The cast and creator of Netflix’s hit comedy “Nobody Wants This” have been addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the press for the past few weeks. First, star Adam Brody, who plays “hot rabbi” Noah Roklov and one half of the show’s main couple, told GQ that he views Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and supports a free Palestine. Creator Erin Foster, who based the show on her experience converting to Judaism after meeting her now-husband, said in a podcast: “I disagree with that. [Brody]and that’s OK,” he keeps his own stance vague, but reiterates that he sees the series as “a love letter to Judaism.” Actor Tovah Feldshuh, who plays Noah’s overbearing mother Bina, went much further in her own response, publicly condemning Brody’s comments to the New York Post as “straight out of Hitler’s playbook.”
It could be argued that the media is not the ideal forum for colleagues to develop opposing stances on complex geopolitical issues that also touch on religious identity. Do you know it could be to be? A television show that celebrates Judaism in all its theoretical forms!
Of course, this is not, and never was, the kind of show that “Nobody Wants This” actually is. The romantic comedy started as a featherweight diversion and remains that way in its recently released third season. Brody’s Noah is the fantasy of a sexy, saintly man who inexplicably thinks Kristen Bell’s self-absorbed podcaster Joanne walks on water, and the seemingly central conflict of their relationship—it’s important to Noah that his partner is Jewish, while Joanne is less sure about conversion—dissipates again and again in the warm haze of a romantic kiss. It’s more likely that the conflict stemmed from Joanne and her sister arguing over who her podcasting partner Morgan (Justine Lupe) was. real star of their show, or Noah’s brother Sasha’s (Timothy Simons) new dye job rather than deep disagreements over values or lifestyle.
To watch too many episodes of “Nobody Wants This” in one sitting is to experience the same stomach ache that develops after eating too many KitKats on an empty stomach. (Perhaps that’s why Season 3 comes so close to Halloween?) Such a sugar rush might not be well-suited to addressing spirituality and ideology as a matter of temperament, but “Nobody Wants This” further undermined its ability to fully represent the Jewish community with some early creative choices.
Season 1 was widely criticized for a seemingly hostile and stereotypical portrayal of Jewish women, such as Bina or Noah’s sister-in-law Esther (Jackie Tohn), who emerge as cunning, possessive obstacles to Joanne and Morgan’s happiness. Later seasons have made some adjustments and behind-the-scenes voices like co-showrunners Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan (“Girls”), but the “Nobody Wants This” trend is trending toward: reduction Does not increase friction. (The building is oddly cool about Noah proposing to Joanne about two seconds after they move in.) And there’s no greater source of friction among American Jews right now than how to feel about the Jewish state in the wake of the Hamas attacks in October 2023.
“Nobody Wants This” premiered almost a year after that terrible event, and Israel’s complete absence from conversations in the Roklov family was always noticeable. If my life is a judge, any holiday or family gathering is bound to come up with opinions that fall along predictable generational lines. If part of Noah’s personality was that of a cooler, cooler-headed religious leader, then offering a critique of the ongoing occupation would be a perfectly plausible way to prove it. The last time I opened Instagram, I saw a video of a progressive rabbi covering the east side of Los Angeles, actually the real-life Noah Roklov! — Establishing a protective presence around the olive harvest in the West Bank. I would wonder what Bina would think about her son doing the same, but I’m sure Feldshuh’s statement is the closest we’ll come to knowing.
To be fair, this gap is part and parcel of “Nobody Wants This”‘s approach to Judaism in general: as a small and easily overcome source of difference rather than as a religion or culture with its own divisions. In Season 3, Joanne finally begins taking Jewish education classes as a potential precursor to conversion. But the lessons delivered by guest star Sarah Silverman have almost no substance and disappear for a long stretch of the season; they’re mostly there to introduce Andrew Rannells as Joanne’s new sneaky nemesis. Even the Holocaust, a much longer-standing and less controversial source of Jewish trauma, is almost entirely absent, lest its shadow pierce the cheerful mood.
“Nobody Wants This” isn’t the only Jewish show, or even the only Jewish show On Netflix! – to avoid trouble. The animated series “Long Story Short”, created by “BoJack Horseman” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg, did not mention Israel in its first season; a conscious choice to give the characters a chance to establish themselves without being proxies for their politics. “I noticed that when we talked about it, all the air was forced out of the room,” Bob-Waksberg said. Diversity last year. However, “Long Story Short” takes place entirely before the October 7 attack, and if this program continues for another two years without the elephant being named, fakeI would make mistakes too.
“Nobody Wants This” He can avoid Israel all he wants. But now the inevitable has happened: Israel has reached that point. “Our set is a lot like dinner tables around the world where people argue and argue and disagree,” Foster said on the same podcast, where he politely distanced himself from Brody. This comment is a tacit admission that Foster has committed gross negligence in representing these dining tables, knowingly sacrificing realism for the blandness of security. This empty space would eventually be filled; now, it occurs outside the control and potential catharsis of the show’s prepared narrative.
Honestly, I’m not sure I will request To see what a “Nobody Wants This” version of this conversation might look like, it’s partly because my feelings on this are closer to Brody’s than Foster’s, and certainly closer to Feldshuh’s. “Nobody Wants This” has never been a Norman Lear-style forum for airing the controversies of the day, and it would be jarring if the series suddenly became one. But if “Nobody Wants This” is a proudly escapist fantasy, there’s a line between riveting entertainment and a story whose distance from its supposed subject is so great that it can’t even maintain a pretense of believability. If Foster and his collaborators don’t want to talk about a painful and harsh but still central part of Jewish American life, then they don’t want to make a show about Judaism as lived by real Jews. And if “Nobody Wants This” doesn’t want to achieve its creator’s stated goal of representation, then perhaps it’s time to wrap things up.