{"id":234408,"date":"2025-10-23T12:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T12:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/234408\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T12:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T12:44:09","slug":"netflix-hit-back-but-not-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/234408\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix Hit Back, but Not Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Erin Foster\u2019s Netflix rom-com Nobody Wants This<\/a> premiered last year, I discussed it<\/a> through one of my favorite prisms: Is it good for the Jews?<\/p>\n

\n\tMy answer was a mixed \u201cYes.\u201d The first season, in which a rabbi (Adam Brody<\/a>\u2018s Noah) falls for a shiksa podcaster (Kristen Bell<\/a>\u2018s Joanne) \u2014 \u201cshiksa\u201d being the show\u2019s oft-repeated preferred slur, not mine \u2014 aimed for laughter and swooning, but simultaneously took a serious-minded approach to interfaith relationships and a specific and detailed approach to Judaism. I appreciated that effort, especially in a television landscape in which any expression of religion, much less Jewishness, is decidedly rare. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNobody Wants This\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tNot a shanda, but not quite a mitzvah either.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAirdate: Thursday, October 23 (Netflix)
Cast: Kristen Bell, Adam Brody, Justine Lupe, Timothy Simons, Jackie Tohn
Creator: Erin Foster\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI still expressed serious concerns about the show\u2019s lack of generosity toward its Jewish female characters \u2014 particularly Tovah Feldshuh\u2019s Bina and Jackie Tohn\u2019s Esther \u2014 and I was perplexed by why both Joanne and her sister\/podcast partner Morgan\u2019s (Justine Lupe) lack of knowledge or curiosity about Jewishness so frequently resembled playful antisemitism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWas the show itself also, you know, good? Well, my answer was similarly a mixed \u201cYes.\u201d The appeal of Nobody Wants This hinged primarily on the chemistry between Bell and Brody, which isn\u2019t uncommon for a rom-com. That the chemistry was palpable helped Nobody Wants This overcome its predictable reliance on genre clich\u00e9s, while the supporting cast, especially Timothy Simons, Lupe and Tohn, helped elevate underwritten roles (though with Lupe\u2019s performance, I was stuck pondering uncomfortable questions like, \u201cIf an actor is so charming that she makes you ignore that her character borders on antisemitic \u2026 is that GOOD?\u201d)<\/p>\n

\n\tAnyway, the show was a sensation, earning Golden Globe and Emmy nominations and reminding Hollywood pencil-pushers that the appetite for a proficiently made rom-com very much exists.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second season of Nobody Wants This, then, is a reminder of why television prefers, whenever possible, to give its rom-coms a procedural coating. Moonlighting<\/a>? A mystery-of-the-week procedural (but really, at its best, a rom-com). Castle? A mystery-of-the-week procedural (but really, at its best, a rom-com). Bones? A mystery-of-the-week procedural (but really, at its best, a rom-com). It just helps for your characters to have other things to do in addition to falling in and out of love. Otherwise, a distinct risk of repetition and exhaustion sets in.<\/p>\n

\n\tNobody Wants This doesn\u2019t fall off a creative cliff in its second season, but a lot of the charm is diminished. The new creative team takes evident pains to adjust some of the character-based problems from the first season, but in the process of expanding the profile for several supporting players, Brody and Bell are left playing often identical beats of uncertainty and insecurity to the ones that worked well in the first season. In the process, the chemistry and overall appeal dwindle dramatically.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new season, boasting Jenni Konner<\/a> and Bruce Eric Kaplan as new showrunners, picks up fairly soon after the first \u2014 though time generally doesn\u2019t matter much in the world of Nobody Wants This, except for when people want to complain about things being \u201ctoo soon\u201d or \u201ctoo slow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNoah and Joanne are basically living together, except for when the show wants to remind us of Joanne\u2019s insecurity that they\u2019re not formally living together. The whole \u201cJoanne isn\u2019t sure she\u2019s ready to convert to Judaism\u201d thing remains their primary bone of contention, though the writers give Noah a contrived professional crisis so that they have things to talk about other than why Joanne can\u2019t commit to converting or not converting.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdding to the rom-com hijinks are extended storylines with Simons\u2019 Sasha, whose professional life has vanished entirely along with father Ilan (Paul Ben-Victor, almost totally absent); Esther hitting bumpy patches; and Morgan embarking on a romance with Dr. Andy (Arian Moayed), an accelerated love story that Joanne disapproves of but the show seems to find amusing rather than ultra-disturbing given its origins. We spend more time with Joanne and Morgan\u2019s parents (Stephanie Faracy\u2019s Lynn and Michael Hitchcock\u2019s Henry).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe season premiere, written by Foster and featuring the return of Noah\u2019s rec league basketball team, again positions Feldshuh\u2019s Bina, frequently my biggest source of discomfort in the first season, as an ongoing adversary. Then she nearly vanishes in the second half of the season, which is one way of dodging the Jewish mom stereotyping. <\/p>\n

