'Nobody Wants This' or as it's been called, 'hot Rabbi meets Shiksa' is quite simply the best romcom I have watched in ages. After such a hard year, it's just what the doctor ordered– fun escapism at its best. The only thing that could make it any better is watching it with a nice glass of wine and/or chocolate, with a toasty fire in the background.
Here's why I loved it:
The repartee is fresh and the main characters have an inexplicable, magical chemistry.
Adam Brody (from 'The O.C.') plays Rabbi Noah, but he's not your grandmother's rabbi. He's young, he's charming, and he's inexplicably attractive. Kristen Bell is outstanding as his love interest, a non-Jewish podcast host who doesn't know the first thing about the Judaism. She's so clueless she doesn't even know that Jews don't eat pork.
The supporting cast shines, bringing depth to what could have been one-note characters. Timothy Simons as Noah's perpetually henpecked brother and Jackie Tohn as his wife are particular standouts, offering performances that sometimes outshine the main storyline.
It seems that most of the internet agrees with me on this one– Rotten Tomatoes even gave it a 93% rating!
In fact, if you come across particularly tired-looking women during the day, it's not from fatigue or insomnia: They were probably up during the night, binge-watching the entire 10-episode season in one night – It's just that good!
So far, so good, right? Unfortunately– no.
Because what it manages to do (very well) is to glamorize intermarriage, to make it fun and funny and sexy. So although it makes a very enjoyable watch, if you look a teeny bit closer, you will quickly see why it is deeply troubling for those who value Jewish continuity and tradition. There is nothing fun or funny about the crisis and tragedy of intermarriage.
We have lost more Jews to intermarriage than we did in the Holocaust– and that's saying something. I'm not even talking about the added difficulty that it brings to a marriage and parenting, which are more than challenging enough these days. I'm talking about the fact that every time a Jewish man marries out and has children, he has essentially cut off those children from their Jewish roots and on his family tree, his Jewish line ends with him.
According to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, the overall intermarriage rate among U.S. Jews is now about 61%, up from 58% in 2013, and among Jews who have married since 2010, 72% of non-Orthodox Jews have married a non-Jewish spouse.
It's not real life, you might say. It's just TV, no one takes these things seriously, right?
Wrong. The insidious yet clear message which punctuates every episode is that true love conquers all and that if you are lucky enough to find that someone special, even if he is a rabbi or she isn't Jewish, you should go for it and consequences de damned.
As an interesting aside, Adam Brody is married to Leighton Meester who isn't Jewish and they have two children.
I wonder if the show would have experienced the same level of success if it hadn't included the whole Jew dates non-Jew storyline.
One thing I know for sure, I sure wish they had.