Nathan For You: Absurdity is Funny

There's this show I love watching and have seen multiple times called Nathan For You, presented by a guy called Nathan Fielder, who graduated from one of Canada's top business schools, with really good grades.

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The Show

Each episode involves new people, apart from the leading person, Nathan. Occasionally different people he has hired will come back to make some guest appearances when their skills are needed, but for the most part, each episode involves new people, new situations, new businesses to ruin, and business owners to torment.

The situations are always awkward, and it's like he goes out of his way to make things awkward, just by being himself.

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Here's the intro to the show, and a bit of insight into to kind of person this is, and the sort of show it is.

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Essentially, the premise of the show is this guy going around to different small, struggling, or failing businesses and helping them out with advice and things they can do to succeed in the world.

His ideas are bizarre and it baffles me that people actually go along with them. I think some people just want to be on camera, and at that, are afraid to disagree with the showrunners in case they get cut. So, to keep up appearances they, "Play along with him, and the weird ideas."

For example, in one episode, he is helping out at an ice cream shop and decides to attract new customers with a new ice cream flavour that's never been done before. Poo.

The poo-flavoured ice cream succeeds in bringing in the crowds, and the reactions from some of the people trying out this fetid flavour are absolutely hilarious.

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Here's a clip of the poo-flavoured ice cream being revealed to the owner/ customers.

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Is It Real or Fake?

This is one thing that I'm always wondering. I honestly can't tell.

He seems to get a lot of flak from people, and his interactions always tend to be awkward. Unless he has a pool of talented actors, who excel in cringe/ awkward encounters, I don't think it's fake.

Is it scripted on his end? Of course, it would be extremely hard to run a show of this scale without pre-production. Although, from working on documentaries, I know that while you have a rough idea of how something will go/ be filmed, you have to expect the unexpected, and be capable of thinking on your feet.

In order to not get tied down to one idea, and allow yourself and your crew to be fluid in your endeavors.

This show does have a lot of moments like that, where something doesn't go to plan, and in a VO of Nathan, he discusses their new idea moving forward and does their best to capture what's going on.

In that way, it really feels like a documentary series, as opposed to a comedy series. It reminds me of an extremely awkward Louie Theroux, and that's one style of show I always enjoyed watching, so this show was my kind of thing from the moment I first saw it.

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The Movement

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Here's an example of something getting bigger than it was supposed to.

He is working for a moving company and decides to hire a body builder, to say that he got his physique from working as a mover.

Alongside this, he hired a Ghostwriter off Craigslist - something he does a lot... Craigslist is his go-to site for hiring people, and he usually finds oddballs to go along with his schemes.

Anyway, the bodybuilder wouldn't stop going to the gym, and Nathan was afraid he'd get caught, or spotted and ruin the whole thing, so he ended up hiring a private investigator to catch him out, since when he was confronted about it, the bodybuilder lied and said he stopped.

The book ends up being bizarre, and along with this, the bodybuilder gets invited onto some morning news show to talk about his experiences. It's wild, and well worth checking out.

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Is It For Everyone?

I have introduced this show to a few people, my sister, and an old mate of mine loved it, my partner hated it, and my dad didn't like it either - even though I thought that he - out of everyone I introduced it to - would like it.

It's an awkward show, and Nathan comes across as a weird and awkward guy. I'm sure that can leave people not liking it, or how it's presented. Me personally, I have a soft spot for awkward weirdos, so find it really funny.

It's hard to explain, and I'm not sure if this is Canadian sense of humour, or just the sense of humour of a guy from Canada, but I enjoy it, and it resonates with me. The style of comedy kind of reminds me of something like Peep Show, or The Inbetweeners.

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The Final Episode

The final episode of this series is something completely different than the actual show.

It revolves around one of the people he previously hired from Craigslist, who continued to hang out and visit Nathan's office after the episode.

As they got close, Nathan heard his story about the Ex-Girlfriend of this old man, whom he had never seen after leaving home for LA back in the 50s/60s, and since he had her on his mind, Nathan decided to help him find her.

It's funny, in the typical weird and awkward way, but it's also really heart-warming in a way and just feels very different than what the show had been up to this point.

Even if you don't watch the show, watch this episode, 'Finding Frances,' it's well worth checking out if you are interested in the premise of it. I won't spoil it, but it's good.