“Nobody Wants This” Should’ve Taken Script Notes from its Name

“Keeping the Faith” wasn’t offensive enough, so a goy made an honorary sequel for us

Image from the 2024 Netflix series “Nobody Wants This”

My partner is a screenwriter, so I have had the opportunity to learn some fun tidbits about writing for film and television. For example, when a line in a script divulges the script’s own weaknesses, you may receive feedback about “script notes” – like if a character states “I am bored,” there is a good chance an audience is feeling that way, too. Or when a screenplay is called “Nobody Wants This,” which no one did (especially not Jews), but it unfortunately still gets made.

When I heard Netflix was creating a romantic comedy about a rabbi falling in love with a shiksa (a non-Jewish woman), my heart sank. Would this be another farce making Jews into evil, rich racists like You People? Another searing condemnation of religious Jews like Unorthodox? Or a perhaps joyous but vacuous and still “rich Jew”-trope-peddling romp like You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah?

The answer is somehow a combination of all of the above, but also something far more sinister. Yes, you read that right, SINISTER! And before anyone has a cow because I dare to criticize a ~CoMeDy~ (calm down), please understand that all mass media promotes some kind of aspiration and ethos, and is thus fair game to criticize, regardless and sometimes even especially in light of its intentions.

I would think people would be more capable of understanding why “It was just a joke!” doesn’t always vindicate someone for offensive blunders, but alas, many people who lack better anchors for meaning in this world turn into piteous werewolves when you criticize television shows they like.

That said, I’ll begin with the assumption that readers here are functional adults who can emotionally handle and be open to critical thinking when any aspect of their beloved TV shows is called into question.

And for the record, I am about as much of a superfan of the romantic comedy genre as one can possibly be. I subsisted on essentially a media mono-diet of rom-coms for most of my life, and I have no regrets (though it turns out I really was sleeping on Lord of the Rings).

Thus, my antipathy for this flaming pile of garbage that no one wanted stems from not only its gross antisemitism, but also for the way it reflects a frustrating and cynical turn in comedy and romance genres – as a corollary for some disconcerting trends in a warped contemporary feminist pedagogy.

Nobody needed this antisemitic bile.

That this heap of audiovisual feces hit Netflix less than a year after October 7^th was not lost on me. At a time when Jews in America (and across the world) are experiencing levels of antisemitism we haven’t seen since 1930s Germany, that this was what Netflix felt we deserved is more than a gut punch.

In order to ground my many criticisms of the show, I am going to say some things that will be controversial— even to many Jews who might otherwise agree with my assessments of Nobody Wants This— but it needs to be said.

Erin Foster wrote this show as a semi-autobiography of her own love story. Foster, a beautiful blonde nepo baby, converted to Reform Judaism after she met her now-husband, Jewish investor, and music executive Simon Tikhman.

Another fun fact about Foster: her father was married to Yolanda Hadid from 2011-2017, making her the stepsister of fellow nepo babies Bella and Gigi Hadid (yes, those Hadid’s—the ones who spread blood libels about Israel harvesting Palestinian organs after 10/7 and other racist, antisemitic disinformation, recently starred in an Adidas campaign celebrating the 1972 Munich Olympics in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes, and whose vile, rich daddy built his wealth financing Islamist terrorists in the 80s), with whom she is still close.

Regardless of Foster’s kinship with neo-Nazis, why should this recent convert to Reform Judaism be the one who gets to take up limited real estate in mainstream media to tell what is perceived as a Jewish story to the masses?

I have nothing at all against converts to Judaism—halacha (Jewish law) absolutely counts converts to Judaism as 100% Jewish (religiously – you can not convert to the ethnicity of being Jewish, as Judaism is uniquely both an ethnicity and a religion, though being ethnically Jewish doesn’t at all make you inherently religiously Jewish either).

But Reform Judaism, in which I was raised, and of which I have made my complaints very clear (speaking as someone who is also by no means Orthodox), does not follow most rules of halacha. Coming back to script notes from the show, the very scene where the insufferable Kristen Bell is strategizing with her non-Jewish friends around conversion, and they quickly find an option to “convert in 6 weeks, no wig” (the wig remark alluding to a custom of Orthodox Jewish women covering their hair, which Bell and her merry gang of emotionally stunted middle-aged girlbosses clearly find detestable).

The version of Diet Judaism that Foster “converted” into may not have taken only 6 weeks, but it may as well have, as clearly indicated by many examples of her simmering antisemitic resentment towards Jewish people and religious Jewish faith, as well as her strikingly inchoate understanding of basic Jewish practices and beliefs, despite 5 years of cosplaying as a Jew.

Let’s tackle some of Foster’s dumbest gaffes, and most glaring gives of why nobody should’ve wanted this woman to tell this story:

The racist depictions of ethnic Jewish women.

