A few episodes into the second season of Netflix’s hit romantic comedy Nobody Wants This, one of those big, introspective, Carrie-Bradshaw-esque questions popped into my head: Do I actually like this show, or does it just go down easy? This is one of the most basic determinations a critic can make, and it’s usually so simple as to be automatic. Severance: genuinely good. And Just Like That: merely diverting. Interview With the Vampire: addictive like an invigorating yoga practice. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City: addictive like a drug that will slowly kill you.
Nobody Wants This is a tougher case because its leads, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, are just so charming and many of its observations about love and family are just so spot-on that weaker elements can get lost in the froth. Amid a generally rapturous response to the first season, the only major criticism that emerged was of the shrill, stereotypical way in which creator Erin Foster (a convert who based the show on her own marriage) depicted Jewish women. When it was announced that Girls collaborators Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan (both Jewish) had been hired as showrunners for Season 2, the news brought some hope that Konner’s perspective in particular would help to make these characters lovable. To a certain extent, it has. And there’s plenty to enjoy about the new episodes besides. Yet beneath its delightful surface, Nobody Wants This remains an uneven show—one that relies too heavily on its effervescent stars and, despite treating them with more kindness this time around, still struggles with its Jewish women.
Adam Brody and Kristen Bell in Nobody Wants This Erin Simkin—Netflix
When we last saw Hot Rabbi Noah Roklov (Brody) and his messy, agnostic, oversharing podcaster girlfriend, Joanne Williams (Bell), they were breaking up over her ambivalence about converting to Judaism—then immediately getting back together. Torn between their love and the promotion he wants, which would preclude having an interfaith partner, he admitted: “I can’t have both.” Then he gave Joanne one of those kisses the show’s fans swooned over, and it seemed safe to surmise that he’d chosen her over his career. Now, she enthuses to listeners in the Season 2 premiere, “I am in a big, beautiful, healthy relationship with a real-life adult man.”
Not so fast. At the couple’s first dinner party, surrounded by friends and family, Noah blindsides her with the assumption that she’s still planning to convert; she just needs more time. As her renewed deliberations drag on, his boss (Stephen Tobolowsky) fills the head rabbi role with a guy also named Noah (Alex Karpovsky, another Girls alum). The professional blow ratchets up tensions within the relationship, as Noah grows increasingly impatient and Joanne chafes at the expectation that she should fundamentally change who she is to be with him.
And so the conflict between love, on one side, and faith, family, and tradition reignites, in a season that retraces the arc of its predecessor—and especially its finale—a bit too closely. Bell and Brody are as great together as ever; you never doubt that they would fight so hard to stay together. Nor are you likely to get bored with episodes of around 25 minutes that strike a satisfying balance between light humor and big feelings. One abiding theme is certainty. How can you know for sure, when you’re making a life-altering decision like marriage or religious conversion, that you’re doing the right thing? “When You Know, You Know” is both the title of the episode and one of the season’s refrains. But do you always? What if what you know changes?
Justine Lupe and Arian Moayed in Nobody Wants This Erin Simkin—Netflix
These questions reverberate through other relationships, as Nobody Wants This fleshes out its ensemble. Joanne’s brash sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), rushes into a romance with one Dr. Andy (Lupe’s former Succession castmate Arian Moayed) and has to decide whether the red flags Joanne can’t help but raise justify pumping the brakes. Their mom (Stephanie Faracy) reflects on her own history of indecisiveness, which kept her from leaving their father (Michael Hitchcock), despite her intuition that something was irreparably wrong in the marriage. (After decades in the closet, he’s now an out gay man.) The close, caring but contentious relationships among the three Williams women constitute some of the new season’s greatest pleasures.
Certainty becomes an issue, as well, for Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons) and his wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn). Her discovery of her husband’s flirtatious friendship with Morgan, in a Season 1 finale set at their daughter’s bat mitzvah, has shaken the foundation of their relationship. The prospect of having another baby arises as they try to repair it. But now, a contrite Sasha is confronted with Esther’s restlessness. Joanne can tell there’s trouble when the woman who may one day become her sister-in-law shows up to a double date with bangs.
When Esther Zuckerman wrote in TIME that “the series seems to loathe Jewish women, who are portrayed as nags, harpies, and the ultimate villains of this story,” Esther Roklov served as Exhibit A. Mean, angry, overbearing, and loyal to Noah’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca (Emily Arlook), a member of the congregation who aspired to be the rabbi’s wife, she referred to Joanne and Morgan as “whore number one and whore number two.” Her cartoon villainy culminated with the men at the bat mitzvah gawking thirstily at the shiksas as Esther seethed: “Those f-cking sisters have got to go.” Considering that Rebecca and Noah’s mom, Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), came off as equally unpleasant, Foster, Konner, and Kaplan kind of had to retool the character.
Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn in Nobody Wants This Erin Simkin—Netflix
The result is a much more likable and relatable woman, though one whose transformation doesn’t feel wholly earned. (Other major characters have also been sanded down after Season 1, for reasons I don’t really understand. Love has apparently cured Joanne of her too-muchness. Sasha is less of a goof.) We never find out why her rage at the Williams sisters cooled to the extent that she can, in Season 2, have a calm conversation with Morgan and Sasha. “I’m not always mad,” she insists at the dinner party, though she might as well be speaking directly to the show’s critics. “I’m actually very fun.” Then she dances. In the next episode, she helps Joanne draft a conciliatory email to Bina. There are some nicely done scenes between Esther and Joanne later in the season, as their detente slowly evolves into a friendship. But when Esther abruptly starts feeling distant from Sasha, it’s hard not to suspect that this is part of a long game to bring him and Morgan back together without having to make him dump his shrewish, Semitic wife for a manic WASPy dream girl.
When it comes to the show’s other Jewish women, Nobody Wants This seems to have decided that less is more. (Also conspicuously absent from the season: any mention of Gaza, which every real Jewish family I know talks about all the time. According to Noah, “That’s the thing about Judaism—we love to talk about things from every direction.” Except for, you know, this one incredibly relevant topic.) Rebecca gets so little screen time, you wonder why Arlook bothered to return. And Bina remains as stridently anti-Joanne as ever, banning her from the Roklovs’ weekly Shabbat dinner and blaming her when Noah is passed over for the promotion. “Because of you,” she hisses, “my son’s career is ruined.” A fun moment in the same episode has Bina and Morgan, two very different kinds of badasses, exchange grudging expressions of mutual respect. It’s not enough to counterbalance how terribly she’s behaving towards her son and the love of his life, though. Strangely, the show abandons her storyline just after the midpoint of the season.
By the end of a finale that strains to create unfeasible synchronicity between the main couples, I was just as divided on Nobody Wants This as I was after the first season, for a few of the same and a few different reasons. Nothing can be done, at this point, about the dubious premise that mainstream Jews and gentiles in 2020s Los Angeles occupy separate social worlds. But the show has expanded its perspective, and tweaked or minimized polarizing characters to make them less likely to offend (though it’s going to have to deal with Bina eventually). It has gained some nuance, but lost some personality. Is it good? Sometimes. Will I keep watching it? Forever.
