The series that investigates the possible human cause behind many plane crashes

One of the main symptoms of the uniqueness of The rehearsal (The essays), which has released its second season, is how difficult it is to describe what it is about. Its creator, Nathan Fielder, studied business before training in the art of comedy. Nathan for you, the comedy show in which he offered to improve business proposals that weren't working out, and which led to surprising results. The essays part of a similar idea. Here it is about analyzing why a real-life situation doesn't work, in order to test possible fictional scenarios that contribute to solving it. In catastrophes such as the Corporate Airlines plane that crashed in Missouri in 2004 or the US-Bangla Airlines flight that crashed upon landing in 2018 in Kathmandu, the recordings reveal how verbal communication between pilot and co-pilot failed.

To certify his hypothesis and at the same time explore the possibilities for improvement, Fielder implements one of his essay strategies in the form of a (supposedly) comic television format. He speaks with an expert on the subject, has an in-depth conversation with a co-pilot to better understand the psychology of these professionals, and holds an audition to find a good part of an airport terminal! So far, the elaborate but understandable approach of an episode of The essays, in which all the stages are followed to create the perfect simulation of reality in order to end up "improving" reality itself. But the charm of this series, an impossible mix of Borges and new forms of television comedy, is how Fielder starts from an already complex scenario to transport us to increasingly unusual and unexpected situations. In the first two episodes, we end up attending a casting call for musical talent in which the pilots act as judges and in which the creator explores why, when faced with the same rejection announcement, we react differently depending on the person who tells us. And we even see how Fielder compares Paramount to Nazism for reasons too long to recount.

But, for now, it's the third episode that has generated the most buzz. And rightly so. It all begins with a couple who have cloned their dead dog. However, the new animals don't behave like the original. So Fielder reconstructs the setting in which the first clone was raised to see if the clones eventually adapt their behavior to the circumstances. A surprising (and sometimes hilarious) way of addressing the eternal debate about whether identity is forged or comes to us as standard. But the paths of The essays are inscrutable. So from there we end up with a recreation of Chesley's life Sully Sullenberger, the famous pilot who successfully submerged a plane in the Hudson River. At the opposite end of the spectrum of the biopic that Clint Eastwood dedicated to himFielder's Sully includes tremendously grotesque scenes and others that reach an unsurpassed level of emotion. His hypothesis about what was the key to Sully's success that fateful day must be seen to be believed. Simply brilliant.