There’s a scene – ok, there are many – in Nobody Wants This that made me wince. In it, Esther, played by the gorgeous and formidable Jackie Tohn, pulls up outside a bar where her husband and brother-in-law have gone out for drinks with sisters Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Morgan (Succession's Justine Lupe). She sees them and leans on the car horn. 'Sasha, if you’re not out here in 10 seconds, I am running you over,' she screams. '10… 9… 8…'
The problem here? It couldn’t possibly be that Sasha, Esther’s husband, decided to play wingman for grown-up Seth Cohen, I mean Adam Brody, I mean Noah 'Hot Rabbi' Roklov, without telling Esther where he was going. It couldn’t be that Esther is embarrassing these grown men, who definitely couldn’t be trusted to find their own way home. It couldn’t be that Sasha didn’t tell Morgan he was married, or that, hang on, did he want her to wonder if they were maybe on a date?
No, of course not. The problem is Esther herself. Because Esther is a shrew.
Everybody wants to talk about Nobody Wants This. Or maybe it’s just everybody in my Instagram DMs. In case you haven’t watched, Nobody Wants This is about sex and relationships podcaster Joanne, who falls for the newly single Noah after they meet at a dinner party.
Every TV relationship has to overcome challenges. In this case, the main challenge is the fact that Noah is a rabbi (a hot one, I may have mentioned) and Joanne isn’t even Jewish. The personifications of this apparently unbreachable divide (um, it isn’t) are the women in Noah’s life.
There’s the aforementioned Esther, who unhelpfully refers to Joanne and Morgan as 'whore one and whore two' before she even meets them (in her defence, she’s best friends with Noah’s ex). There’s Noah’s mother Bina, who whisper-threatens into Joanne’s ear, 'You’re never going to end up with my son.' There’s Rebecca, who became Noah’s ex after she broke into his desk, fished out an engagement ring and wore it in front of him rather than waiting for him to propose. There’s the parade of single women presented to Noah after synagogue who probably didn’t agree to their mothers’ set-up attempts, but who are nonetheless played for laughs as doughy, unfuckable despos.
A note on Jewish women who seem like ‘a lot’: I have known them; I have been scared and impressed by them; I am them. Erin Foster, who created the show, probably knows a few, too; she converted to Judaism before she married her husband and now takes very public pride in her Jewish identity. Which is why I was so puzzled that her show’s stance toward every character who happens to be Jewish and female seems so negative – even adversarial, in an adolescent, 'are you with me or against me?' way. Joanne and Morgan, despite all their crazy, are portrayed as the cultural norms; pretty much every Jewish woman (with the exception of a kind, maternal rabbi) is an overbearing, shrill hag.
The thing is, I’m not sure what we, the audience, are supposed to make of Joanne. She’s blonde and feisty and cute and flirty and gives great cocktail-party repartee. She’s liberated from the old-world expectations that felt like a burden to Noah when he was with nice Jewish girl Rebecca. She’s simultaneously vulnerable (she’s been hurt before) and guarded because of it, yet also callous towards the values and feelings of others (she regularly ghosts her dates).
And then there’s her cultural incuriosity bordering on insensitivity. Joanne shows up at Noah’s synagogue on a Friday night wearing a red cardigan and satin slip skirt that shows her midriff (inappropriate). She doesn’t call out light anti-Jewish racism from Morgan when Morgan says of Noah, 'He doesn’t even look Jewish' (it’s problematic because it implies that to look Jewish would be a negative; please don’t say it, ever). She brings a charcuterie platter to Noah’s parents’ home – charcuterie generally being heavy on pork products, which observant Jews don’t eat. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word 'Shalom'.
I can’t imagine what version of Los Angeles Joanne would have to live in to be that clueless. Nor can I imagine any veteran dater who wouldn’t immediately Google 'what to wear to synagogue' or 'Jewish in-laws help' or 'Shabbat for idiots' upon falling for an actual rabbi. Especially one played by a verified Millennial heartthrob.
The fact is, as an aspiring future Jewish mother-in-law myself (my oldest kids are 10; we’re talking far in the future), there’s very little I like about Joanne. I say this with full acknowledgement of just how bananas Rebecca seemed. I know that Bina, played by the inimitable Tova Feldshuh (who I once sat next to in the audience at a West End show and yes I will show you the photos), comes on strong. I also winced at the repeated and casual uses of the word ‘shiksa’, which is more mainstream than it used to be, but still feels derogatory.
But watching the show, I kept wondering when a Jewish woman might be presented as desirable or deserving of care. When one would get to be funny and feisty, rather than put-upon and angry. When we would see the beauty and richness of Jewish culture, which Noah found so compelling that he went and became a rabbi, come through in its female characters. Instead I saw unsympathetic, cruel caricatures. Nobody wants that, indeed.