In a country where more than 42% of Jewish households are comprised of different religions, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, interfaith coupling is understandably a hotly-debated subject in the Jewish community. It’s one that Hollywood, however, has only taken limited interest in (there hasn’t been much since the 70s – the heyday for the topic -when you had the short-lived show Bridget Loves Bernie and the movies The Heartbreak Kid, The Way We Were and The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz). Nobody creator Erin Foster, daughter of music legend David Foster, who converted to Judaism before marrying her husband (not a rabbi), was inspired to make a show loosely based on her experience.
The fictionalized Foster is Joanne (Kristin Bell), a blonde, sex and dating podcaster with terrible taste in men and lots of bad dates to show for it. She meets Noah (Adam Brody), a pot-smoking LA rabbi, fresh off a recent break-up, and despite being a non-believer herself, is drawn to him when they meet at a mutual friend’s party. They immediately spark to each other: he finds her “unfiltered, complicated, beautiful” and terrifying, and she’s intrigued by how different he is and his overt decency (he walks her all the way down the hill to her car while his is parked by the house). She’s carrying baggage from her parent’s divorce (her mother is still in love with her gay father) and for him, the Jewish part is a factor: “even a forged document?,” he says, hopefully. “Trying to repopulate a people”. She asks him to say “something rabbinical” and he responds, “There’s a fiddler on the roof”.
Noah’s Russian immigrant parents, Bina (Tovah Feldshuh) and Ilan (Paul Ben-Victor), on the other hand, have been together for 41 years, and Bina in particular has very strong feelings about Noah dating outside the Tribe. When Joanne pops into Friday night services to hear Noah’s sermon, Bina sees her talking to her son after and furiously spats out, “Shiksa!” Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons) is secretly rooting for him, but Sasha’s wife Esther (Jackie Tohn), who has her husband on a tight leash, is even more vocal than Bina, referring to Joanne as “Whore #1” and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) as “Whore #2” when she finds the foursome out having drinks post-Shul.
For the last year, the idea of what makes a person Jewish, or more accurately, a “good” Jew, has of course been a profoundly divisive issue. Through a rom-com lens, Nobody is also posing questions, but with a welcome, philosophical bent. Foster could have created just a Jewish protagonist, but raises the stakes by making Noah a rabbi trying to navigate the weight of familial guilt, assimilation, and little things like the persecution and decimation of his people. It’s no small thing to him that his parents came from a country where “if you said your name out loud, it could be dangerous if it sounded too Jewish.” Joanne too is attempting to push back against decades of repeated, destructive patterns and be as open as she encourages her listeners to be. It’s a delight to see these two challenge themselves, each other and the world views put of them.
My biggest problem with Nobody is the brush it uses for the Jewish women. Though largely played for laughs, Bina and Esther need more nuance and subtlety; they cross over into the harsh, judgmental Jewish female stereotype, a portrayal of Jewish women some might say is offensive. I also thought the show went to needless extremes to demonstrate how dissimilar Noah and Joanne’s worlds are. What LA woman has never heard “shiksa” or “mitzvah” before? And having Joanne’s mom Lynn (Stephanie Faracy) be a woo-woo type into auras and doing Ayahuasca was lazy writing. That being said, there’s an abundance of things I loved about the series. Bell expertly inhabits cynical, damaged women (see Veronica Mars and The Good Place) and the eminently likable Brody has made for excellent boyfriend material since he won the heart of Lane Kim on Gilmore Girls. They have killer chemistry and it’s a pleasure just watching them get to know each other through the witty writing. And when you have national treasure Tovah Feldshuh, what else needs to be said?
