Not Even Adam Brody's Charms Can Save "Nobody Wants This"

Has Kristen Bell’s character, who is from Los Angeles, literally never met a Jewish person?

Warning: Spoilers for “Nobody Wants This” and “Fleabag”

Twenty years ago, when Adam Brody first appeared on television screens across America as the “adorkable” but smoking hot “nerd” Seth Cohen on “The O.C.,” millions of indie and alternative tween girls, including myself, fell completely and utterly in love. Here was a tall, handsome, sensitive nerd who spoke in rambling witticisms and loved indie music, who didn't fit into his wealthy Southern California beach town. A relatable early aughts dreamboy! Though today we could certainly problematize him, at the time Seth Cohen became a placeholder as the archetypal ideal man for a certain kind of millennial adolescent.

Kristen Bell, of course, is a millennial icon herself, having started her career as the titular character in the cult teen noir show “Veronica Mars, ”on air around the same time as “The O.C.” Bell stood out as a snarky Nancy Drew-like P.I., stealing the hearts of many viewers, too.

So when after two decades, I heard about the new show, a *deep breaths* ROM COM *deep breaths* starring Kristen Bell *deep breaths* and ADAM BRODY, my inner teen fangirl lost her mind. While Bell has had a very successful career and has become a household name through her roles in “Frozen,” The Good Place,” and guest roles in countless beloved millennial shows, Brody has been much more elusive. But if he’s in it, I am seated, thank you very much. If you haven’t seen “Life Partners,” which co-stars Brody’s real-life wife Leighton Meester (making the two essentially early aughts royalty) and Gillian Jacobs as best friends, do yourself a favor and check it out.

“Nobody Wants This,” which came out in October and was a huge hit for Netflix, is by far the highest profile project that Brody has been in for years, despite his obvious appeal as a rom-com star. In the show, Brody plays a hot rabbi named Noah (yes I did have to look up his character’s name) and Kristen plays a cute goyim podcaster named Joanne. The show is based on the experience of creator, writer and producer Erin Foster, and her experience converting to Judaism for her now-husband. There are lots of parallels. In the show, Joanne hosts a podcast with her sister, which Foster does as well, and there are some biographical details in common as well— Foster’s step-parents are Soviet refugees, as are Noah’s parents on the show. (Foster is also apparently somewhat of a nepo baby, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Joanne and Noah have a meet-cute at a friend’s party (the friend is played by the awesome but underused Sherry Cola, who I’m so happy to see getting roles after her turn in “Good Trouble”), which works well enough. This time, no one is trying to convince us that Adam Brody is a nerd, and he quickly earns the moniker of “hot Rabbi,” which he obviously deserves. Charming banter immediately ensues.

Kristen Bell and Adam Brody in “Nobody Wants This” (Netflix)

Where Foster diverges from her lived experience, and tries to insert drama into her own personal story where it didn’t actually exist is when the issues begin. The story’s main conflict is that Noah is a rabbi and his family expects him to marry someone Jewish, though it’s never clear if that’s all that important to him. So Noah’s family and friends are immediately horrified by the prospect of him dating a shiksa (non-Jew), and immediately judge Joanne and behave with the upmost nastiness towards her.

That nastiness, however, is mostly centered on the Jewish women in Noah’s life. His brother’s wife, Esther, is portrayed as a scary, controlling, and manipulative force in his brother’s life, who hates Joanne immediately out of loyalty to her best friend, Noah’s ex-girlfriend. Tovah Feldshuh, who I guess plays everyone’s mean Jewish mom now (see a much more nuanced and funny portrayal of Judaism and Jewish culture in “Crazy Ex Girlfriend”!), is also extremely harsh and overbearing as Noah’s mother. No one is good enough for my perfect son, yadda yadda. Foster has said in interviews that her Jewish husband’s family was not actually mean to her, and her attempt to add conflict to the fictionalized version rings unsettlingly.

In one of the first scenes of the show, before he meets Joanne, we see Noah break up with his girlfriend Rebecca because there’s “something missing” – but not before Rebecca puts on an engagement ring she found in his drawers while snooping. This plays into a stereotype too. As Jamie Feldman wrote in Buzzfeed, “the implication here, in my opinion, is that for a Jewish woman, the goal is marriage at all costs, romance be damned.”

“Nearly every Jewish woman in the show is like this: manipulative, spoiled and selfish,” wrote Jessica Grosse in The New York Times. “By contrast, Noah is a saint — or, if you prefer, a mensch.” And it’s true. His character is endlessly patient, funny, charming, thoughtful, and has basically no flaws other than abruptly leaving his girlfriend and moving on too quickly.

In one scene, we are introduced to the “WAGS” (wives and girlfriends) of Noah and his friends, presented one by one, Plastics-style. In one of the only funny Jewish jokes of the show, the team is called the Matzah Ballers. The women are all brunette, for one, and “all superficial followers of Esther, either obsessed with their weddings, their children, or their tacky jewelry brands,” a recent article in Time read. They are textbook “Jewish American Princesses,” or “JAPs,” a term really only Jewish people should use (and maybe we shouldn’t), presented unironically except for the fact that, compared to Joanne, they are buttoned-up and lame. Joanne warms everyone up at the game by showing up with a flask. What a cool girl!

