‘Paul T. Goldman’ Is Even Darker Than Nathan Fielder’s ‘The Rehearsal’

Ever since Peacock‘s manic new series Paul T. Goldman premiered last week, it’s been toasted by alternative comedy nerds and feted as the first real successor show to Nathan Fielder‘s reality-bending HBO series The Rehearsal. Like The Rehearsal, Paul T. Goldman blurs the lines between reality and simulation for both comedic and dramatic effect. The Rehearsal understandably upset some viewers and critics for the ways in which it interrogated issues of consent. Did Fielder’s subjects understand audiences might later laugh at their pain? More poignantly, did the child actors hired to play “Adam” in Fielder’s on-going parenting “rehearsal” understand what was real and what was for show?

But for all the knocks The Rehearsal got, I find myself far more disturbed by Paul T. Goldman. As director Jason Woliner’s decade-long project begins to unravel itself, I became distressed by the subject himself. When we’re first introduced to Goldman, he comes across as a kooky babe in the woods. But as the series continues, the truth doesn’t just get blurred; Paul T. Goldman’s moral compass cracks. We are left viewing the world through Goldman’s warped perspective, which isn’t just quirky, but full of wrath.

Paul T. Goldman follows the story of an insurance quoter whose real name is Paul Finkelman. After divorcing his first wife, Galina — whom he met in Moscow through a mail-order Russian bride scheme — Finkelman took sole custody of young son Johnny. Soon, though, he realized he wanted a mother for Johnny and a wife for companionship. After a foray into online dating, the Florida man settled on “Audrey,” a single mother who demanded a “part-time” marriage. She would only be available for half the week, but soon demanded both money and co-ownership of Finkelman’s then-considerable assets. After Finkelman realized he was sending checks to a dummy account she set up, he filed for divorce. But not without hiring private investigators, hacking into her private email, uncovering an affair and — Finkelman believed — a vast international sex trafficking ring.

While Finkelman came ahead in the divorce, he still felt that “Audrey” and her lover Royce Rocco had escaped justice. So Finkelman created the pen name and alter ego of Paul T. Goldman to write the loosely auto-biographical novel, Duplicity. He then reached out to directors via Twitter to adapt his incredible “true story.” Nathan For You and Borat Subsequent Film‘s Jason Woliner is the auteur who decided to go along for the ride.

Woliner was down to adapt Duplicity as “Paul T. Goldman” envisioned, off his script and with him starring as himself, but he also wanted to film a documentary around the project. Through confessionals and doc footage, Woliner exposes the holes in Goldman’s own story. It’s not just that the guy leaps to insane conclusions, but that refuses to extend empathy to anyone else. At first, this feels simply like someone unable to accept culpability for failed relationships. But as Paul T. Goldman churns on, it seems that its subject has a dark and cruel vision of the world that has wronged him — and nothing Woliner can do can stop Paul exposing his sadistic fantasies.

I think the reason I find Paul T. Goldman harder to watch than The Rehearsal has to do with perspective. One project knowingly masterminds a funhouse mirror version of reality to trip us up. The other forces us to see the world through the eyes of its extremely aggrieved subject. Nathan Fielder is the sole ringmaster of The Rehearsal, while Paul T. Goldman is ruled by a tug-of-war between its subject and its director.

The Rehearsal mastermind Nathan Fielder’s comedy has always been impish. He delights in pushing up against societal norms, but he has a moral compass. Nowhere is that more obvious in his consistent battle against anti-semitism. He not only created a sportswear brand in Nathan For You committed to Holocaust education, but throughout The Rehearsal we see him wrestling with the anti-semitism of his subjects. Moreover, Fielder has always been aware of what the joke is and he’s okay with being the butt of it. He is a willing participant in his experiments. His trademark awkwardness is yet another layer of the puzzle. Fielder wants us to question everything, including his own motives.

Paul T. Goldman, on the other hand, is a portrait of a man whose insecurity has transformed into a virulent strain of vanity. It is so important that Paul has mastered the transformation from “wimp to warrior” that he straight up tells Woliner’s cameras numerous times that he doesn’t want the audience to feel empathy towards anyone but himself. When it comes time to shoot a fictitious final meeting between Paul and Audrey in jail, Finkelman reveals that his alter ego can’t find emotional catharsis because that would make him, in his father’s words, a “sissy.” Nonetheless, Audrey’s dramatized death in a fiery explosion reveals just how much the real Paul clearly needs some kind of emotional intervention. Sure, Paul can admit that he was duped. But in order to live with himself, he has to reframe Audrey as a criminal mastermind and not just a run-of-the-mill cheater. This obsession overrules his life to an unhealthy degree.

When I watch The Rehearsal, I understand that Nathan Fielder knows he’s playing with our assumptions of how social interactions are supposed to work. I can see an artist who allows himself to be a subject on the canvas. With Paul T. Goldman, I’m still not sure Paul knows how literally insane he is. Jason Woliner, like Fielder, is clearly aware of the larger questions he’s asking with the piece, but Paul himself seems blissfully ignorant to how much of his worldview is a lie. And a bitter, disgusting, vindictive lie at that.