(courtesy IMP Awards)
It will surprise precisely no one that relationships are HARD.
But, asks Nobody Wants This in its brilliant second season, does it have to be this hard?
Exactly what level of hard is acceptable sits out in the landscape of the nebulous and oblique and one of the great things about this show as a whole but this season in particular is that does try to serve up trite, easy answers or to pretend that people are great big complex bundles of contradictions.
Because a lot of time what we want and feel and hope for does make sense; in a world where process is king and where answers are supposed to be a Google search away, working out what your heart is feeling and being act with any certainty on that feels like a pipe dream wrapped wishing and hoping and a whole heap of non-religiously specific praying.
Even when things are going well, as they seem to be for odd couple pairing, Rabbi Noah Roklov (Adam Brody) and sex and dating podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell), obstacles and issues crop up all the time, proving that even when you truly love someone and know they are you soulmate, your people and your home, that you still can still trip over all kinds of things that simply don’t make sense against the blissful background of the rest of your relationship.
The big one for Jewish Noah and non-Jewish Joanne is the issue of conversion – Noah would love it if Joanne would convert but doesn’t want to push her because he wants her to own her decision heart and soul, and while Joanne isn’t opposed to it and knows it means the world to the man she loves against all expectations, she wants to do it, if she does it at all, on her own schedule and in a way that is authentic and meaningful to her (there is an epiphany for Joanne but it’s beautifully quiet and nuanced one and occurs in the most unlikely of places).
The thing is that even when they “table” the issue (one of Noah’s favourite issues) and talk it through as much as they can at that point, and decide to let it go on the backburner for the time being, it crops up again when they least expect it – in the middle of parties is one place and who needs that to plague you then? -and cause all kinds of problems, including rather horribly in the final episode, when they are at Joanne’s sister’s doomed engagement party, that not only upset the smooth functioning of their otherwise happy partnership but cause it to maybe run off the rails entirely.
The great strength of the second season of Nobody Wants This is that as much as it recognises that these huge issues, and every relationship has them, can go big and wide with a moment’s notice, and sometimes not even that, it also acknowledged they exist in the small but pivotal moments of the every day when a stray word and an ill-thought out action can send the relationship tumbling towards a potentially ruinous void in an instant.
There are lots of these big and small moments in this season for Noah and Joanne who aren’t an island obviously and who are also caught in the web of what’s happening with Joanne’s sister and podcast partner Morgan (Justine Lupe) who is dating her therapist/now non-therapist Andy (Arian Moayed) – a huge ethical minefield with which Joanne, not one to stay silent, mightily struggles with and handles horrendously badly at times – and with Noah’s brother Sasha (Timothy Simons) and his wife Esther (Jackie Tohn) who grows from hating Joanne (watch season one for why) to being an ally against the machinations of Noah’s unforgivingly exact and extremely judgey mother Bina (Tovah Feldshuh) who is, happily, given some moment of real 3D humanity this season.
It’s hard enough when you’re juggling the numerous issues in your own relationship but that becomes even more of a challenge when the people you love are struggling in their key relationships and the disruptions, questions and emotional waves spill over to you.
Nobody Wants This knows that none of us live or relate in a vacuum and this season, while Joanne and Noah remain the emotional centre of things, the show broadens its reason this time around to a slightly more ensemble feel and how nothing any of us does, even in our relationship bubbles, happens in a vacuum.
While there are some loved-up and sweetly funny moments, mostly courtesy of Joanne and Noah who are, for much of the season, #CoupleGoals, Nobody Wants This enters some fairly serious territory with all three couples having to weigh just how hard a relationship should be, and how you work out where this largely intangible line in the sand is.
The reality is it’s almost impossible to know where that line is and it’s unique to each couple, as is how you respond to it once you do figure out what you can live with.
Each couple slowly moves to a reckoning with this crunch point and in the final episode “When Noah Met Joanne”, they all have to make a decision with only one of the couples ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- emerging from the fray intact.
If this sounds like a regulation level cliffhanger that you’d expect would finish off a season, and to be fair, it is in part, think again because Nobody Wants This does a good job of putting a huge amount of emotional weight and thoughtfulness into each of the three stories and making it feel sudsy and more meaningful and quote impactful.
It doesn’t completely stick the landing in the very final scene, and things do feel a little performative and rushed, but by and large, Nobody Wants This finishes off the season as evocatively and thoughtfully as it began it, leaving you eager for the just-confirmed third season, due to hit our streaming screens in 2026, and to see where Noah and Joanne find their way to next on their journey through the joys and pitfalls of being a couple.
Nobody Wants This streams on Netflix.