They are overbearing bitches, nasty through every stage of their lives, even from when they are small children who would lust after hot rabbis and bully poor middle-aged creepy women who have wandered into their Jewish camp and overshare details of their romantic pursuits with those pesky, jealous tweens.

They are tone-deaf psychopaths who would cluelessly breastfeed their children until they’re five, try to kill themselves for attention if their exes appear to move on; they are rich, gossipy, meddlesome, cruel idiots.

Moreover, they are generally perceived as ugly, and they can’t hold the attention of their husbands; their relationships are in shambles, their husbands are miserable and desperate to lie to and cheat on them. Even a board member of the congregation is cheating on his wife, which the rabbi gleefully leverages to implicitly blackmail him.

Heads turn when the two hot non-Jewish blonde women walk into a room full of Jews, and everything turns to slow motion, as though those poor ugly Jews have never been privileged to be in the presence of such true beauty before. Behold, the scintillating mid-life glow of Botox and bleach!

The intrinsically un-Jewish framing of allegedly Jewish characters and stories.

I am trying to be gentle here, because despite my gripes about Reform Judaism (and the ways that it has engendered anti-Zionism in America, and fundamentally maligned religious Judaism by insisting on the imperative of assimilation and “reform” of thousands-year-old traditions based mainly on convenience and spiritual ambivalence), I have been privileged to know some very spiritual, wise, and also Zionist Reform rabbis.

That said, my reaction to any of this offal being described as “Jewish” can best be summed up by this stanky antisemite:

There’s a line in the movie when the brother of the so-called “hot rabbi” says that his brother (the rabbi) is “like the Jewish Jesus.” First of all, clown, Jesus was Jewish, that’s a known fact – though probably not convenient for historically revisionist narratives that like to pretend that Jews have no history in Israel.

But alas, as script notes remind us, this “Reform Jewish convert” writes from the same lens in which she still thinks – a fundamentally Christian lens where worshipping individuals (even half-jokingly) doesn’t at all clash with a Jewish worldview, despite that being one of the single most critical commandments of the Jewish covenant with G-d.

Indeed, the credentials and motives of this “hot rabbi” are called into question when A) his own brother doesn’t know what Havdalah is (it’s the ceremony to end Shabbat every single week) and mistakes it for a dessert, B) the rabbi himself rarely seems to be busy with anything religious on Shabbat or presumably ever leading Havdalah rituals (it’s Reform! Whatever you like can be Jewish if you just have the chutzpah to imagine it as such!) since their family does generally seem tight-knit and supportive of his “career.”

This same rabbi does a blessing for Shabbat candles as a romantic display of affection in a restaurant for his girlfriend, which for some reason also extend to the wine and bread as well. We don’t get to see it on camera, but I presume he blew those candles out later on like they were atop his big goyish birthday cake (don’t blow out Shabbat candles unless there’s an emergency, please).

But the real problem with this rabbi is that he is so spineless and disconnected from Judaism, that there is almost nothing believable about him being called to be a spiritual Jewish leader. In an instant, he sacrifices his core, so-called Jewish values about gossiping to stoking all the gossipy fires when he meets Joane’s (Kristen Bell’s character) friends, since he wants them to feel comfortable and to like him.

He hides his identity as a rabbi when he first meets Joanne, and not soon after, he demonstrates that he’s one of the “good ones” by taking no offense whatsoever when Joanne and her sister remark (in an audaciously and racistly good way) that he “doesn’t look Jewish.”

This putz is so incompetent in his job, that he can’t even help assist a miserable newlywed Jewish couple (hoisted by their own Jew-y petard, of course) in his congregation without the helpful wisdom of his sex podcasting girlfriend, who offers such prophetic, science-backed girlboss wisdom as “Always be the hottest one in a threesome.”

I’m not sure where Foster and her oblivious goy writers got the idea that Shabbat candles are lit because they “represent the Temple in Jerusalem, and [the notion that Shabbat can be celebrated anywhere in the world,” because the candles are actually a metaphor for Torah and the human soul.

As this was the only reference to Israel in the entire show, I speculate this was inserted as a pro-“diasporist” (aka diaper spore, aka privileged self-loathing Jewish ideology from anti-Zionists with daddy issues who believe that the half of global Jewry in Israel should die while the rest of us should keep enjoying what’s always been a safe and jolly time in the diaspora we were forced into) reference.

There are no Jewish people in this film who demonstrate any meaningful understanding or practice of Jewish values. The rabbi’s own cruel mother, who seems otherwise obsessed with living Jewishly (while being fabulously wealthy, of course), is shown to be a deceitful hypocrite, gobbling down forbidden pork behind closed doors – after bullying poor, innocent 44-year-old Joanne and publicly castigating her in the most vituperative tone as a shiksa (gasp!).

