The 15 Best Nathan For You Episodes Ranked

Before Nathan Fielder was an advocate for aviation safety, he was best known for his Comedy Central series "Nathan For You." A graduate of one of Canada's top business schools (with really good grades), Fielder used the series to help out small businesses by providing out-of-the-box solutions to their problems, with varying levels of success. If you're the type of person who can't stop thinking about those hilarious details in "The Rehearsal," the series run of "Nathan for You" is essentially a prequel to how far the HBO series goes in solving serious problems. 

But where to begin? Some of Fielder's best work in "Nathan For You" that didn't make the cut on this list include him convincing a frozen yogurt shop to sell a "poop" flavored yogurt to attract curious customers, goading a caricature artist into incorporating offensive stereotypes in his drawings, and installing a "you break it, you buy it" policy at an antique shop whilst making it harder to navigate through without destroying property. However, some of the best "Nathan for You" episodes don't just see Fielder helping out small businesses but helping out needy individuals, including himself. 

Here are the 15 best "Nathan for You" episodes.

In the recent second season of Nathan Fielder's HBO series "The Rehearsal," he called out Paramount+ for removing an episode of "Nathan For You" from their streaming service. That episode was the third season's "Horseback Riding / Man Zone," but most of the episode concerns neither of the two business ideas named in its title. Those ideas (a ranch accommodating overweight horseback riders and a women's clothing store created a "man cave" for boyfriends and husbands of shoppers) pale in comparison to the additional business pursuit: Summit Ice apparel.

After discovering that his preferred outerwear brand Taiga had ties to notorious Holocaust deniers, Fielder created the Summit Ice company as a non-profit apparel company whose profits go entirely towards Holocaust awareness. Sadly, Paramount+ labeled the episode "offensive" enough to be taken off their platform, but it's certainly a predecessor to "The Rehearsal" showcasing how Fielder's specific brand of comedy can also be for a good cause. Plus, the awkwardness of Fielder's "Man Zone" experiment gives the episode more than enough cringe to off-set his genuine pursuit of education. 

Oftentimes, the best episodes of "Nathan For You" see Fielder go incredibly overboard with fixing minor problems that businesses suffer from. Such is the case of the dive bar at the center of the episode "Smokers Allowed," wherein Fielder proposes they add a pair of theater seats in the corner to bypass California state law barring smoking inside the premises unless it is for a theatrical production. However, in order to make this scheme more legitimate, Fielder goes to great lengths to recreate a specific night at the bar by hiring actors.

It's one of those episodes where viewers might wonder if "Nathan For You" is real or scripted, particularly for one memorable moment where Fielder goads a female actress into rehearsing the line reading of "I love you" to him again and again, as if he's getting some kind of validation from it. Like all the best moments in "Nathan For You," it lingers way too long, just like Fielder himself does by remaining involved with this dive bar trying to recreate the magic of theater night after night. 

It's rare to watch a TV show these days and be actually shocked by what you see, but leave it to this episode of "Nathan For You" to do the trick. "Hotel / Travel Agent" begins with Fielder's work with a financially-struggling hotel, proposing they begin marketing to families by creating isolation chambers for children so that their parents can be intimate with one another without the fear of perpetual trauma (indicated by the show's graphics to be a personal issue for Fielder). 

It feels quite taboo to see Fielder hire actual porn stars to have long sessions of unsimulated sex in front of these parents in order to test that their rocket ship-inspired isolation chamber is soundproof. Hopefully, Comedy Central hired the vital role of an intimacy coordinator for those scenes. The hotel section overshadows the episode's other business scheme, in which Fielder helps a travel agency by convincing them to provide funeral services for more elderly customers, which is a clever albeit grim satire of travel agencies becoming less and less relevant by the day. 

The season 3 premiere of "Nathan For You" kicked off with an ambitious challenge for Fielder: help a mom-and-pop electronics store wage war against electronics conglomerate Best Buy. In the episode, Fielder convinces a struggling electronics store owner that the best way to combat Best Buy's competitive price-matching is to sell TVs for $1, forcing the store to drastically knock down their own prices low enough for Fielder to buy them all out and make this local store the only seller of TVs in the area.

How does Fielder rationalize selling a TV for $1? Well, it involves placing inventory behind a series of obstacles, including a dress code, a small door to crawl through, and an actual alligator to deter them from actually buying anything. The end result of the hilariously convoluted episode is Fielder getting involved in a legal battle with Best Buy over his business practices, labeling the electronics store owner a victim of psychosis whilst Fielder justifies his scheme through inventing a reality dating show (not a first in "Nathan For You"). 

"Souvenir Shop / E.L.A.I.F.F." might not be the most ambitious stunt Nathan Fielder has ever tried to pull, but it's a pivotal moment in the show's overarching narrative. As one of many Hollywood souvenir shops, Fielder tries to create buzz by staging a film shoot inside the store (complete with a Johnny Depp impersonator, too), only to discover that this scheme has made him liable for fraud, after he forces customers to actually pay for souvenirs while they shop in the store as "extras". 

