I actually saved Nobody Wants This, postponing my viewing for several weeks because I was so excited about it and didn’t want to waste a great show on a stressful back-to-school season. And why wouldn’t I be excited? Kristin Bell has the snarkiness of Veronica Mars and the sweetness of everyone’s second-favorite princess; Adam Brody — because I am, apparently, culturally illiterate and did not watch The O.C. — is the eternal Best First Boyfriend, Dave Rogowski. Together … well, I wasn’t sure what kind of couple they might make, but I was excited to find out.
Well, I found out, and I’m disappointed. Both actors played exactly the characters I expected them to play, but I wasn’t interested in their relationship. Bell’s character, Joanne, seemed to be drawn to Brody’s Noah for more or less the right, if caricatured reasons (he’s attractive, and kind, and there are no good men anymore). But Noah’s interest in Joanne seems to be derived solely from her dissimilarity to the other, Jewish women in his life.1
Much has been made of the unpleasant stereotypes supposedly perpetuated by this show: Jewish women are nagging, controlling demanding harpies with short tempers and unruly eyebrows. (Okay, their eyebrows are perfect; that’s just me.) But while it’s true that Noah’s ex-girlfriend is his ex for a good reason, his mother is pretty average on the difficult-television-mother scale and his sister-in-law is… just a person? Yeah, she’s not hugely welcoming toward Joanne, but why should she be? Joanne is a total stranger, replacing her best friend as Noah’s partner, and for the first half of the show, she appears to have no executive function and no long-term potential. Why is it Esther’s job as a female to perform niceness?
Anyway, Joanne is as bad as any of the other characters. She’s immature, insecure, and emotionally incontinent. She’s agnostic (but, one assumes, Christian-adjacent), but far worse, she’s oblivious. The first time she meets Noah’s mother, she brings a charcuterie platter featuring prosciutto, even though Noah and his family eschew pork. This leads to what I found to be the funniest and most accurate moment of the show, Noah’s mother surreptitiously scarfing down the prosciutto in the kitchen, but it also indicates Joanne’s profound lack of understanding of Noah’s culture and the way it permeates his life.
But I had a hard time getting really worried about this, and I think this was partly because we never really know the stakes of Noah and Joanne’s relationship. Who are these people, actually; how old are they, and where are they going in life? Do they want to have children, and is that still feasible (the actors are 44)? In what direction can Joanne take her sex-and-relationships podcast if she settles down? How inappropriate and dysfunctional are their extremely connected relationships with their families of origin?
I’ve often said that romantic comedies should end fifteen minutes earlier, in that moment when things have gone horribly wrong and the heroine has been forced to suffer and retrench and find her strength. The last grand gesture — the man running through the airport or across the city — is only going to lead to a temporary reunion and more pain.
Nobody Wants This is no exception. The series’ first season ends — spoiler! spoiler! — with Joanne telling Noah she can’t convert to Judaism and implicitly ending their relationship. She’s realized she cares about him too much to continue something that will destroy his career, divide his family, and erode his most deeply felt beliefs. It’s a sad moment but a brave one, and it allows Joanne to show the only character growth we see in the ten-episode series.
And then Noah ruins it. He chases after her and insists they will make it work. It’s unclear what this will look like — will they marry, even though he’s already said that’s a no-no, and have a bunch of half-Jewish kids? will he find a new career or a more permissive congregation? will they engage in a long-term clandestine affair while he marries his still-on-the-hook ex? But regardless, after just a few months this romance has become more important to Noah than his family, his faith, and his life’s work.
And to a cynic it’s clear what this will lead to: Noah, ten years on, broken and lonely; Joanne, embittered. Noah, knowing he took a bad deal but not knowing how to back out of him. Joanne, furious that she can never measure up. Two people who saw the best in each other destroying all that goodness until they are left with each other’s worst. It’s the setup to a very dark marital comedy, or maybe a crime show in which Veronica Mars is the perpetrator. And nobody, at the series’ outset, wanted that.
Things I Actually Did Want: Screen Adaptations of Books
I enjoyed The Perfect Couple on Netflix despite its differences from the book, which I read too long ago to remember details of.
I saw The Wild Robot; it was a bit long but the large group of adults and children I went with were all entertained, and most of the women admitted they cried.
I watched the first twenty minutes of The Chicken Sisters (Hallmark Plus; you can watch the first episode free on Prime Video and get the subscription as an add-on) and was immediately engrossed. Wendy Malick is particularly excellent.
Other Things I Actually Did Want: Books
Perfect Fit, the second novel by Clare Gilmore, author of the excellent Love Interest, is out on October 29. I’m only halfway through it but it’s easily meeting my very high expectations.
I read fewer books than usual in October because I spent a full week engrossed in Draco and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love. It’s fan fiction, which I don’t usually read, and quite long, but it was one of my favorite books of the year so far.
Maggie North, author of the incredible Rules For Second Chances, is releasing a second book this summer. It’s called The Ripple Effect and getting the ARC in my inbox this morning made my day.
I am Jewish. I have dated plenty of non-Jewish men but they were typically less attractive and more functional than Joanne.