As a millennial Jewish woman, the new Netflix series Nobody Wants This hooked me with a concept: “Adam Brody plays a hot Rabbi.” And, yes, when I actually watched the 10-episode romantic comedy, the star of The O.C. lived up to expectations in the role of Rabbi Noah Roklov. He’s barely aged a day since playing Seth Cohen in the early 2000s and is charming in that self-deprecating way the actor has mastered over his decades on television.
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Still, I couldn’t help but feel let down. While it offers up the fantasy of the ideal Jewish man in Noah, the series seems to loathe Jewish women, who are portrayed as nags, harpies, and the ultimate villains of this story. I wanted to be swept away by a rom-com. Instead, I was faced with the reality that maybe this show actually hates me.
Nobody Wants This is created by Erin Foster, the daughter of music producer and composer David Foster who was formerly the star of the short-lived VH1 reality TV parody Barely Famous in which she and her sister Sara played fictionalized versions of themselves looking for fame. In real life, Foster converted to Judaism to marry entertainment exec Simon Tikhman. Their wedding was covered by Vogue. Here she offers up a spin on her own story. Her alter ego is Joanne, played by Kristen Bell, who, like Foster, has a podcast with her sister, Morgan (Succession‘s Justine Lupe), where they talk about their chaotic sex lives and bad taste in men.
At a dinner party, Joanne meets Noah after initially assuming a more stereotypically Jewish-looking man was the rabbi she expected to be attending. Despite the accidental antisemitism in their meet cute, Noah begins to fall for this pint-sized firecracker. Of course, the fact that he’s a rabbi complicates things: He is expected to marry a Jewish girl, and the very blonde Joanne is not at all Jewish. In fact, she’s almost shockingly unaware of the most basic of Jewish customs, especially for a privileged person living in Los Angeles. Joanne, for instance, doesn’t know what “Shalom” means. I grew up in the same L.A. circles. A real-life Joanne would have definitely attended multiple bat mitzvahs in her day.
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To be with Noah, Joanne must overcome her own insecurities about relationships. To be with Joanne, Noah must figure out how to make his career and his faith coexist with his choice in a woman. Standing in their way is a horde of judgmental Jewish women including Noah’s mother Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), his sister-in-law Esther (Jackie Tohn), and his ex Rebecca (Emily Arlook). While Joanne is by no means perfect—she’s immature and messy—these brunette ladies are one-dimensional nightmares who together fuel stereotypes. They are needy, overbearing, and nasty.
The non-Jewish woman—a.k.a. the “shiksa”—has long been idolized by Jewish men in popular culture. In Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer falls for the title character played by Diane Keaton, who tells him, “you’re what Grammie Hall would call a real Jew.” In Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid, Charles Grodin’s Lenny Cantrow essentially abandons his Jewish newlywed Lila Kolodny (Jeannie Berlin) to chase after Cybill Shepherd on a beach. In the musical The Last Five Years, which will be on Broadway next year more than two decades after its off-Broadway premiere, novelist Jamie sings an ode to his “shiksa goddess,” Cathy. “I’m breaking my mother’s heart,” he croons. “The longer I stand looking at you the more I hear it splinter and crack from 90 miles away.”
Nobody Wants This, by contrast, operates largely from the perspective of the shiksa. Here she’s as equally in love with the Jewish man as he is with her, but she’s not sold on adopting his culture as her own. And why would she be when it seems so unfriendly?
“Who the hell is that?” Esther asks Bina at the end of the pilot episode after Joanne ditches a date to show up at Noah’s temple where he’s giving a sermon. Bina responds with anger, “A shiksa.” Esther then follows Noah and his brother Sasha (Veep‘s Timothy Simons) to the bar where they’ve gone out with Joanne and Morgan. Esther beckons her husband to the car by honking her horn and calling the sisters “whore number one and whore number two.” Bina, meanwhile, has a thick Eastern European accent, and is vaguely threatening when she confronts her son about dating Joanne. Later, when Joanne meets her, Bina is briefly charmed but then whispers with a smile, “you’re never going to end up with my son” like a mob boss.
And they aren’t the only Jewish female targets of Nobody Wants This. Rebecca gets off slightly easier—she’s not as outwardly mean and is genuinely heartbroken—but she’s still painted in an unflattering light. Noah breaks up with her after she presumptuously startings wearing an engagement ring before he’s proposed. She later lies to Morgan, who she meets in a bar, about the status of her and Noah’s relationship with the goal of torturing Joanne. Plus, the other “wives and girlfriends”—or WAGS—of the guys on Noah’s basketball team, the Matzah Ballers, are all superficial followers of Esther, either obsessed with their weddings, their children, or their tacky jewelry brands.
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They are all what some would call Jewish American Princesses, or JAPs, a semi-offensive term that has been reclaimed by some Jewish women. For instance, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a show with a Jewish heroine played by co-creator Rachel Bloom (and coincidentally also starring Feldshuh as the Jewish mother), staged a hilarious “JAP Battle.” But Nobody Wants This has none of the lived-in knowledge that makes the Crazy Ex scene funny. Instead, it’s a tourist’s view of Judaism with an outsider’s observation of Jewish women. The only one that is presented as entirely benevolent is a rabbi played by Leslie Grossman who Joanne meets at the camp where Noah works.
This is not to discredit Foster’s claim to Judaism as a convert. But that doesn’t let her off the hook for dealing in cheap stereotypes for lame jokes instead of offering up nuanced depictions of complicated women. Joanne and Morgan are allowed to be misguided but lovable. Their opponents are simply mean.
The men, by the way, are presented as eminently more chill. Sasha is a fun stoner who bonds with Morgan over being the “loser sibling.” Sasha and Noah’s dad (Paul Ben-Victor) likes to schvitz and take naps. You can see why Joanne would want to be married to a Jewish man; you can see why she’s not sure about wanting to become a Jewish woman.
That’s the ultimate letdown of Nobody Wants This. What should be a show about a woman’s entrance into and embrace of Jewish culture instead perpetuates the worst ideas about Jewish women. I wanted to fall in love. Instead, I just felt targeted. And I’m not just bitter because the bitch’s name is Esther. I promise.
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