‘Nathan For You’ Season 4 Finale: A Portrayal of loss

On November 9th, the season finale of the fourth season of ‘Nathan For You’ aired. After the previous season’s spectacular finale, promotion heightened viewers’ expectations for the episode. If you’ve never seen ‘Nathan For You’, the premise might sound insane. It’s a docu-reality comedy series in which co-creator blurs the lines between reality and fiction. None of the contributors and business owners are actors; but Fielder and his team have an eye for finding the weirdest, most interesting, and sometimes delusional people. His large production team orchestrate the ridiculous plans, and the series often gets into the most extreme and farcical situations imaginable, despite not having a script.

The season four finale begins by looking back to when Nathan and a so-called Bill Gates impersonator, Bill Heath, recorded commentary for a DVD release. Bill is preoccupied by a long-lost love, a woman named Frances Gaddy whom he regrets not marrying. Out of empathy for the lonely 78-year-old, who still clings to the glory days of playing American football in high school, Nathan makes it his mission to find Frances.

Throughout the four seasons of this show Nathan has gone through a lot of ambitious tasks, and while this might not be the most difficult one, it is by far the most emotional, and it made the season finale the best episode of ‘Nathan For You’ thus far. While this episode is about Bill’s desire to find Frances and declare his love for her, it contains some surprisingly vulnerable moments from Nathan. It’s difficult to tell where the real Nathan begins and the persona ends, but they clearly have similarities.

This feature-length episode is one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever watched. It’s a sad, honest, and poignant portrayal of regret and how we as humans want to be loved. Although ‘Nathan For You’ has been renewed for a fifth season and I have no doubt that it will continue with the same original brilliance, the season four finale will always stand out as exceptionally down to earth – a humanising creation.