The Most Uncomfortable Show Ever Made

Some shows never leave you. There’s a devious moment toward the end of the premiere episode of The Rehearsal – HBO’s slippery new hidden-camera comedy from earnest Canadian Nathan Fielder – that’s as much a part of me now as anything else I’ve ever seen on TV.

Fielder sits down with one of the show’s real-life participants, an easy-going 50-year-old Black man named Kor Skeet, and confesses to lying about something trivial – his timorous delivery is comedy’s answer to mumblecore. But when the camera cuts to Skeet, the trivia-enthusiast has been replaced by an actor who looks a good deal like him. The actor delivers a brutal dressing down, and Fielder sheepishly takes it.

In the following shot, Skeet is Skeet again, warm if a little quiet. The temporary recasting is never acknowledged. Maybe it never even happened?…