I really can’t think of a better non-Jewish Jew to play this role than Adam Brody. In his own words, he grew up knowing few Jews; he “wanted long, straight blond hair. All [his] idols were named Shane.” And now? He describes himself as “not religious at all, a nonbeliever.” Voila! A perfect Reform Rabbi.

In that same interview, asked about playing this role in light of the current war in the Middle East, Brody said “The representation feels heavier on me, and I feel slightly disconcerted about it, to be honest.” But he felt confident that this was “pretty positive” representation, since Rabbi Noah was a good son and brother, and a good rabbi who “gets the goyish girl.”

Unsurprisingly, the experience did not bring him closer to Judaism or G-d. He is raising children with his non-Jewish wife without any semblance of Jewish identity or values. His Reform upbringing brought him just barely through a bar mitzvah, but in his own admission, he retained practically nothing. This was foremost an interesting acting opportunity for him.

To be fair, Brody’s own upbringing in Reform Judaism makes it seem a lot less shocking that b’nai mitzvot are mostly celebrated in their fictional Reform Los Angeles Jewish world for party themes such as “Magic Mike” which allow for adolescent girls to look like “tiny sex workers.” Precisely the Jewish values that every antisemite likes to invoke whenever they bring up Jeffrey Epstein cabals and the like.

In fact, the rabbi’s own brother at some point gets extremely stoned and spends an entire evening catfishing and flirting with a 12-year-old boy on Snapchat. This whole series was a travesty, and a playful reinforcement of far too many disgusting tropes about Jewish people.

Despite its renewal for a second season, I personally look forward to never having to see world-class schmuck Adam Brody’s self-loathing face on television again – and that’s coming from someone who once wore this:

Now, let’s move onto the cynical, pseudo-feminist part of the series (i.e. Kristen Bell)!

Nobody wants Ja’mie Private School Girl cosplaying as a middle-aged woman-child and pretending that it’s “feminism.”

I have been proud to call myself a feminist for most of my adult life, but the last few years have been testing me. I am well-aware of how white feminist liberation has historically and continuously come at the expense of non-white women.

But there is a particular brand of contemporary white feminism that has percolated down far beyond the exclusionary pillars of “Lean In” feminism. I’m not sure it has a special name yet, or if it qualifies as its own wave of feminism yet, but I like to call it “hedonistic feminism.”

It’s pretty much what it sounds like, and it relies on a fundamental self-righteousness and self-victimization that can be reproduced across any intersection of identity deemed adequately “marginalized” in Leftist or Liberal thought.

Essentially, it means that anything any woman does, by virtue of her being inherently “marginalized,” (even if she’s a nepo baby) means that it is triumphant, subversive and just. A woman reclaiming high heels by purchasing $1000 high heels made by slave labor? Slay queen, you earned this!

This type of opportunistic self-aggrandizing is exactly what would lead a white Reform Jewish convert like nepo baby Erin Foster to write a story as profane and deluded as this one.

Watching Kristen Bell in this series made me physically ill. I understand how stressful it is to age in Hollywood, but Bell’s performance was embarrassing beyond comprehension, and made me wonder if basic women are starting to feel any sense of shame about this kind of behavior.

Joanne’s worst fear in the series is “a bad facelift,” because we are in the era where it is not only completely destigmatized to seek eternal youth (if anything, if you have the means, it would be more shocking not to pursue at minimum Botox to “keep yourself fresh,” in the words of those pseudo-feminist perverts from And Just Like That), but it is expected and celebrated for women to capitulate to historically oppressive and/or dehumanizing feminine beauty standards.

Bell’s character, like a disconcerting number of older Millennial and Gen X women nowadays, is a victim of arrested development. Joanne and her sister, in the most cringey of terms, talk about “the ick” in relation to feeling sudden commitment-phobia and concomitant disgust towards the men they’re dating (that’s a little “Lean In” throwback in there for you – just because they are girlbosses doesn’t mean they can’t be promiscuous and disaffected and cruel, just like those mean men!).

Their mannerisms and conversations are like those of teenage girls, but all the plastic in their faces and bodies are belied by tired, cynical eyes. The entitled, hedonistic, self-victimizing “feminism” that Bell/Joanne and Foster and their girlboss company revere is constantly undermining itself.

Despite making a surprise appearance to the Rabbi’s congregation on Shabbat when he was delivering an important speech for his career, Joanne was incensed that he made her wait TEN MINUTES after services ended, while he mingled with his congregants. How dare a MAN make a WOMAN wait! What kind of logic is this, and are these women at all aware of how this type of rhetoric undermines the true nature of and importance of feminism?

