Kristen Bell’s Joanne and Adam Brody’s “hot rabbi” Noah are back for a second season of Nobody Wants This. While critics remain charmed by the couple’s love story, Season 2 broadens its focus to explore other relationships, among them Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons), and Sasha’s wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn), as well as Joanne’s sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), who dives into a romance with her therapist (Lupe’s Succession co-star Arian Moayed). Guest stars, including Seth Rogen, join the cast, and one episode even features Brody’s real-life wife, Leighton Meester.
The Los Angeles–set comedy, about a rabbi who falls for an agnostic podcaster, now has showrunners Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan at the helm. Critics largely agree the Netflix series remains a fun, witty watch — but they’re split on whether it has evolved beyond its charming surface.
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Daniel Fienberg at The Hollywood Reporter writes that the show “doesn’t fall off a creative cliff” in its sophomore season, “but a lot of charm is diminished.” He adds: “The new creative team takes evident pains to adjust some of the character-based problems from the first season, but in the process of expanding the profile for several supporting players, Brody and Bell are left playing often identical beats of uncertainty and insecurity to the ones that worked well in the first season. In the process, the chemistry and overall appeal dwindle dramatically.”
Variety’s Alison Herman calls the new season “a more refined version of itself.” She notes that it “has more depth than it had in Season 1, but that’s not quite the same as going deep.” Herman writes: “The same issues that keep Nobody Wants This from being a nuanced, meaningful story are also the ones that keep it airy enough to gobble up like popcorn. You’ll never be emotionally overcome enough to need to take a beat between chapters, which keeps the engagement metrics right where Netflix likes them. Bell and Brody are pros who can make cutesy banter in their sleep. … The self in question is just fundamentally slight and not especially ambitious.”
Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn in ‘Nobody Wants This’Erin Simkin/Netflix
Lewis Glazebrook at ScreenRant praises the new season, writing that it “retains everything that worked about the hit first season, providing yet another binge-worthy bout of enjoyable rom-com goodness. It would have been difficult for the creative minds at Netflix to mess up Season 2; all they had to do was give us the same thing again, only with a few added twists and turns. Thankfully, it delivers exactly that.”
At The Washington Post, Lili Loofbourow offers mostly praise for the Erin Foster–created show, calling it “a well-paced, engaging season of television marred by a finale that feints toward originality but swerves.” But she echoes Herman’s sentiment that the series doesn’t dig quite deep enough: “Is it fun? Yes! Very. Does the way it innovates on old formulas set it up for failure? Also yes. If rom-coms wrap everything up by making love into a religion to which people can surrender, Nobody Wants This scrambles those terms so much that moments that should feel transcendent — or like miraculous, beautiful cathartic breakthroughs — land instead like compromises or worse: defeats.”
Meanwhile, Time’s Judy Berman strikes a middle ground, praising Bell and Brody’s chemistry: “Bell and Brody are as great together as ever; you never doubt that they would fight so hard to stay together. Nor are you likely to get bored with episodes of around 25 minutes that strike a satisfying balance between light humor and big feelings.”
However, she also notes: “Beneath its delightful surface, Nobody Wants This remains an uneven show—one that relies too heavily on its effervescent stars and, despite treating them with more kindness this time around, still struggles with its Jewish women.” Still, she concludes on a hopeful note: “It has gained some nuance, but lost some personality. Is it good? Sometimes. Will I keep watching it? Forever.”
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