The course of true love is notoriously unsmooth, but for Noah and Joanne \u2013 protagonists of charming LA-set romcom Nobody Wants This \u2013 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 \u2013 as his disapproving mother puts it \u2013 a \u201cshiksa\u201d. Otherwise known as Not a Jew.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t the most morally upstanding thing to do. So she dumped him. This was also an admirable decision, ethically speaking; Joanne didn\u2019t want to force Noah to choose between her and his life\u2019s calling.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t have both \u2013 before leaning in for a big old snog. This wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s most nihilistic romantic comedy to date? If not, how was the show going to write itself out of this dead end?<\/p>\n
By ignoring it, largely. As we reunite with Joanne and Noah in season two, you\u2019d be forgiven for assuming none of it really mattered at all. Instead, we\u2019re confronted with love\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t mean he can\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n
Still, the question of conversion continues to hover around Joanne and Noah\u2019s romantic bliss. Nobody Wants This is inspired by creator Erin Foster\u2019s 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 \u2013 who suddenly develops an eyeroll-inducing connection to the faith during a Purim party \u2013 she\u2019s (relatably) sceptical about the idea of suddenly just feeling Jewish.<\/p>\n
Justine Lupe as Morgan and Arian Moayed as Andy in Nobody Wants This. Photograph: ERIN SIMKIN\/NETFLIX<\/p>\n
Yet a more prosaic approach can also feel jarring. At one point, Noah\u2019s sister-in-law Esther pitches Judaism as something like the religious equivalent of hygge, telling Joanne she is \u201cwarm and cosy\u201d therefore \u201cbasically Jewish\u201d. She\u2019s \u201cfunny\u201d (\u201cthat\u2019s Jewish!\u201d), is \u201calways getting in everybody\u2019s business\u201d and \u201clove[s] to overshare\u201d too \u2013 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 \u2013 one which has quite a lot of rules (especially if you\u2019re marrying a rabbi) \u2013 seems rather shallow.<\/p>\n
Luckily, Nobody Wants This continues to be remarkably strong in other areas. The chemistry between Brody \u2013 still able to trade on the heart-throb status he accrued two decades ago playing beautiful nerd Seth Cohen in The OC \u2013 and Bell, who specialises in acid-tongued cool, remains electric. The brattiness and barely disguised fragility of Joanne\u2019s younger sister and podcast co-host Morgan (Succession\u2019s Justine Lupe) makes her one of the best comic creations currently on our screens. This time round, she gets a proper love interest \u2013 although sadly it\u2019s love-bombing therapist Dr Andy (Succession\u2019s Arian Moayed). It\u2019s a storyline that lends itself to both stupid jokes and emotional depth, as does the subplot involving Morgan\u2019s friendship with Noah\u2019s elder brother Sasha (Veep\u2019s Timothy Simons), a goofy source of advice grappling with his own marital strife.<\/p>\n
With a respectable joke rate \u2013 though we\u2019re talking smirk-inducing wisecracks rather than belly laughs \u2013 and a steady stream of keenly observed details (Joanne\u2019s palpable delight at getting the pious Noah to properly kvetch; Noah\u2019s 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 \u2013 like the show itself \u2013 you don\u2019t think too hard about the knotty theological dilemma at its core.<\/p>\n
Nobody Wants This is on Netflix now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The course of true love is notoriously unsmooth, but for Noah and Joanne \u2013 protagonists of charming LA-set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-234501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}