\n\tAnother way is to write characters out of a maternal role, like Esther, whose teenage daughter has become invisible (figuratively), allowing Esther to concentrate on more important things like getting bangs and waffling on whether or not she\u2019s jealous of Sasha and Morgan\u2019s friendship. Esther\u2019s still a little mean this season, but she\u2019s playfully mean and makes no effort to break Joanne and Noah up, so we can like her without complication. As for Morgan \u2014 still my most consistent source of laughs \u2014 giving her a relationship of her own, however bad that relationship is, makes her less prone to saying dumb things about Jewishness.<\/p>\n

\n\tThus, Esther and Morgan become less problematic characters and Bina becomes a frequently mentioned but less frequently seen afterthought. That\u2019s a way of fixing those problems!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut new problems arrive with Noah and Joanne. In the first season, Noah was perhaps over-idealized, to a point at which it was hard to feel like the generally superficial and dithering Joanne was on his level. This season turns Noah into a smarmier, borderline sociopathic character \u2014 far more like Joe from Netflix\u2019s You<\/a> than anybody is likely to want to admit \u2014 whose condescension often became insufferable for me. I\u2019d say I sympathized more with Joanne, but it\u2019s almost like the writers realized that despite her being based on the series creator, she had no specific personality traits, so scripts are constantly trying to over-explain her limited eccentricities. <\/p>\n

\n\tAn episode featuring Brody\u2019s real-life wife Leighton Meester tries to fill in some backstory blanks, as does an episode that spells out how Joanne\u2019s parents\u2019 divorce impacted her. But people kept making pronouncements about Joanne\u2019s personality and I kept responding with, \u201cHuh?\u201d Plus, somehow Joanne and Morgan\u2019s podcast is less plausible and less purposeful than it was last season.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are still times that Brody and Bell generate some sweetness, but the heat and crackle between them is missing \u2014 by choice a lot of the time, but far from all of it. The entire first season sold the premise, \u201cThese two characters absolutely belong together, no matter the obstacles.\u201d This season builds to a nearly identical finale decision and I was hard-pressed to care.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe vagueness extends to the season\u2019s perspective on Judaism, which is simultaneously more and less.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe season is very invested in exploring Jewishness as a way of processing the world, which of course it is, more than as a \u201creligion,\u201d which of course it is for many people. At the same time, Nobody\u2019s Wants This becomes like the rom-com version of one of those high school-set shows in which the book they\u2019re studying any particular week ties in directly to the theme of the episode. Noah is constantly making sermons or toasts cribbed from Talmud for Netflix Subscribers. Then again, there\u2019s a full Purim episode, so I shouldn\u2019t quibble.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy biggest regret of the entire season is the lack of a return cameo from Leslie Grossman\u2019s Rabbi Shira, whose lone episode last season represented one of its most meaningful spiritual moments. Sending up the no-stakes frivolity of progressive Reform Judaism, characters played by Seth Rogen<\/a> and Kate Berlant get some insight-free chuckles. Plus, bringing in Rogen forces comparisons to Platonic<\/a>, which had a tighter, funnier second season and emerged as a better \u201cLos Angeles\u201d show.<\/p>\n

\n\tOr maybe Nobody Wants This just requires a mulligan after the creative overhaul of the second season. Reading THR\u2018s cover story<\/a> after watching the season and writing most of this review, I find it amazing that the first season worked as well as it did and wholly unsurprising that the second season doesn\u2019t seem as secure in who these people are or what their story is. Maybe season three will be what I actually want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Erin Foster\u2019s Netflix rom-com Nobody Wants This premiered last year, I discussed it through one of my…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[43818,49,48,75,111015,111016,43819,43821,4426,111017,348],"class_list":{"0":"post-234408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-adam-brody","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jenni-konner","13":"tag-justin-lupe","14":"tag-kristen-bell","15":"tag-nobody-wants-this","16":"tag-seth-rogen","17":"tag-tim-simons","18":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}