However, to combat this potential fraud, Fielder legitimizes this film production of his by creating the "Easter Los Angeles International Film Festival" and awarding the production after it competes against the only other film in the festival, a short clip of a man farting. Sadly, the kiss Fielder shares with an actress on-screen doesn't lead anywhere for the comedian romantically, but that'll only fuel his motivations in the show's eventual finale that reunites him with the very accurate, very professional Bill Gates impersonator that debuts in this episode. 

While promoting the fourth season of "Nathan For You," on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in 2017, Fielder regaled the audience with a pretty incredible story about his trip to an out-of-town wedding, in which some mixed-up luggage results in him wearing someone else's suit, getting pulled over by the police, and getting caught with a suspicious bag of powder that turns out to be a stranger's mother's ashes. If it sounds too good of a story to be true... well, that means you were one step ahead of Fielder, who devised the story for an episode of "Nathan For You," titled "The Anecdote."

In the episode, the audience of this show (and Kimmel's) is made the fool as Fielder, in order to avoid lying on television, makes it so that the exact events of his made-up anecdote occur for real. This means actually getting himself invited to a wedding, procuring the ashes of someone's mother (they're not her remains, but her toenails and hair), and feeding a real police officer what lines to say while pulling him over. The end result makes for great television, not just one time, but twice. 

Who would've thought one of the best TV episodes about ghosts wouldn't be from a horror show but a "Nathan For You" episode. "Mechanic / Realtor" follows two business schemes from Fielder. In one, he encourages a mechanic to be hooked up to a polygraph test while giving pricing estimates to customers so they know he's not overcharging them. However, it's the episode's other scheme that makes even Fielder feel like he bit off more than he can chew, helping Sue Stanford re-brand herself as the "Ghost Realtor," assuring her clients that her homes are 100% free of paranormal entities.

As it turns out, Sue has some experience with specters herself, as confirmed after she and Fielder meet with a medium named Ron, who deems one of her homes particularly haunted. In order to secure a sale for Sue, Fielder hires an exorcist to visit the house and exorcise both him and Sue, the latter having quite a visceral reaction to the experience. Still, Fielder doesn't let the audience forget what they're watching by encouraging the exorcist to call out any demon affecting his penis size. 

Even in the very first season of "Nathan For You," Fielder proved the show would go to great lengths to appease his own ego, as evidenced by the fifth episode, "Haunted House / The Hunk." The first half of the episode is a classic Fielder-esque scheme where he improves a haunted house tour by making visitors actually think they've contacted a serious disease, breaking the form of the haunted house and forcing them into quarantine, which is as entertaining to watch as it probably was terrifying to experience.

However, it's "The Hunk" that makes the episode most memorable, as Fielder orchestrates a reality dating show a la "The Bachelor" to help him feel less awkward around women. Ultimately, Fielder becomes preoccupied with the presence of the fake show's conventionally attractive host, Anthony Napoli, whose stilted performance makes him an iconic figure in "Nathan For You" lore. Napoli even returned to the show to host the 2017 special in which Fielder revisits previous clients from the show's first three seasons. 

Some magicians risk life or death in their stunts, but Nathan Fielder might be the only magician who's risked a fate even worse than death: being labeled a sex offender. The penultimate episode of "Nathan For You" season one is "The Claw of Shame," in which Fielder challenges himself to escape handcuffs before a robotic arm finishes slowly pulling down his pants and underwear, exposing him to an audience of children. Should Fielder fail, a police officer is on site to arrest him. 

In-between vignettes showcasing Fielder's determination to set up this elaborate and reputation-risking stunt, he examines a few of his failed business ideas that didn't make it on-screen for the show's first season. One of the most memorable ones is Fielder's proposed plan to convey to children that their pet has passed away, which involves re-animating them digitally through terrible voiceover, but it crashes and burns pretty miserably as the child still gets upset anyway. Luckily, his "claw of shame" stunt doesn't end in such a failure. 

When it comes to the eclectic business owners that Nathan Fielder interacts with over the course of "Nathan For You," few have made as memorable of a first impression as Brian S. Wolfe, a private investigator who Fielder helps out in the first season finale. Fielder's plan to help Wolfe is by giving him an honest 5-star Yelp review, tasking Wolfe to track Fielder's whereabouts for a full day. Unbeknownst to Wolfe, Fielder has hired 8 "look-alikes" (we'll let you be the judge of how much any of them actually resemble Fielder) to throw Wolfe off his trail. 

Even though this isn't the only business idea Fielder pursues in the episode (the other involves a taxi company), what really sets this one apart from the rest of "Nathan For You" is the combative dynamic between Fielder and Wolfe. Wolfe coins the term "wizard of loneliness" to describe Fielder, and the two end up in an argument over whether or not Wolfe's background in modeling constitutes as "pornography" or not. For their interactions alone, this episode is an all-timer, albeit not the biggest stunt Fielder's ever pulled. 

