[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for The Rehearsal, Season 2 Episode 2, “Star Potential.”]
In The Rehearsal Season 2, Nathan Fielder is spinning together no shortage of unexpected elements, leading to situations like real-life airline co-pilots being asked to judge real-life amateur singers for a TV singing contribution. But it’s all part of a bigger design that the comedian is slowly revealing, one with plenty of personal angles for him — such as the way he used the second episode of his HBO series, streaming on Max, to call out a different streaming service.
As Fielder explains, one 2015 episode of the Comedy Central series Nathan for You included a subplot about Holocaust awareness, with Fielder creating a new brand of outdoor apparel after his preferred brand of outdoor apparel published praise for a noted Holocaust denier in its catalog. As of November 2015, Summit Ice had generated more than $300,000 for Holocaust education, and since then, Fielder says in the episode, it “has raised millions of dollars for Holocaust awareness.”
The Nathan for You episode, “Horseback Riding / Man Zone,” is largely focused on important business innovations like creating a safe space for boyfriends to hang out in womens’ boutiques, and attaching helium balloons to people who might weigh too much to safely ride horses. It is also not currently available for streaming on Paramount+ (the home platform for Nathan for You and other Comedy Central-produced series), with the service skipping right past it (as seen in the below screenshot).
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Screenshot via Paramount+
It’s not unheard of for streaming services to remove episodes from a show’s line-up for content reasons. That said, the cause for such removals is usually due to issues surrounding race, such as the (numerous!) times It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and 30 Rock depicted blackface. “Horseback Riding / Man Zone” does feature a few grim images, as Fielder’s suggested retail display for Summit Ice isn’t a big hit with the store owner, but only because it depicts the reality of what happened during the Holocaust. As one does, when trying to impart Holocaust education and awareness.
In The Rehearsal, Fielder casts actor Alexander Leiss as “Fake Nathan” to re-enact his discovery of the episode’s removal in late 2023, as well as his attempts to email Paramount and find out what happened. The first answer he gets is that the episode was removed due to “sensitivities,” before it’s explained further that Paramount+ Germany removed anything that touches on antisemitism in the aftermath of the October 7th, 2023 terrorist attack.
Fielder uses a map of the world borrowed directly from a high school history class on World War II to show how “before long, the ideology of Paramount+ Germany had spread to the globe, eliminating all Jewish content that made them uncomfortable.” Now, as Fielder accurately documents in the episode, searching Paramount+ for the word “nazi” pulls up 50 results and “hitler” pulls up 10, while “judaism” goes unrepresented.
Yes, I did these searches myself Sunday morning, and I have one minor update for Fielder: As of writing, “judaism” does have one result — searching the word pulls up Spotlights, a Showtime series consisting of “short films showcasing visionary talent.” But it is entirely possible that Fielder does not subscribe to the full Paramount+ with Showtime package, costing as it does $12.99 a month versus $7.99 a month.
That said, it’s on Showtime that one finds The Curse, the 2023 series Fielder starred in with Emma Stone and Benny Sadfie — which may or may not one day get a second season. Fielder’s efforts to use his maybe-not-actually-patented rehearsal technique to help him confront Paramount over the “Horseback Riding / Man Zone” removal aren’t that effective. That said, he makes his opinion about the decision heard with not-so-subtle touches like the aforementioned map and casting an actor named John Hans Tester as “Fake Paramount Plus Executive” — you might know Tester best from his six episodes on Prime Video’s The Man in the High Castle, playing Josef Mengele.
“A man with a grudge using his TV show to smear us, instead of trying to understand us,” is how Fake Paramount Plus Exec describes Fielder’s efforts here, and it’s worth noting that watching a working comedian on this level use his show on one corporate-owned platform to call out another corporation like this is remarkable on its own merits. Maybe this is Fielder’s way of saying that a second season of The Curse isn’t happening anytime soon? Then again, who knows.
At the end of “Star Potential,” Fielder doesn’t get “Horseback Riding / Man Zone” back on Paramount+, but the season is early yet, and whatever journey Fielder is on right now still feels like it’s just beginning. In the meantime, never fear: Nathan for You is also streaming on Max right now — including the episode “Horseback Riding / Man Zone.” Right where it’s supposed to be.
New episodes of The Rehearsal premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.