Nathan For You: “Dating Website/Party Planner”

Unheralded online dating services are a pretty sketchy proposition. Just overcoming the online dating stigma and signing up for mega-popular sites like OKCupid or Match.com is enough of a mental hurdle for most people. Who knows what the hell is going on with little-known sites like Dating DNA, the subject of the episode’s first segment, or what kinds of people are looking for love there. We’re not here to judge, though; we’re here to improve a struggling business.

As a man, it’s hard to imagine how women can muster up the courage to actually meet up with a strange man they’ve met on the Internet, and it’s with this in mind that Fielder pitched his idea to the Dating DNA CEO: assigning a “daddy” to women on dates so that they feel safe around Internet strangers. The obligatory glaring problem with this one is that the “daddy” concept ends up being creepier than your average Internet stranger. Fielder is ready for the CEO’s objection, however, and gets him to agree based on the principle that it wouldn’t be wise to oppose anything that could make women feel safer. And we’re off.

Fielder pulls out all the stops to make this one pay off, which isn’t surprising considering how doomed the idea is—the more ill-fated the scheme, the harder Fielder will work to make it happen. To test the idea out, Fielder plays the role of “daddy,” which involves A) vetting the date by hanging out in front of the woman’s house, asking him to help him take a picture when he arrives and proceeding to grill him with thinly veiled questions about if his potential desire to strangle women or if no really means no, B) taking the date’s fingerprints in case shit goes down (of course) and C) dressing up as a woman in concealing religious garb so he can observe the date at close range undetected. Fail safe plan, and the woman didn’t get murdered so it’s hard not to chalk this one up as a success.

But at the core of every Nathan For You plan is a perfectly engineered awkward situation on which the segment hinges, and in this case it occurs when Fielder hires a menacing looking “daddy” off Craigslist, introduces him to the next woman and informs her that he’s been given all of her personal information as a precautionary measure. The poor woman just sits there and nods, clearly intimidated by the cameras as the scowling daddy for hire stares her down. It’s probably a safe bet that Dating DNA isn’t currently offering this service.

Next was Fielder’s party planning scheme, which centered around the idea that there are always some friends you don’t want at your party, but whose feelings you also don’t want to hurt by not inviting them. The solution? Invent a way to re-route certain invitation emails to certain friends’ spam folder. When they wonder why they weren’t invited, just tell them to check their spam. It’s the Internet’s fault!

The highlight of this segment was the return of the Bill Gates impersonator from “Souvenir Shop/E.L.A.I.F.F.,” who showed up to Fielder’s lame party he threw to test out his idea. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for a spinoff to just feature Fielder and the Bill Gates impersonator going on adventures, showing up at corporate events, birthday parties, you name it. There’s got to be something there. This guy needs more camera time.

“Dating Website/Party Planner” also had a little side project run throughout in which Fielder employed an unconventional weight loss method to help some people he found off—you guessed it—Craigslist to shed a few pounds. All I’ll say is that it involved a large old man getting naked and posing as the meat in an oversized hot dog bun, as well as a woman presenting her boss at her law firm, Michael Cohen, a picture of herself holding a sign that says “I hate Jews.” Talk about a perfectly engineered awkward situation.