MeinPanzer posted:

The Zionist shpiel and Nathan's discomfort with it is extra funny considering that Nathan and Seth Rogen went to high school and started out in comedy together and Seth got into a little bit of trouble over pretty mildly anti-Zionist comments a couple of years back.

The founder of Summit Ice has a little more wiggle room to work with.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Phenotype posted:

Yeah, like, they're literally the same websites haha, I'm having a hard time picturing a modern-day website that talks about the devil running Google that wouldn't ALSO be talking about how the Jews run the media and the LGBTQ+ are grooming your kids and whatever else. I can't really picture Angela reading about how the devil runs Google and really getting into it, but then later on down the same page where it says the Jews are using the vaccine to feminize America's military and she's like "no, that's too far, the Jews are good people like anyone else."

I don't really disagree, but to play devil's advocate, since her dream is supposedly to go pro with an Etsy fragrance shop she might be hearing that stuff filtered through the TikTok crystal mom community which does filter out some of the worse stuff. For a time in QAnon there were a lot of meetups were people with vague human trafficking fears would roll up to a QAnon rally and get rolled over by the people screaming about elites sacrificing babies. The whole joke in the third episode was that she was fairly happy to just go along with Nathan's fake reality because she was already just kind of chilling in a weird fake reality without questioning it.

And yeah, to echo other posters, we kind of did the whole Satanic Panic thing on a national scale within my lifetime so...it's a pretty big chunk of the country that you'd be cutting out. Not necessarily wrong to want to do that, but yeah... I was coincidentally just catching up on a podcast series about a big Satanic Panic dude and they mentioned how you'd see plenty of very real, very important cops and figures sincerely stating that 500,000 people were getting killed each year by cults. And that was just an unquestioned reality for a lot of people in the 80s and 90s. You sort of get a little glimpse of how one of those people live (in a very scripted reality) thanks to Rehearsal.

Then again...

Baron von Eevl posted:

I want you to consider that Angela met Robbin, liked him a lot. Heard him ramble incoherently, still decided he was the one for her. Now, do you trust Angela's judgment in raising a child?

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Also, as we're seeing "canonically" now, Angela wasn't really pretending to be a mom if Nathan wasn't there filming. So a lot of the time it was probably just the kid playing in a room while a crewman or real/pretend nanny stuck around.

Also they're being paid what was implied to be decent money. It didn't give a number but in the shot of Nathan's flowchart it said something about substantial/significant/something compensation.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Aug 16, 2022

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

holefoods posted:

Echoing the other comments that the show is interesting but the other rehearsals were a lot more interesting and fun. I can imagine it would be extremely surreal and easy to lose yourself in a replica of a bar that you’re familiar with but creating an entire imaginary life doesn’t quite resonate the same way. There were never really any stakes for Angela. Having kids was something she wasn’t committed to one way or another. The rehearsals for Kor and the gold digger guy were things that were real in their lives that they needed to do.

I feel like sentiment is going to turn a lot on whether he lands the finale. It looks like it'll be interesting, but with how much the fake family life was built up it'll need to have a good ending. I think he can pull it off.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Crescent Wrench posted:

Does anyone have their head around the HBO Max content purge well enough to explain how they benefit from removing vintage Sesame Street episodes? Is there some kind of tax on puppets?

Bigger thing is that they're in a full panic because they have a big loss on the books and are afraid of shareholders getting mad. So they're slashing and burning to try and make the numbers look better. Somebody had the line that they're butchering their laying hens to sell the meat.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Golden Bee posted:

The silent birthday party was loving hilarious

Silent Ninja Turtle put it over the top.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
I'm sure Nathan planned out his speech (and rehearsed it :)) but if the kid's reaction was scripted then he's a really good actor.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Somebody posted something earlier saying that none of the trivia night regulars were there and the employees were different than usual. If that's true, it's hard to say if that was so they could put in plants for jokes and control things better or if it was just a typical TV thing where they didn't want to have a ton of blurred out people so they put out an ad. Same thing that they do for restaurant rescue shows.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
^About the only thing I'd say on that is that my read was Nathan's "No, I'm your dad" was a little darker statement of this really being about how much he did wish it was kind of real and that he was going to miss having a family. Maybe. Like the thing from Film Critic Hulk about Finding Frances' emotional core being the guy doing a role reversal and realizing that he was the one who messed up the relationship and he needed to own it. But yeah, if there was a thesis to the series it was about not obsessing about failures, doing your best and trying to fix things if you break them :shrug:.

It's kind of funny that some poster predicted a critic getting upset that Nathan "exploited a child's suffering." Just didn't expect it to be Sepinwall. I'm a little disappointed that about half of the review boiled down to it giving him tummy rumbles and making him feel uncomfortable, even if he did an okay job trying to unpack it. I'm reminded of that Twitter post about the whiplash from reading the tweets about Nathan being a manipulative psycho and then you'd see the clip and he just kind of made someone look silly on TV. And also the season was borderline marred by the people popping up to insist on how much fun they had. And the last 3 episodes had moments where Nathan literally looked at the camera and pointed out how absurd and weird and unrealistic the situation was.

