NATHAN FOR YOU: Finding Connection in a Disconnected World
Comedy CentralThe following article contains spoilers for all four seasons of Nathan For You.
The beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 emphasised how detached from reality humanity has become: social media rules most interactions and often paints a life that is brighter and more fulfilling than it really is. There is a need to be seen, loved, and appreciated, but by constantly seeing others doing more and better things, strong feelings of depression and loneliness are bound to rise up in everyone. It becomes harder to connect with other humans on a deeper level, and it often seems like manufacturing excuses to interact with other people is the only socially accepted way to socialise without showing how utterly alone these people are.
The hit Comedy Central show Nathan For You both signalled this change and gives some hope for the future. The docu-reality comedy show sees Nathan Fielder use his knowledge in business and marketing to support small shops and entrepreneurs to gain some success. Rather than giving them genuinely helpful and practical advice, he concocts increasingly more elaborate plans that range from the purely comedic and silly to the outrageous and inventive. Even though Fielder plays himself, the way he acts on the show creates a character that lives and breathes on his own, making him the main reason for the show’s success.
Nathan Fielder is an everyman: he is insecure and lacks any sort of confidence, his build is slim and short, and his voice is quiet and a bit nasal. Part of his relatability comes from being socially awkward, as well as using Wikipedia, Craigslist, and body-building forums as part of his research. But Nathan’s key characteristic is his lonely soul, out in the world looking for friendship and love. While the show’s title can be seen as Nathan Fielder using his “knowledge to help struggling small business owners make it in this competitive world”, it can also be seen as something more selfish, rather than selfless.
Right from the first season, it is clear that Nathan just wants someone to be with, be they a friend or lover. In the pilot episode, the owner of a yogurt shop refuses to hang out with him, but Nathan manages to befriend a young pizza delivery man (also unlucky in love), and in the season finale he is nicknamed the “Wizard of Loneliness” by private investigator Brian Wolfe, who belittles him for having no friends. Nathan is clearly using the excuse and pretence of the show to connect with other people, spending time with them by helping them out in a way that is bound to bring attention to himself. He must feel needed, wanted, yet the outrageousness of his ideas always puts his clients off. The subversive nature of the show, where all the awkward interactions are not edited out, not only helps in stripping down the fake appearance of reality shows, but further reinforces that the show itself is an elaborate plan for Nathan Fielder to find meaning in his life.
There is no real arc for Nathan in the first two seasons, though his longing for a relationship of any kind is a constant. When creating a fake short film to avoid a potential lawsuit, he inserts a scene where he has to kiss a fictional girlfriend, and while he tells the actress that the moment felt real for him, she said it was just work for her and felt no connection whatsoever: while he can find love in the fictional world that he created, Nathan is denied it when the façade crumbles. This concept is taken to the extreme in a classic episode of season 3, Smokers Allowed, where Nathan’s closing argument states (after having perfectly recreated a boring night in a bar as a theatrical play with a cast of professional actors): “They say reality is what you make of it, so in a world that’s cruel and hurtful, who’s to say mine can’t be nice?” This is a powerful, deeply thoughtful question that embodies what makes Nathan For You so special and empathetic: the world has become such an ugly place for so many reasons, that apparently only through crafting a fake reality it is possible to find any sort of peace and acceptance, not unlike the bubbles that users create on social media.
There are two key episodes that move these concepts forward. The season 3 finale, The Hero, sees Nathan take the identity of Corey Calderwood, who is as plain as young men can get: passionate about Magic: The Gathering, living with his parents, working a minimum-wage job, and not really achieving anything in his life. The goal of the episode was for Nathan to show that everyone can become a hero, as he takes over Corey’s life (with the help of a mask and prosthetics) and attempts a tightrope walk between two buildings as a stunt to promote breast cancer awareness. It is a noble cause, but the fact of the matter is that Corey did not do this: Nathan Fielder did. This is when his character finds some semblance of meaning, but it is possible only by literally pretending to be someone else, and at the end he is just another face in the crowd, with Corey getting all the praise.
The apotheosis is found in the crowning achievement of the four-season run: the final, feature-length episode, Finding Frances. Breaking the format of the show, Nathan decides to help Bill Heath (a Bill Gates impersonator befriended during the second season) find the woman he loved during the ‘60s. During every other episode of the show, Fielder puts himself on a pedestal compared to others, often remarking that he knows what he is doing due to his business degree. However, in this episode it is different: Nathan sees Bill as his equal. Or even better, he sees Bill as his future self: an old man, who followed his dream to work in Hollywood, yet sacrificed his true love in favour of his career. He has wealth and success, but he is ultimately alone.
By helping Bill find Frances, Nathan is, for the first time in the show, putting the needs of a friend front and centre. It is genuine, honest, and what a true friend would do. The search ends up being very meandering, with a couple of weeks spent in the small town of Little Rock, Arkansas. Nathan ends up meeting an escort called Maci, first just to see how Bill would interact around women, but then to have someone fun to talk to. While all the previous encounters with women were orchestrated by Fielder, this one started with a different intent and slowly evolved into something else. Nathan himself is aware that, as nice and earnest as Maci may seem, he is still paying for her to act this way. This is, however, a lie that he is willing to live, for the company that she gave him on those monotonous days kept him sane and feeling wanted.
Finding Frances ends in a bittersweet way, as the titular woman is discovered to be already married to someone else, and Bill decides to not bother her in any way after a final phone call. This is anticlimactic for Nathan, as he was hoping to find a happy ending for his friend. As it turns out, Bill has taken a fancy to June, an older actress that was hired earlier in the episode to play a pretend-Frances: what Nathan managed to give Bill was closure, a gift not many are able to receive in life, and now he can finally move on. The final monologue from Nathan is one of the finest of the whole show: “It’s easy to look at someone else’s life as a cautionary tale. After all, no one wants to be old and filled with regret. But if you look closer and see that that life is filled with moments of sincere joy, however fleeting, it’s hard to say if it was really a bad life after all.”
Nathan For You must end after this. He spent four years trying to find meaning in life by helping those around him, feeling alone and not loved, but that is not true. Over the course of the seasons, he has developed heartfelt friendships with some of the people he has helped, including a professional Santa, a production assistant on the show, the aforementioned private investigator, an awkward security guard, a retired judge, and of course Bill Heath, all of whom appear repeatedly in multiple episodes. Nathan has lived a life full of wonderful little moments, opening up on Mount Chileo to three people looking to get a rebate on gas, creating an anti-Uber terrorist cell with bitter cab drivers, revitalising the career of a realtor by selling ghost-free houses, or crafting the ultimate talk-show anecdote. He has found the meaning of life, which is simple, small, and easy to attain and accept.
In the final moments of the show, he meets up again with Maci, holding hands for what might be the last time. But that does not matter. She asks him if they can turn off the cameras, though she is aware that “it defeats the purpose”. “What’s the purpose?”, he asks back, then closing the show with a final drone shot. The purpose has been achieved: Nathan has found love and friendship in the little things in life, and he will not go on living with regret. There is no more reason for the show to exist now, as Nathan does not need cameras to give him confidence and emotional support, and audiences are left with a wholesome, heart-warming, and important message: there is always hope for things to get better in life, and a different perspective is all that’s needed to see that. While everyone might feel alone in a world dominated by social media, simply reaching out to someone and making them feel seen, wanted, loved, is the best thing that could be done to a fellow human being.