Nathan Fielder believes in second chances. With its dizzyingly complicated layers of nested simulations and unnerving ethical provocations, his HBO series The Rehearsal seemed like an impossible act to follow: a landmark, maybe even a masterpiece, but not a repeatable phenomenon. So when plans for a second season were announced on the eve of the show’s finale in August of 2022, it was hard to know what to think. How could another season possibly replicate the first one’s protean unpredictability, its mixture of deadpan cringe comedy and postmodernist rug pulls? Could this be another one of Fielder’s elaborate conceptual pranks,...