Photo: Hopper Stone/Netflix
Well, well, well, what an efficient little start to the breezy autumnal romantic comedy that is Nobody Wants This. In a tight 26-minutes, series creator and this episode’s writer Erin Foster not only introduces us to our two main players, drops us into their fully-realized individual lives complete with some very promising supporting players, but also wastes zero time getting us to the big, wildly endearing meet-cute and sets up some major obstacles for this could be, who knows, perfectly mismatched couple. It’s a very productive (compliment) and charming kick-off to this love story. If you aren’t sold on the central romance by, like, minute 17, I really have nothing to say to you. This show is not for you — scram!
So let’s meet these people, shall we? Kristen Bell plays Joanne, the host of a successful sex and dating podcast alongside her sister Morgan (a perfect Justine Lupe) on the verge of being acquired by a huge platform. Now, I know “podcast host” is a legit (and sometimes lucrative) career path (and I know that Foster has a very successful podcast with her sister, too), but the elder millennial in me still has to do a lot of work to accept that this is going to be the thing that replaces magazine writer as the “romantic comedy woman job” without rolling my eyes; But that’s a me problem, okay? I fear change. I just want to be upfront about it as we go on this journey together. Joanne is open and opinionated, really has no time or respect for the duds she has been meeting on the L.A. dating scene, and is perfectly described by her friend and producer Ashley (Sherry Cola), who at one point says of her to another character: “Her bad personality is weirdly charming, right?”
Joanne’s family, who we find all together at an anniversary dinner for her parent’s separation, are about as far from repressed as you can get. Henry (Michael Hitchcock) and Lynn (Stephanie Faracy) separated after Henry came out, and Lynn is still very much in love with him and is pretty vocal about it. She also makes a dire health announcement at dinner, informing her ex and her daughters that her sound therapist Birch did discover that she’s missing the note C when she speaks and that’s linked to sadness, in case you wanted to get a fuller picture of what Lynn is all about. (I’m already obsessed with her.)
The other half of our would-be couple is Adam Brody’s Noah. Joining the (welcomed) long line of hot TV clergymen before him, Noah is, in fact, a rabbi. But he’s like a very cool rabbi — he says fuck and is flirty as hell. At one point, he jokingly cops to “playing up the Torah bad boy vibe,” which is a phrase I cannot believe anyone could get through saying with a straight face, but Adam Brody did it. Also in the spirit of full disclosure, this O.C. fan wants to be very upfront about the fact that I am a Ryan Atwood girlie always and forever, but I do firmly believe the greatest gift that show gave us was the relationship between Ryan and Seth (Sandy Cohen a close second) and I am beyond pleased to see Brody back in a TV show where he is just oozing chemistry with every one of his co-stars.
Speaking of, we meet the Noah counterpart to Joanne’s Morgan in Sasha, Noah’s brother played by Timothy Simons, yet another perfectly cast supporting character on this show. Everything you need to know about Sasha you learn in the first two minutes of meeting him: When Noah says there’s something he wants to talk to him about, Sasha’s immediate response is “Is Esther cheating on me? Whatever, I’ll stay with her,” about his wife, and he, an adult human, also has no idea what’s so wrong about his mother still cutting his hair. My biggest gripe about this episode is that I wish there were a little more com in this rom-com, but I have faith Sasha is really going to deliver on this front.
When the brothers arrive at Noah’s place, they find Noah’s long-term girlfriend, Rebecca, wearing an engagement ring Noah had purchased but definitely had not given to her yet. Not only did Rebecca go hunting for a ring in Noah’s locked desk drawer and is now wearing it, but she’s also already started talking to Noah’s mom about wedding venues. She sees absolutely nothing wrong with this since the plan was to get married and she was going to say yes, so why drag it out? Noah can’t believe she’s treating their relationship like it has an itemized checklist. Rebecca thinks it’s silly that Noah is waiting around expecting to feel something different. “This is it, this is the feeling,” she tells him. “I don’t think it is,” he says.
And that is how a newly single Noah winds up at a dinner party hosted by his fellow neighborhood watch friend Ashley and bumps into a cute podcaster wearing a ridiculous chinchilla coat because she’s admittedly “in need of constant attention.” Noah and Joanne’s meet-cute over a bottle of wine that Noah embarrassingly cannot open is a delight. Bell and Brody’s banter is so easy and natural, and their chemistry is so instant. I honestly can’t believe they haven’t been paired up in something before.
It’s not long before Noah is asking Ashley what Joanne’s deal is and specifically if she is even a tiny bit Jewish. Did I guess that there was going to be a played-out joke about how Noah could put a Jewish bone in Joanne’s body? Sure did. But I will forgive some of this episode’s underwhelming jokes (a joke about being a Karen? Still?) because I am so all in on the Noah and Joanne pairing.
When Joanne realizes at dinner that she incorrectly assumed who the rabbi at the party was and it turns out she has been unknowingly flirting with said rabbi the whole time, it doesn’t matter — you can already tell she has it bad for him. It’s exactly why she abruptly decides to leave the party. Just yesterday, she had made a promise to start making healthier relationship choices, and she, someone who doesn’t even think she believes in God, getting involved with a rabbi just seems like asking for trouble. Yet, she certainly doesn’t stop Noah when he says he’s leaving too and will walk her to her car, which is parked near hers. He’s pretty upfront about how even if they wanted to, it might be hard for them to date with the whole rabbi/gentile pairing — “we’re trying to repopulate a people, you know?” But he also doesn’t seem to mind one bit when she talks about how she doesn’t buy into the religious thing. In fact, he’s very charmed by it.
Joanne gives him a crash course on her life to see if there’s anything she could say that would scare him off. He’s happy to admit that she does scare him: “Oh, you’re terrifying. You’re an unfiltered, complicated, vulnerable, beautiful woman.” He also admits that his car was actually parked way back in front of the house, and he just wanted to walk with her, which is so unbelievably endearing, and yes, I understand that says more about my low bar for men than anything else, but STILL. Joanne (and I) cannot believe how smooth this guy is “for a rabbi.” But more than a strong flirt game, in just a few short hours, Noah seems to understand Joanne better than anyone else maybe ever has. Alas, she tells him that this will never work — they’re from two different worlds — even if she really, really wants it to.
AND YET, we get a montage of the two of them going about their business over the next few days, clearly unable to stop thinking about each other. There’s even a moment when Joanne smells her chinchilla coat that Noah wore for a minute that I think is played to be serious but is actually insane. Anyway, it’s no surprise that when Ashley texts Joanne that Noah has been asking about her while she’s on yet another terrible date, she busts out of there and over to Noah’s temple where he told her he’d be delivering the sermon that night.
For not knowing that Joanne would show, Noah’s sermon is quite pointed! He talks about how you’re in the middle of God’s plan even if you don’t realize it and how “everything can have purpose if you allow it,” and it seemingly really does it for Joanne. She’s hooked on this rabbi. And by the way Noah pushes away the swarm of Jewish mothers foisting their daughters upon the single rabbi in order to get to her, he seems hooked, too. And that’s when we meet what will surely be one of the biggest obstacles to our couple getting a happy ending: Noah’s mother (Tovah Feldshuh), who does not look pleased at all to see her son chatting up a “shiksa” in the middle of their temple.