‘Nobody Wants This’ (Season 2): Leap of faith worth taking

“You win… I hope it’s what you want,” a central character tells Kristen Bell’s Joanne, the agnostic, sex-positive podcaster, in the pivotal closing moments of the romcom series ‘Nobody Wants This’. It set the stage for the second season, which premiered this weekend.

Joanne and her charming rabbi boyfriend, Adam Brody’s Noah, are together despite the hurdles of an interfaith relationship. Being with a shiksa (a disparaging term for a non-Jewish girl) costs Noah his dream job of head rabbi. Joanne, too, makes sacrifices. She dresses up to impress his unapproving mother and pretends to like basketball. It is funny as it is universally resonant. Dating a man of God, she even entertains the idea of learning Hebrew and hosts Havdalah dinners.

In an age of left and right swipes, watching a couple address their issues in real life is fresh, nostalgic even. It also gives way to laughs: in one sequence, Joanne stacks up, with the precision of a neurosurgeon, her bedside essentials to make room for a carafe (a glass jug) handpicked by Noah. She’s livid but much in love to say anything. Bell showcases her range in moments like these, shifting from comedic genius to dramatic angst in the same breath.

Creator Erin Foster, who herself converted to Judaism to be with her husband, borrows heavily from personal experiences. The on-screen couple’s struggles and triumphs feel lived-in as a result.

The production design also plays its part. The series is an ode to Los Angeles, where Foster grew up. The airy, minimalist houses occupied by the leads and the ornate mansion owned by Noah’s parents emulate different forms of Hollywood prestige. When Noah and Joanne are together, though, the scenery shifts to the coffee houses and bars-heavy Eastern districts. The vibe is hip, laidback and mirrors the evolving nature of both the city and their lives.

The supporting cast also delivers the goods. The “loser siblings” Morgan (Joanne’s sister) and Sasha (Noah’s brother), played with ineffable ease by Timothy Simmons and Justine Lupe, make a case for their own independent show. The chemistry can put the leading pair to shame and their scenes with Sasha’s wife Esther, played by the excellent Jackie Tohn, will have you in splits.

Lupe also shares an effortless rapport with Bell, be it in the candour with which they discuss their private lives for the podcast, or the fights over Joanne’s evolving views on dating and adulting.

Beneath the breeziness, however, still lies the question posed to Joanne: is being with Noah really what she wants? Every little adjustment chips away a little part of who she was before she met him. It’s a modern Ship of Theseus: if you start replacing every part of a ship with newer parts, how long before the old ship is completely lost?

Phoebe Waller Bridge’s transcendental ‘Fleabag’ set the bar for a doomed love story between a free-spirited yet confused woman and a man of God. It even put two sisters front and centre like ‘Nobody Wants This’. Yet, the approach varies. What Waller Bridge accomplishes to say about longing and loneliness with silences and empty spaces, Foster sometimes fails to with lengthy dialogues and by putting her two attractive leads in close proximity.

‘Nobody Wants This’ is by no means a perfect show. At times, it doesn’t even have the answers to the questions it poses. But when Noah surprises Joanne with a nightstand to fit in her stuff, the show succeeds in finding its own definition of love being a constant negotiation of space — literal and emotional. It’s these small gestures that make Joanne and the viewer believe in and root for their relationship, even if nobody else wants it.