Similarly, Joanne is angry when the Rabbi brings her mother flowers (that’s part of what induced “the ick”), but at another juncture as part of her speech on why she’s such an avowed feminist, makes mention of always requiring men to pay for dates. I suppose if you are effectively a sex worker, which I would somewhat qualify Bell’s character as, then that exchange might make sense. But to frame it as inherently “feminist” is a wild stretch.

What strikes me about Joanne and her sister (and their friends), aside from an almost complete lack of values or character and severe emotional stuntedness, is how brazenly self-satisfied they are. Joanne can demand almost feeble deference and hyper-sensitivity from the Rabbi, but she can Facetime her sister post-coitus (ew, get therapy) with Adam Brody in the picture without his consent. Fucking heinous, and a bizarre violation of privacy.

But Joanne’s (and indubitably Foster’s own) petulant narcissism is on full display when she remarks on the prospect of becoming Jewish for Noah that, “[she] was a goth in high school, [she] was a lesbian for a year… [She] feels like she can do it.”

Life is just a costume party or a lavish playground for a beautiful, privileged nepo baby to tromp around in. And who would burst the bubble of a spoiled brat who always gets what she wants? In her own words (script notes), “We’re the popular mean girls, we win.”

Perhaps it would seem so… but only if the prize is a superficial life, with a superficial husband and a superficial spirituality. Hardly a prize worth “winning” – at least, not for a person who possesses any kind of depth or purpose beyond material gain.

The sad thing about Nobody Wants This is that, corroborated by its extremely high viewership worldwide, many people actually do want this. But why do they want this? Because it is a diluted, distorted version of Judaism that is pathetic, meek, malleable, and unthreatening.

It is a presentation of Judaism that waters down Jewish spirituality so significantly, that even a rabbi wouldn’t need to marry a Jewish woman, despite the role that a rabbi and his wife typically play in Jewish community. It is an erosion of whatever semblance of Jewish tradition or community remains in Reform Judaism, which has in many cases deliberately become a shadow and a sham of that which it “reformed.”

In a Nobody Wants This paradigm, Judaism doesn’t need Israel, and it doesn’t even need Judaism. It just needs bagels, and to be saved by basic sexy white ladies who can lure the good, hot Jewish men out of the incestuous traps of the evil Jewish women who have dug their claws into them for so long.

I have brought up some complicated and controversial questions around interfaith marriage and Reform Judaism, so I will end this essay with a passage from a previous essay I wrote (which I hope you read in full), called “Has Reform Judaism Fueled Anti-Zionism?”:

Almost half of married Jewish people in America are now intermarried (a number that goes up to 61% after 2010), and that concerns me. Not because it is wrong or bad to marry for love outside of your religion (which is very much a sentiment of Reform Judaism), but because Reform Judaism in America is already so woefully out of touch with Jewish tradition.

I think that interfaith families are incredibly beautiful and hopeful for humanity at large, but for my many thousands of years-old tradition that has only 15 million members of the tribe alive today (due to constant persecution and genocide against us), it makes me feel afraid.

I appreciate the notion of compromise (I’m married, I get it!), but it truly is not Jewish to celebrate Christmas or Easter. No matter how you spin it, that is abjectly not Jewish. And maybe that’s fine – I know there are many interfaith families that raise their children with strong Jewish identities, and I think that’s valid and beautiful.

And yet, after learning so much from immersing myself in more Conservative and Orthodox traditions, I feel immense grief and fear. Or rather, I would feel that a little more strongly if there wasn’t still a strong representation of religious Jews in the diaspora – and for every single Jewish person in Israel, who somehow lives and breathes Judaism, even if they never go to shul or daven.

I am not the arbiter of what is or isn’t Jewish; we have the word of G-d to dictate that. And change is natural and inevitable; many will gleefully point out that … I’m queer, therefore I’m already out of alignment with halacha. Well, I’m not saying that I want to adhere to every single rule or law in the Talmud.

Part of Jewish tradition involves debating or arguing even with G-d directly. I know it can be a slippery slope to determine when “arguing” or “pushback” devolves into sacrilege, but I am inclined to believe that there is a balance – one that we must actively continue to seek, even if it makes us uncomfortable or challenges us.

Judaism is so profoundly beautiful and fulfilling, and I believe that if many Jews who have assimilated would be willing to find the courage to explore what has been lost or misunderstood, and to allow themselves to be proudly, boldly different, they would find a deep sense of belonging and understanding.

Until then, I hope that when many Reform Jews make their biannual trip to synagogue for Yom Kippur, that they really enjoy the gospel choirs and full bands singing Hugh Jackman musicals; may they continue to delight in the secular joys that will eventually make many of their children forget that Judaism was anything other than entertainment, or that it perhaps existed at all.