Nobody Wants This Season 2 Review | Chemistry meets Judaism 101

In Season two of Nobody Wants This, the creators have realised that it is useful for your characters to have things to do in addition to falling in and out of love. The season begins with LA -based inter-faith couple Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody) deeply entrenched in the “honeymoon phase” of their relationship: they are cooking together, co-hosting dinner parties, Noah also gets an occasional corner in Joanne’s sex podcast with her sister Morgan (Justin Lupe, Succession, 2018) and in her words, “You’re in a psychotically annoying relationship. Way to make all of our single listeners feel bad.” Brody and Bell vacillate between insecurity and uncertainty, but overall, Season 2 often slips into a couples therapy session vibe: Joanne and Noah seem to be having many text-book relationship conversations—about how being a generically good guy doesn’t make you a good boyfriend, how voicing angry or jealous thoughts out loud doesn’t make you a bad person, how telling your partner exactly what you want is empowering. Yet, they are always skirting around the elephant in the room: religion.

Noah and Joanne are now basically living together, even if they haven’t formally “moved in together”, leaving room for Joanne’s insecurity about their being an “us”. The whole “Joanne isn’t sure she’s ready to convert to Judaism” thing remains their primary bone of contention, though now, there is more to deflect this, in Noah’s supposed professional crisis and Joanne being a somewhat contributor to this, because she is a "shiksha" (non-Jew) and he is a Rabbi (as Jew as it gets). So picking her implies he isn’t all in, and everyone, including his Rabbi and his mother, hope that it’s an infection he will soon be rid of.

There are extended storylines, with Morgan embarking on a problematic romance with her therapist Dr. Andy (Arian Moayed, also Succession), an accelerated love story that Joanne disapproves of, but not for the right reasons, as it appears to be. But Morgan provides more laughs than anyone else, so I don’t mind the spotlight on her for a while. We also spend more time with Joanne and Morgan’s parents (Stephanie Faracy’s Lynn and Michael Hitchcock’s Henry).

The relationship of Noah’s brother Sasha (Timothy Simons, Veep) and his wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn) gets much more attention in season two, giving us better insight into their love and connection. Esther is also shown to have more depth, despite doing waffly things like getting bangs. You are reminded as they are planning “a second baby” that they are also parents of a mysteriously invisible teenager and I know for a fact that this is not practically possible (the invisibility).

Although Morgan runs the risk of playing to the “I am hot and I know it” stereotype, she offers some great moments in season two whenever she interacts with someone entirely outside her normal orbit, like at one of those co-hosted dinners, when she is seated next to a set-up who doesn’t seem into her and she has to know why, “for data”. It is what makes her friendship with Sasha so intriguing, although one can tell there is zero chemistry and Esther should take a chill pill. One of my favourite scenes involves Morgan and Bina (Noah’s mother) having a heart-to-heart in the bathroom of the local high school.

Seth Rogen and Kate Berlant, runners of a progressive Judaism temple, Ahava, provide some chuckles, although one is left hoping for another cameo of Leslie Grossman (Rabbi Shira), who made for one of the most meaningful spiritual moments last season.

In the first season, Noah was perhaps over-idealised—to a point when it was hard to imagine him being in a real relationship with the largely superficial and dithering Joanne. This season turns Noah into a smarmy, borderline sociopath, a man with issues and insecurities and an unresolved past—as flawed as anyone else. The heat and crackle between them is somewhat missing, although this can be attributed to the revelation of some backstory details which connect the dots: Noah’s lack of closure with his ex, who pops up, as do Joanne’s parents and stories of her high school misadventures and being scarred by their divorce.

For an entire first season that reigned us in and sold the premise, “These two characters absolutely belong together, no matter the obstacles,” the second season doesn’t seem as secure in who these people are or what their story is. Maybe season three will be what everybody wants.