‘Nobody Wants This’ feels prematurely old and lazy

When feel-good romance Nobody Wants This first showed up on Netflix last year, it felt refreshing, even bracing, to see a love story on television where a woman fell for a guy who wasn’t toxic. This was no criminal or a conman but a man of the cloth, a rabbi—a milquetoast variant of the “hot priest" from Fleabag. The gentile heroine was therefore introduced to the ways of the Jews, romanticised at every step, but, most critically, the show created by Erin Foster was written smartly and sharply with enough quips and wit to justify the Caslon-style font used in tribute by the show’s titles, a font famously used on the book jackets of the iconically Jewish maestro Philip Roth.

The second season of the series, which dropped on Netflix last week, is feeble enough to relinquish its right to salute the master. The show still features great characters and wonderful actors—in particular Morgan (played by Justine Lupe) and Esther (played by Jackie Tohn)—but the main course now feels like a reheated romcom casserole. The delicious first season felt like “romantic pornography", I had written last year, about this show with dreamy post-date conversations, easily cleared misunderstandings and wall-to-wall wish-fulfilment. However this time the protagonists are asked to retread cliché after cliché as they try to stretch out relationshippy sap. Kristen Bell’s Joanna and Adam Brody’s Noah both deserve better.

“We’ve made it work," says Joanna about her relationship as the new season opens, her voiceover/podcasting voice more smug than ever, “We’re an amazing couple." I kept waiting for Morgan, her sister—and podcast co-host—to add “Famous last words." Nobody Wants This barrels recklessly through the tiredest tropes—him leaving her text on read, her being destructive at his work even—because the show’s point doesn’t seem to be the couple themselves, but on prolonging their agony. The show has changed showrunners, and the new gang appear more focused on trying to get another season than let their smart, reasonable protagonists stay smart and reasonable.

Therefore we have a series where podcasters behave as if their episodes are being broadcast live and where several couples conveniently break-up during the same party. The lines are nowhere near as incisive or as quotable as the first season, and honestly—without that cleverness and without those refreshingly sane protagonists—Nobody Wants This now feels like an increasingly tone-deaf advertisement for how cuddly and adorable Judaism can be. In a show full of product placement, the religion is front and centre. The show first sold us on a believer and a non-believer being helplessly in love; the love story between a believer and someone trying hard to become a believer doesn’t have the same dynamic.

Meanwhile, in a more interesting corner of Netflix, there stands Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s Long Story Short, an animated series that grapples with Jewishness in a much more mature way. The show is about a family and its dynamics contrasted across three timelines, three decades, so we see the characters as children and as adults, their relationships altered by the sliding scales of passing years.

Long Story Short is a powerful series—expectedly, coming from the creator of the devastating BoJack Horseman, still Netflix’s best show—and I recommend it heavily. The series is a superbly evocative take on the passage of time, but it also offers a fascinating window into the religion. “Learning everyone hates you and wants to kill you doesn’t exactly make for a well-adjusted person," says one of the characters about his faith, and that explains the Jewish condition with profound simplicity.

Nobody Wants This is still an easy show to watch. It’s a quick binge with its snappy episodes and quickly understandable conflicts—it is such easy-viewing, in fact, that it has become a comfortable second-screen show, the kind of thing streamers want you to play in the background while you text a friend or fold a shirt. That feels like a waste principally because the first season was so compelling, and held such promise for being a grown-up relationship to root for. But now Joanna—who spirals out of control because her boyfriend wants a night by himself to prep for a job interview—and Noah—who seems to have given up all self-awareness—are the least interesting people on the series.

Joanna’s sister Morgan, however, is awesome. Lupe plays her with sass and style—few can carry off a Pretty Woman costume with such flair—and the self-absorbed character has an enviable effortlessness. It’s also fun to see her paired with fellow Succession alumni Arian Moayed, even though his part is mostly a one-note caricature. Most parts in the show now have been reduced to a single riff with minimal variations, but the actors elevate it. Timothy Simons has an infectious enthusiasm as Noah’s brother Sasha, and Tohn makes Sasha’s discontented wife Esther a deeply compelling character. “It’s so much easier to have hope when that gummy’s about to kick in," she says.

Nobody Wants This needs that gummy. It feels prematurely old and stale and lazy, and it needs something to chew on and something to help it find some rhythm—any rhythm—again. It needs to be fun again. It needs to be cool again. It needs to be sexy again. That’s my complaint—and Portnoy would agree.

Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.