Thoughts on Comedy Central's Nathan For You, the Unreliable Narrator

Ive recently been binge watching Comedy Central's Nathan For You, a show that is genuinely hilarious, but I wanted to talk a bit about the reality of it. Basically the premise of the show is that the comedian Nathan Fielder will go into small businesses in an attempt to give them ideas to help their business out, but the joke is the ideas are usually horrible. Sometimes by sheer hilarity they end up working out, but the whole point of the show is to make fun of the type of business fixing reality shows that we see on TV. In fact the business owners for the most part dont know they are the butt of the joke.

They are going to be doing season five at this point, so they might suffer a bit from what I like to call the Ali G effect, which is basically when a joke becomes too popular that you cant fool anyone with it anymore. So I expect to see many more actors and scripted parts in the upcoming seasons, which is mostly what I want to talk about today. There was a famous AMA that Nathan did on reddit in which he claims the show is all real for the most part and people who are actors in it, just happened to be at where they film because its in and around the Los Angeles area.

I am not buying it though because for the most part Nathan Fielder cant be trusted. If you learn anything for him show and the character that he is playing, he is the unreliable narrator of the story. In one segment he even goes on Jimmy Kimmel and makes an anecdote that was completely made up because it would get a good crowd reaction. Whose to say that he isnt playing his character when he answers questions online? He could also just want to not broadcast the fact that some of the show is scripted. I think many people who believe that the show is completely real might be turned off if they realized some of it is scripted.

This doesnt make the show any less funny in my opinion, but like the “based on a true story” line before a horror movie, it definitely draws a crowd. Too much that happens in the show has to be fake just because they most likely need filler for the episodes. Something interesting isnt going to happen every time because it is reality. Also like I said before, the chance of so many actors being present is just way too unlikely in these scripted scenarios in my opinion. However, people will fight you tooth and nail just to say the show is completely 100% real all of the time.

Like I said before, to me, it doesnt matter, the show is still hilarious even if it were scripted or not. Nathan does a fantastic job while in character and his jokes are on point when it comes to making him seem awkward and actually a bad actor in certain situations. I think that the majority of people are not fake and actually do believe that they are on a reality show, but there are a ton of scripted parts and I enjoy them just as much. If you havent seen the show I would highly recommend it and you can see what you believe for yourself.

-Calaber24p