“Reality TV” is not a prestigious genre — the phrase brings to mind “Real Housewives,” “Jersey Shore” and latest exercise in lowest common denominator “Dating Naked,” all of which aspire to nothing higher than guilty pleasure.
With all of this trashiness on display, the power of featuring real people on TV has become diluted. However, much like non-fiction is an often riveting cousin to fiction, real people can often be the strangest, most fascinating and most relatable of all.
Nathan Fielder understands that, which is what makes his Comedy Central series, “Nathan For You,” so powerfully funny. The premise of the show is that he goes to different small businesses and pitches them ideas that have an insane logic to them, but are completely unfeasible long-term. For example he tells a pizza company to advertise that they deliver in eight minutes or you get a free pizza, which is impossible, but the catch: the free pizza is an inch big.
It’s technically legal, and makes just enough sense that the business-owner will tolerate trying it out, but there’s no way it’s going to go well. Things predictably don’t work out when customers react to the microscopic free pizza with laughter, disbelief and angry refusal to pay, all directed at poor delivery boy Angel.
Angel confesses to Fielder that he actually wants to be a singer, launching into an overwrought cover of The Star-Spangled Banner. Later, after the tiny pizza is rejected, he sits dejectedly with Fielder and wonders aloud why good girls get together with bad guys. “Nice guys like us are left behind,” Fielder agrees in a perfect deadpan.
It’s these weird little nuggets of humanity that make “Nathan For You” essential viewing. Fielder’s plans are inherently funny, but what really makes each episode sing is the consistently weird ways people react to his schemes, and the lovable oddballs that are taken along for the ride. At the beginning of the show, Fielder brags that he graduated from “one of Canada’s top business schools with really good grades” while his decidedly mediocre report card flashes on-screen. It’s this real understanding of economics that makes his schemes so interesting — they could, in theory, work if they didn’t have to deal with the human factor.
Telling children that if they don’t buy a useless toy everyone will think they’re a little baby will work, until parents complain. Selling alcohol to minors but then holding it at the store until they’re 21 is technically legal, but teenagers will catch on and the store will get a bad reputation.
It’s the counterpoint to “conscious capitalism,” a movement that seeks to implement environmental and human benefits in their business rather than the pursuit of pure profit. Fielder’s plans ignore all ethical ramifications in the pursuit of a buck, an absurdist exaggeration of capitalism in a vacuum. “Nathan For You” shows us that business, like people, is weird.
The show just wrapped up its second season, meaning that there are 16 episodes of inspired deadpan mayhem waiting for the new viewer. It has a surprising amount of heart and some trenchant things to say, and it’s one of the funniest shows on TV in years.