The Best Nathan For You Episodes To Watch For Fans Of The Rehearsal

Whether he's conducting supremely weird interviews or sniffing out strange pockets of Americana, Nathan Fielder is one of comedy's most unique talents. His HBO series, "The Rehearsal," makes this clear in every single episode. In "The Rehearsal," Fielder helps real people practice difficult moments through ever-more absurd set pieces. The results are strange, outright surreal, and hilarious. 

This success isn't a surprise to fans of Fielder's previous series, "Nathan for You," one of the modern era's most memorable works of comedy. Taking its cues from business makeover shows like "Bar Rescue" and "Kitchen Nightmares," "Nathan for You" sees the titular comedian play a heightened version of himself (one of the best TV characters of the last decade, in our opinion), who attempts to help small businesses and individuals through strange schemes. These stabs at virality tend to blossom into overly complicated and incredibly expensive set pieces that are as ludicrous as they are humorous.

Nathan's awkward comedy, risk-taking, and endless desire to go overboard make every episode of "Nathan for You" a delight. If you love "The Rehearsal," you're sure to enjoy it — but which episodes, you might be wondering, are the most relevant to the HBO series? We've got the answers. These are the best episodes of "Nathan for You" for fans of "The Rehearsal" to watch, from long-simmering quests for lost loves to literal high-wire acts.

"The Claw of Shame," Season 1's penultimate episode, contains Nathan's first experiment with the show's format. Here, he escapes handcuffs mere seconds before a robotic arm pulls his pants down. What's worse, this disrobing happens in front of children. He's promptly arrested for indecent exposure. And that's not all: "The Claw of Shame" also samples some of Season 1's less successful pranks that previously hadn't made it to the air.

The wildly overdetermined nature of this episode's project is classically Nathan. After he realizes that he can't have human helpers remove his pants before the buzzer goes off — this could potentially get them into trouble with the law alongside him — Nathan gets a lab to create a giant-armed robot and special pants and undies that are designed to be easily removable. We get to see the results in real time, which means we get to watch Nathan become more and more nervous throughout the episode. The pressure memorably mounts as he's chained to a solid steel bar and forced to confront the law.

In the first scenario of the Season 1 finale of "Nathan for You," "Private Investigator / Taxi Company," Nathan hires a hostile private investigator to follow him for 24 hours. If the man does his job, Nathan promises to leave him a five-star Yelp review. But he's not going to make it easy: Nathan proceeds to hire a private investigator to follow the first private investigator. He also arranges nine lookalikes — who, amusingly, don't particularly look like him — to throw the man even more dramatically off his game. 

One of these lookalikes goes to live in Nathan's house, and is asked to do the dishes and a few other household tasks. Nathan takes his place, in turn, at the man's own home. This proves to be a pretty strange experience for the lookalike's fiancée. What follows is a kind of complex dance, as the real Nathan, his copies, and his two private investigators make their way around Los Angeles. Plenty of weirdness ensues, and several near-misses occur. The way this wild scenario exponentially expands, eventually unfolding into absolute madness, should be very familiar to fans of "The Rehearsal."

In Season 2, Episode 3, "Pet Store / Maid Service," we see Nathan's penchant for ever-increasing scope on full display. If two maids can clean a house in two hours, then 40 maids should be able to clean the same house in six minutes, right? With this absurd calculation in mind, he hires a charter bus to take an army of maids to their first appointment. We're treated to the sight of 40 laughing house cleaners getting off the bus and cleaning every inch of a domicile in record time — albeit, more than the promised six minutes.

Next, Nathan hires a focus group to help him shine up his personality. Four random strangers who are picked for their demographic spread are given microphones, with which they can advise Nathan through the earpiece he's wearing. They give him truly wild tips about his clothes, his mannerisms, his physical presence, and a whole lot more. This scenario is particularly reminiscent of "The Rehearsal," in that it puts Nathan on the line in a major way. Empowered by everything he's learned and a new (some might say sleazier) look and vibe, he tries to ingratiate himself with the hostile private detective from the Season 1 finale. Watching this play out is priceless.

Season 3, Episode 5, "Smokers Allowed," is another episode-long adventure in scope, as Nathan tries to help a struggling pub by making it legal to smoke there. The plan is simple: He presents the night's activities as a work of experimental theater, conducted before a seated audience of two. While this goes well, what makes it so utterly Nathan is the way he decides it needs to be legitimized after its initial success. Nathan turns the whole night into a full-scale production, using professional transcribers to jot down the "lines," adding four more viewers, and hiring actors, as he does in "The Rehearsal."

The only thing keeping this from being indistinguishable from an episode of "The Rehearsal" is the fact that it actually takes place in a real-world bar and not a fake recreation. But everything we eventually see in the latter show is here, including a gruesome scene in which Nathan forces a pretty actress to tell him she loves him not once, but at least a dozen times. It's unnerving, desperate, and awkward, but most of all, it's Nathan putting his own loneliness and dating trouble on blast. A whole lot of comedy has come from shame, and Nathan furthers the tradition by finding a huge amount of humor in his skin-crawling interactions with women.

In "The Hero," the exceptional finale of "Nathan for You" Season 3, we see Nathan strive to give a stranger named Corey everything he wants. He does this by turning himself into Corey and performing a seriously dangerous feat, making him into a hometown hero.

As you can imagine, Nathan does not do this transformation by halves. His full-scale impersonation of Corey requires a whole lot of advanced prosthetics, some serious makeup, months of training, and some dicey relationship humor. Nathan even conducts interviews and dates women in his Corey get-up, as he tries desperately to create the man's perfect life. It all culminates in a truly death-defying stunt: Nathan-as-Corey walks a high wire strung between two buildings to raise money for charity. It truly must be seen to be believed.

In the end, it's impossible to say whether Nathan succeeds in reshaping Corey's life for the better. But in attempting to do so, he creates a poignant investigation into what it means to be Nathan Fielder. This definitely sets the tone for the more "Rehearsal"-esque Season 4 of "Nathan for You," and "The Rehearsal" as a whole.

One of the most affecting episodes of "Nathan for You" is its two-hour series finale, "Finding Frances." Here, Nathan helps William "Bill" Heath, a Bill Gates impersonator from Season 2's "Souvenir Shop," in a way that leads directly into "The Rehearsal." As he looks back on his life, now than he's past middle age, Bill finds himself somewhat lost. He comes to the conclusion that it all went wrong when he left Frances, his lost love, to chase his dreams in Hollywood.

Bill Heath is an unreliable narrator, to say the least. His particular brand of creepiness plays off Nathan's in a way that is simultaneously calming and likely to make your skin crawl. As they set out on their quest, Nathan hires a charming woman named Maci, to see how Bill will react. Bill's not interested, but Nathan and Maci hit it off in such a poignant way, their subplot ends up obscuring the actual plot. 

All four seasons of "Nathan for You" are summed up in the tender, surprising, and complex way Nathan interacts with his new friend. There's a reason The New York Times named "Finding Frances" one of 2017's most memorable episodes of television: It's unlike anything else. The line from "Finding Frances" to "The Rehearsal" is especially clear, and one fans should take the time to examine. If you love "The Rehearsal," you're sure to love seeing Nathan Fielder's genius take shape in this one-of-a-kind installment.