He’s bad at basketball but good at puns! (Netflix)

I am far from the only one to notice the strange and kind of messed up portrayal of Jewish women in this show. Rom com aside, what rings really false too is Joanne’s patchy knowledge of Judaism, along with her sister, Morgan (played by Justine Lupe, who I was excited to see in this role after playing Willa in “Succession,” but her vibe here was… pretty much the same). The show takes place in Los Angeles, a city in which nearly 1 in 5 people are Jewish and home to the second largest Jewish population in the country.

Joanne doesn’t know what “Shalom” means, but she and her sister know enough about Jewish people for her to jokingly ask if she and Noah have sex “through a hole in a sheet,” which is apparently a widespread myth about Orthodox Jews. Morgan, who is supposed to be snarky and I guess, in absence of a better word, brat, seems actually disgusted by the prospect of Joanne and Noah together, which could maybe be a reflection of her jealousy that her sister has found someone and she hasn’t, but the way it comes off made me cringe a few times. Also, when Joanne is about to meet Noah’s parents she asks him if it’s true that Jewish men kiss their mothers on the mouth. Noah laughs it off. He is, after all, perfect.

Erin Foster has actually said that, unlike Joanne, she did know a lot of Jewish people growing up in L.A. (no shit) and regularly went to the Shabbat dinners and the bar and bat mitzvahs of her friends. To this point, coincidentally, around the time I was watching “Nobody Wants This,” I watched the 2022 film “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” which is about a recent college grad who is not Jewish and becomes a hype guy at local bar and bat mitzvahs, which speaks to the degree to which non-Jewish people know about Jewish customs in this day and age in major cities with Jewish populations. (I thought it was great.)

Foster has responded to criticism saying that she surrounded herself with writers, actors, and producers who were born Jewish to make this show – a hard feat in Hollywood, where Jews are famously underrepresented! And contrary to the portrayal of women in the show, she sees “Nobody Wants This” as an example of needing “positive Jewish stories right now,” according to an interview with the LA Times. (Foster has posted often on her Instagram about Israel’s right to exist since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and named her child after one of the released hostages.) She elaborates to basically explain how Noah is so different from the stereotype of a Jewish Rabbi, because he’s “a hot, cool, young Rabbi who smokes weed.”

It’s hard to think about the “Hot Rabbi” without thinking about “Hot Priest” in the second season of “Fleabag.” Because priests are celebate, the main character’s budding relationship with said hot priest, played by Andrew Scott, is actually a big problem. The hot priest, like the hot rabbi, is a normal dude who drinks and swears and is yes, hot. But the writing on that show rang more true, especially in elucidating the hot priest’s relationship with religion, and why he chooses God over a life with Fleabag in a series of precisely heartbreaking lines. While watching “Nobody Wants This,” I never quite believed Noah was a rabbi, or that he had these deeply held religious beliefs alongside being a regular cool dude. In fact, I watched “Nobody Wants This” a week after a major breakup and it barely struck my heartstrings. The inner conflict, or romance, or ill-fatedness, or meant-to-be-ness of these two characters just never quite hit for me.

The hot priest broke all of our hearts and I am not past it (Amazon Prime Video)

Of course, Noah is a rabbi, not a priest so the conflict here is certainly surmountable. And the show doesn’t even specify what kind of rabbi he is, which is important because different sects have different rules about interfaith marriage. But over half of Jewish people who have married since 2010 are in interfaith relationships, so the pearl-clutching is kind of unwarranted. Yet the prospect here is treated as altogether new.Yet in the early 2000s, the hit HBO show “Sex and the City” had a major plotline about Charlotte, queen of the WASPs, converting to Judaism after meeting her soon-to-be second husband, Harry. Over seven seasons this was my favorite plot of the whole show.

There’s also, well, “The O.C.” The show was created by Jewish showrunner wunderkind Josh Schwartz, who later went on to create “Gossip Girl,” and its portrayal of Judaism is fresh, funny, and spot-on. Amid all the soapiness, the Jewish commentary was always a highlight of the show for me. Seth Cohen’s parents are in an interfaith* marriage themselves, and Seth, being half and half, originated the term “Chrismukkah,” which my family still uses. Growing up in a semi-interfaith household, my mom would always come up with ways to somehow make Christmas Jewish, like by buying eight tiny trees for each night of Hanukkah. So while “Nobody Wants This” left a bitter taste in my mouth, we’ll always have Seth Cohen and his santa yarmulkes, talking about Chrismukkah.

What I’m Watching: Okay, it’s been a while so I’ve watched a lot since I’ve posted last. But the most recent show I’d recommend is Netflix’s “The Decameron,” a spoof of the medieval plague story. Part “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” part “Miracle Workers,” I loved this ensemble show starring familiar faces from “Derry Girls,” “Sex Education,” and more. It was morbid but hilarious, and touching, too. I was so sad when it ended.

“I’m not dead yet!” – This newsletter

*correction: this should say interfaith, not interracial