Nathan for You is one of the best comedy show of the 2010s. Developed from a premise that first surfaced as a section of the Canadian comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, it started life as a clever and hilarious spoof of reality TV and life hack gurus but gradually became a more complex and profound proposition, making us think about the nature of "reality" television and the lengths subjects are willing to go to in bending that reality to please TV producers. Occasionally skits wound up seeping out uncontrollably into our reality, making news headlines and going viral. Whilst comedy pranksters such as the Jackass crew and Eric Andre are experts at making us laugh our assess off, Nathan For You does so consistently whilst simultaneously being multifaceted and surprisingly deep. Here are 11 of the times Nathan Fielder and his team went above and beyond, making us laugh, think, or simply shake our heads in disbelief at the ridiculous and yet somehow quite brilliant marketing plans he put together for small businesses.
Free Pizza
In the very first episode, Nathan goes to work trying to turn around the fortunes of a pizza business with a classic gambit: if the pizza is not delivered within eight minutes, you get a free pizza. Who would not go for that deal? What is not explained until the point of delivery is that the free pizza is roughly 1 inch in diameter, presented in a scaled-down box by the frankly brave delivery guy to increasingly outraged customers.
Gas Station Rebate
Nathan comes to the rescue of small-time gas station owner with an innovative new concept to get customers rolling in: $1.75 per gallon of gas - after rebate. However, claiming the rebate is a little tricky, as it involves going hiking in the hills with Nathan. A remarkable number of stooges follow Nathan into the woods and camp out overnight in pursuit of their cheap gas. Memorably, the episode ends with the gas station owner seemingly leaving Fielder genuinely bemused when he randomly announces his belief that if you are ever scared, you should drink the urine of a small child. From the ludicrousness of the rebate expedition to the effluence-quaffing conclusion, the cumulative effect is the suspicion that Nathan For You may be deserving of an equal amount of skepticism about the presentation of reality as the sort of shows it is satirizing.
Haunted House
Unimpressed with the level of fear achieved by a standard haunted house, Nathan decides to make the world’s scariest mansion in the pursuit of getting the business sued for being too scary, and therefore receiving free press. How? By convincing customers they are actually going to die from a contagious disease, including being whisked away in blind panic into a very realistic quarantine via ambulance. Completely insane, riveting television, although it feels like if anyone was due to get sued as a result, it was the production company behind Nathan For You.
The Claw of Shame
Towards the conclusion of the first season, Fielder breaks with the format in order to prove that he is willing to take big risks, just as he expects of the businesses he usually “helps.” To this end, he enlists an expert in robotics and various other bewildered accomplices in order to stage a Houdini-style escape that, should he fail, will result in his genitals being exposed to a small audience of young children and his immediate arrest as a sex offender. As well as repeat deadpan references to the total lack of a good reason to do any of this, the episode gets big laughs when Nathan learns that the OS controlling the robot is Windows 95, one of the few times he appears to get cold feet about this totally pointless endeavor.
Dumb Starbucks
One of the more notable occasions that Fielder’s warping of reality snuck into our real lives, Dumb Starbucks was his ingenious way to save a café struggling to keep up with the competition from the big chains, by creating the world’s first parody café. It operated as a normal café, but everything was “Dumb” - Dumb Frappuccino for example. The stunt gained national news attention, not the first time the invented reality of Nathan For You became legitimized by an unquestioning news media, before it was shut down ostensibly because of health concerns, although it is claimed that Starbucks had considered pursuing legal action.
Summit Ice Apparel
Upon discovering that he has been wearing clothing branded with an organization with publicized ties to a Holocaust denier, a mortified Nathan sets about making amends by starting a quality outdoor apparel brand with the twin aim of being stylishly comfortable, and raising awareness of Nazi mass-genocide. Nathan is apparently entirely sincere and unable to fathom why anyone could find the venture to be in poor taste as he creates an in-store display including the new clothing brand, bone-filled ovens, and swastikas, all of which is unbelievably overseen by an enthusiastic Rabbi. The website for the brand is still apparently operational, in yet another example of the fantasy becoming real.
The Movement
One of the all-time best episodes of Nathan for You, in which Nathan is tasked with improving the efficiency of a moving company. Arguing that there is little difference between the physical labor of a gym membership or moving houses, Fielder uses a questionably-proficient ghostwriter and a body-builder to create an entirely fabricated back-story The Movement - a full body workout achieved by moving peoples' possessions from one home to another. As with all the best episodes, the amount of convoluted twists and turns the scheme undergoes, and the sheer strangeness of the people Nathan manages to find (always from Craiglist), result in multiple belly-laughs, and the bizarre tie-in book created to give the premise credence is still available to buy on Amazon.
Smokers Allowed
The smoking ban has taken its toll on a dive bar, so Nathan realizes a fool-proof plan: by placing two chairs behind a theatrical curtain and selling tickets to two eager theater-goers, he can use “theater law” to allow patrons to smoke under the pretense that their evening at the bar is a production of a play loudly advertised under the title “Smokers Allowed.” Always determined to take an idea to extremes, Fielder feels the performance is almost there, but decides to replicate the actions of the opening night’s customers and the bartender, by employing actors. This leads to a scene in which socially anxious Nathan repeatedly asks an actress to tell him she loves him until he appears to genuinely begin crying. It is the sort of moment that elevates the show way beyond the average comedy and into a realm all of its own, simultaneously hilarious and weirdly touching.
The Hero
Surely the most audacious plot to date, in "The Hero," Nathan decides to take a completely unremarkable man, Corey, and prove he has a hero within him to make him do something huge with his life, without actually involving him in any of the heroic behavior. Nathan performs all acts of daring whilst wearing a rubber mask of Corey’s face, with Corey kept hidden from view, primarily in an RV in the middle of a desert, until the final reveal. Not only does Nathan convince Corey’s grandparents that their grandson has walked on a tightrope between two tall buildings, back and forth several times, he also embarks on a romantic relationship on behalf of Corey, then encourages the real man to continue it. The ability to discern between what has really occurred and the extent to which events have been manipulated becomes increasingly tenuous.
The Anecdote
Concerned that his anecdote-telling skills on late-night talk shows are lacking, Nathan blows thousands of dollars in order to ensure that a carefully-planned series of events (involving an outsized suit and some human remains) can take place, purely in order for him to have a vaguely amusing and totally unbelievable story to tell a baffled Jimmy Kimmel. That the story went out as a normal Kimmel segment some time before the Nathan For You episode aired added weight to the eventual rug-pull, as the entire audience realized they had been taken in by a Fielder prank of huge magnitude; the episode also offered a sly commentary on the ridiculousness of the late-night talk show circuit and the pretense that a natural conversation is taking place.
Finding Frances
"Finding Frances" is a feature-length series finale filled with pathos, heart, and the return appearance of an unconvincing Bill Gates impersonator. The show's swansong is a somber, melancholy docudrama which dwells, sincerely, on such topics as romance, love, regret, and the passage of time, as Nathan attempts to find Frances, the lost love of the Gates impersonator’s youth. The episode features some laughs, but the real surprise here is the genuine emotion elicited by the unfurling story. The inability to pinpoint which elements are real, which are manipulations of events, and which are entirely manufactured and scripted, reach their natural culmination here, and there is even a satisfying emotional conclusion to Fielder’s own storyline about his difficulties connecting meaningfully with humans - even if it does involve paying an escort to simulate human connection. Hang on - this is just a dumb comedy show right? Wrong.