Nobody Wants This: A non-kosher romance with a rabbi

Published October 14, 2024 2:08pm ET



Who wants another rom-com about star-crossed lovers? From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco, our cultural canon is brimming with tales of love that defies the odds, whether those odds are warring families, political allegiances, or even faith. These stories endure because they capture something uniquely human: the tension between what our hearts want and what society tells us we should want.

Netflix’s aptly titled Nobody Wants This offers exactly that: a fresh retelling of a timeless theme, told through a distinctly millennial lens. The series cleverly pairs Joanne (Kristen Bell), a raunchy and filter-free podcaster, with Noah Roklov (Adam Brody), a reform rabbi whose family, albeit hippies by Orthodox standards, are effectively Hasidic compared to Joanne’s quintessentially contemporary American parents. This unusual combination sets the stage for a series of comedic and poignant explorations of love and identity across cultural and spiritual divides.

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