Two leads with nostalgia power. A meet cute. A series of fish-out-of-water mishaps, some of which rely on an almost alarming level of ignorance or ineptitude. A party that goes awry — probably from too much stress. (Probably a wealthy, maybe even icy woman has caused this stress.) Her: Frazzled, into her phone. Him: Safe, sensitive, sage.
Make it about Christmas, and you have a Hallmark Channel original. Make it about interfaith romance, and it’s Netflix’s latest hit “Nobody Wants This.”
A romantic comedy that checks every genre box, “Nobody” is about the star-crossed attraction between Joanne, a Los Angeles podcast host played by Kristen Bell, and Noah, a soulful rabbi played by Adam Brody. Since arriving on Netflix late last month, it has remained at or near the top of the service’s most-watched chart, sharing space with a show from the darker end of the replication factory, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”
“Nobody” has generated as much coverage as that grisly docudrama, thanks partly to its charms and partly to its shortcomings, namely its depictions of Jewish women that rely on hoary stereotypes.
The draw of “Nobody,” though, is not that the show is so distinctive, it’s that it is so familiar. Rom-coms have thrived on streaming as they have mostly fallen out of fashion in theaters, and for this particular genre “formulaic” is no great diss — it is perhaps the opposite. (“Nobody” isn’t even the best opposites-attract rom-com to arrive on TV recently — that would be Season 2 of “Colin From Accounts,” on Paramount+.) Beyond the show’s ample joys and persistent irritants — “What about our podcast?” is this show’s “can MomTok survive this?” — there’s a Goldilocks ease to the endeavor that one can see as either finely honed or algorithmically precooked; simply reheat and enjoy.
And that’s not just because it knows how to orchestrate a major kiss. “Nobody” hits its rom-com marks easily — doofy sidekicks, familial friction — but also draws on other trendy subgenres and existing fan sentiment, a hybrid strain of everything you already like.
Shows that are based on true stories are all the rage right now — hello, Menendez brothers — and “Nobody” relies on this blurring between on-screen and offscreen for both credibility and permission. It’s a key element of the show’s promotion, and the fact that the series is based loosely on the life of its creator, Erin Foster, means we don’t have to suspend disbelief. We just kind of prop it up.
The semi-autobiographical auteur comedy became standardized in the 2010s. Now the genre is seeing its next generation: “Baby Reindeer” demonstrated what a darker, gnarlier spin on it can look like, and “Nobody” takes the brighter, lighter, gentler tack. The descendants of “Fleabag” walk many different paths.
The stars of “Nobody” also are proven commodities, playing versions of people we have loved them as before. Bell is not merely sweetheart-coded. (How many commercials can one relatable mom be in?) We’ve also seen her play a free-spirited wild card in high-rise jeans who is incurious about the nature of existence until she falls for a sexy-dorky guy who has devoted his life to studying morality. Vive “The Good Place.”
As for Brody, we don’t just know his general Hollywood résumé: We know him as Seth Cohen from “The O.C.,” interfaith icon and popularizer of Chrismukkah. He is the son Noah and Joanne might themselves raise.
And Bell and Brody have actually played a romantic pairing before, albeit briefly, in a premium-cable deep cut, Showtime’s “House of Lies” — she as a management consultant, he as a dildo scion. (So even the “Nobody” sex-toy shop scene has a kind of predecessor.)
But maybe the most contemporary aspect of “Nobody” is that although it centers on a rabbi, its overall perspective could be described as “spiritual, but not religious.”
Its religious characters aren’t. Its seemingly observant Jews scarf pork in secret. The rabbi not only plays basketball on Saturdays, he also doesn’t offer counsel when he realizes a congregant is having an affair — instead, he just accepts a donation to the shul and looks the other way. Rites of passage are just excuses for big parties, and rituals are tedious and hollow. The upshot is that Joanne seems truer to her principles, or lack thereof, than Noah does to his. “It’s not like you stand for anything or have strong beliefs,” her friend tells her, approvingly. But she resists conversion anyway; it’s Noah who is willing to risk his traditions and beliefs.
Put another way, even the thing that makes “Nobody” distinctive has been packaged into something comfortable and familiar. If the show’s understanding of Judaism seems mean and shallow, that’s probably because its true religion is the holy algorithm, its episodes preordained to be even more irresistible than illicit prosciutto.
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