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The course of true love is notoriously unsmooth, but for Noah and Joanne – protagonists of charming LA-set romcom Nobody Wants This – it has been especially rough. The problem? Noah is a religious leader and Joanne is an agnostic sex podcaster. The real problem? Noah is a rabbi and Joanne is – as his disapproving mother puts it – a “shiksa”. Otherwise known as Not a Jew.
Is that a dealbreaker? Season one seemed to suggest so. After finally getting together with Noah (Adam Brody), Joanne (Kristen Bell) pledged to convert to Judaism. But then she changed her mind, coming to the realisation that adopting a faith for logistical reasons wasn’t the most morally upstanding thing to do. So she dumped him. This was also an admirable decision, ethically speaking; Joanne didn’t want to force Noah to choose between her and his life’s calling.
True love, however, is also notoriously hard to rationalise away. The last time we saw the pair, Noah had just sprinted after a downcast Joanne and admitted it was true, he couldn’t have both – before leaning in for a big old snog. This wasn’t just a classic romcom climax, it was also a cliffhanger. Our couple had both just agreed their relationship had no future; could this turn out to be Netflix’s most nihilistic romantic comedy to date? If not, how was the show going to write itself out of this dead end?
By ignoring it, largely. As we reunite with Joanne and Noah in season two, you’d be forgiven for assuming none of it really mattered at all. Instead, we’re confronted with love’s young-ish dream (Brody and Bell are both 45, and although the ages of their characters are not explicitly revealed, they appear to be in their late 30s). Their most pressing concerns range from the quotidian (will their first joint dinner party be a success?) to the niche (should Joanne discuss Noah’s classy bedside water carafes on her podcast?). Admittedly, their relationship does have real-world ramifications when Noah is overlooked for his dream job of head rabbi. But it doesn’t mean he can’t be a rabbi at all, and he quickly lands a new position at a more progressive temple (helmed by the mystifyingly underused comic dream team of Seth Rogen and Kate Berlant).
Still, the question of conversion continues to hover around Joanne and Noah’s romantic bliss. Nobody Wants This is inspired by creator Erin Foster’s own experience of converting to Judaism after falling in love with a Jewish man, so we can broadly assume where things are going. But how to get there? Joanne hopes she might gradually become enthusiastic about the religion, but unlike her woo-woo mother – who suddenly develops an eyeroll-inducing connection to the faith during a Purim party – she’s (relatably) sceptical about the idea of suddenly just feeling Jewish.
Yet a more prosaic approach can also feel jarring. At one point, Noah’s sister-in-law Esther pitches Judaism as something like the religious equivalent of hygge, telling Joanne she is “warm and cosy” therefore “basically Jewish”. She’s “funny” (“that’s Jewish!”), is “always getting in everybody’s business” and “love[s] to overshare” too – things which also make her a perfect fit for the religion. To equate affectionate Jewish archetypes (which are, at the end of the day, simply human archetypes) with the religion itself – one which has quite a lot of rules (especially if you’re marrying a rabbi) – seems rather shallow.
Luckily, Nobody Wants This continues to be remarkably strong in other areas. The chemistry between Brody – still able to trade on the heart-throb status he accrued two decades ago playing beautiful nerd Seth Cohen in The OC – and Bell, who specialises in acid-tongued cool, remains electric. The brattiness and barely disguised fragility of Joanne’s younger sister and podcast co-host Morgan (Succession’s Justine Lupe) makes her one of the best comic creations currently on our screens. This time round, she gets a proper love interest – although sadly it’s love-bombing therapist Dr Andy (Succession’s Arian Moayed). It’s a storyline that lends itself to both stupid jokes and emotional depth, as does the subplot involving Morgan’s friendship with Noah’s elder brother Sasha (Veep’s Timothy Simons), a goofy source of advice grappling with his own marital strife.
With a respectable joke rate – though we’re talking smirk-inducing wisecracks rather than belly laughs – and a steady stream of keenly observed details (Joanne’s palpable delight at getting the pious Noah to properly kvetch; Noah’s nice-guy credentials crumbling ever-so-slightly when Joanne finds out how he treated previous partners), Nobody Wants This is easy to buy into and easy to love. Especially if – like the show itself – you don’t think too hard about the knotty theological dilemma at its core.