As we come down to the top 5 best episodes of "Nathan For You," we get into the scheme of Fielder's that stretched far beyond the limits of a simple Comedy Central show. Among his most viral stunts is "Dumb Starbucks," an episode in which Fielder helps a struggling coffee shop rebrand their image using parody law, dodging the ire of Starbucks' legal team. While the publicity stunt itself was enough to garner actual media attention (and a visit from the Los Angeles County Health Department) prior to the episode's airing, the episode itself is full of a lot of hilarious legal hijinks.

In order to secure their legal right to pursue this "Dumb Starbucks" idea, Fielder ends up opening an art gallery depicting parody (establishing himself as a parody artist) and even swindles a real lawyer into signing a release form on camera that makes him liable to any legal damages the show is hit by as a result of this scheme. Even when the local coffee shop owner backs off, Fielder keeps going, proving that for the ideas he really believes in, there's no level he won't stoop to. 

On the topic of "Nathan For You" episodes that pierce outside media, there's also "The Movement." The third season episode starts when Fielder agrees to help a moving company save money on hiring workers by marketing their business as a new fitness craze, encouraging people to get "exercise" by moving boxes from house to house. There's only one snag: Fielder himself does not have the body to be the face of "The Movement," so he hires a spokesperson in bodybuilder Jack Garbarino. 

The episode feels larger than life once it's revealed that Garbarino appeared on numerous daytime talk shows and local news programs to promote his lifestyle, but the best parts are all the ways Fielder goes about creating this fake fitness craze. He hires a ghost writer to pen a ridiculous book from Jack's perspective, which claims he was friends with Steve Jobs and does volunteer work with "jungle children." There's also some real drama when Fielder discovers that Garbarino has been continuing to visit his local gym instead of work out in the storage unit filled with equipment that Fielder has rented out for him. 

Unless you've watched the first season of "Nathan For You," it's possible to have absolutely no idea that the viral "Pig rescues baby goat" video from 2012 was the brain child of none other than Nathan Fielder. It was all an elaborate stunt Fielder pulled to help a local petting zoo gain viral attention, which worked like gangbusters and, as the series' second-ever episode, foreshadows its ability to make business schemes feel bigger than the show itself. Even then, "Petting Zoo" is not even the best part of this episode.

That honor goes to James Bailey, a mall Santa with a criminal record who struggles to make ends meet during the off-season. Fielder, empathizing with James, seeks to convince a mall to offer discounted photos with Santa in the summer, which ends up getting him and James thrown out by security. That's not the end of Fielder's collaboration with this empathetic, gun-toting Santa Claus (just one of the legend's many forms), as James ends up lending his voice to the petting zoo video, and joins in on some of Fielder's stunts later in the show. The best part? Every time James is re-introduced to the show's viewers, Fielder shows the same black-and-white clip of James showing Fielder his gun collection from this first season episode. 

Over the course of four seasons (sadly, season 5 won't be happening), "Nathan for You" helps out a lot of small businesses, but his best work is when he becomes focused on individuals, because it always ends up being a way for Fielder to help himself. For the third season finale, that lucky individual who Fielder has chosen is Corey Calderwood, who turns from zero to hero by having him tightrope walk across two buildings for charity. The only caveat? Corey spends the entire episode isolated in the Mojave Desert while Fielder, having studied Corey's mannerisms and donned extensive prosthetics, assumes Corey's life.

It's a predecessor to "The Rehearsal," in which Fielder re-enacts scenarios and adopts a "Fielder method" of observing targets and embodying their personalities for the purposes of the most accurate rehearsals. However, for "The Hero," Fielder falls too deep into the character of Corey, as he helps the guy get a girlfriend and come out of his shell, which is all really just a way for Fielder himself to get out of his own skin. While the ending for Corey is pretty optimistic, ultimately it's the exploration of Fielder's own character that makes it one of the show's best. 

It's ultimately unfair to rank the best episodes of "Nathan For You," because there's nothing that can occupy this #1 slot other than "Finding Frances," the show's feature-length series finale. Like we said earlier, this episode centers entirely on Fielder helping out Bill Heath, the Bill Gates impersonator from "Souvenir Shop / E.L.A.I.F.F.," who is eager to reconnect with his long-lost love from high school. Fielder makes it his mission to help Bill find the titular Frances, learning where she's been all these years and uncovering the secrets Bill is keeping about how their relationship ended.

As The A.V. Club wrote of "the best episode in a show full of brilliant ones," "Finding Frances" is "one of the most captivating things ... seen on television in a long time," even preceding "The Rehearsal" as Fielder attempts to help Bill practice his inevitable reunion with Frances after discovering that she's married. Of course, Fielder also gets his own character arc as he pursues a flirtation with an escort, Maci, which feels exactly like the type of love story the show had been teasing throughout its entire run.