To be fair, I guess it is kind of a Rorschach test, like Sepinwall said. I think some people are assuming that Remy's way more hosed up by this than he'd really be. I don't have kids, but even just being around my nieces made it pretty clear that it would almost certainly just be a phase that he'd work through. It is a little bit of a bummer that he's feeling left out about not having a dad in his life, but they handled it fine. I don't think we were supposed to doubt his mother's faith in him to work through it.

My mom's seen a few episodes of this and I'm really curious to hear her thoughts on the finale, since she actually used to administer "reality/cognitive" tests as part of her job. Just sitting down with kids and grading them on things like "Is this book character real? What about unicorns? Big Bird? Spider-man?" to make sure that they're developing okay.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Yeah, at least Sepinwall put in the effort. I think I'd still ding him for the fact that most of his concerns are addressed in text, he just doesn't really believe or like it and got really hung up on what's real and what's fake.

I did appreciate his point that at least in the canon of the show this is a little bigger of a deal since Remy's mom agreed to it originally as him just chilling with a pretend single mom for a week, and then Nathan changed it with the help of his flowchart (again, canonically). Which is an interesting wrinkle.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
At the very start of Nathan For You his character, if I remember right, was much more of a general mockery of the type of pod person that fills out a lot of consultant groups.

It tied in well with making fun of reality TV/business rescue shows. Just running with the idea of what would happen if they didn't present the host as a charismatic and magnanimous benefactor, but some weird dude with stupid ideas that you couldn't turn down (or good ideas that he took 5 steps too far :) ).

But then as the show went on there was room to kind of build up the character and have fun exploring it. And yeah, it makes The Rehearsal hit different since it flows on so well from the types of questions he was playing with toward the end of Nathan For You.

I'm really curious what a second season looks like.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

bobjr posted:

The best part about that episode was showing the 10 dollars they were saving for this crazy hike.

That or the hidden box reveal

Yeah, it's a simple joke but the little box with the "Potential Rebate - $16.12" popping up as Nathan leads them further into the mountains is so good.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Nothing about the video, but the top comment that Nathan's plan to sell booze certificates to minors was basically just an early NFT is blowing my mind. Although at least you could cash those in.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
It's really close to the energy of something like Finding Frances. Just a really long look at the kind of guy who would have funded his own vanity budget action movie in the VHS era.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
That moment when she just off-handedly declares that Abraham Lincoln reincarnated as Obama was just straight Nathan for You. That and the shot of the framed "new" Lincoln quote.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Aye Doc posted:

*snip*

no other complaints about this wonderful show

I think that was a part I kind of liked about it. Paul's still Paul and you're stuck with that reality. If he doesn't have some real realization, then it's just not going to happen. And there was no way he was going to have a realization. As you saw, even when he was straight-up pressured into apologizing he hedges with the "if I was wrong." I think they made their point well enough. He had an opportunity to have a pretend reconciliation with her Rehearsal-style and even just pretending to forgive her pissed him off so much that he couldn't keep his composure. This was never going to end with Paul having some life-changing moment where he realizes how hosed up this whole thing was.

I did love that they managed to get the little scene where:

"Who's behind it? It could be the mob or maybe even the Vatican"
"Wait, are you talking about real life or the Chronicles"
"I don't know! :)"

Kind of sums it all up.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Yeah the way the editing is done they kind of fall in with the psychic since it's setting up the line of people all profiting off of Paul, including the lawyer getting Paul to talk on his radio show. I want to say that Jenn had a line about how many hours of work it generated because they were chasing Audrey everywhere. That came off ominously in the moment.

I think with the last episode that they were pretty much cleared as just doing a job, since they clearly could have bled Paul dry if they'd wanted.

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Since it dislodged the memory anyway, I remember some podcasts and threads doing deep dives into communities of dudes reviewing sex workers Yelp-style. And at least some of it is pay for time since a weirdly common bit was dudes pissed off at sex workers always asking if they wanted them to make a cup of tea since it was just a secret way to burn 15 minutes.

But yeah, Paul's whole view of sex work and trafficking being this weird amalgam of TV and movies was good.

Parakeet vs. Phone fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Mar 23, 2023

Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009

Khanstant posted:

The impractical Jokers are down a man. Maybe this is Nathan's opportunity to break into the group. Nathan would have such twisted punishments, like having to take a piece of gum that will shock them.

Might fit in well, since I just remembered that one punishment was supposedly a months-long con to convince Q or Sal that they were facing federal trespassing charges from climbing onto a statue at a courthouse, complete with a fake meeting with a fake federal prosecutor.

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Parakeet vs. Phone
Nov 6, 2009
Still a little surprised that Nathan seemingly did a whole hellish parody of a TikTok house that didn't really come to anything besides that video.

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