It was not a given I’d watch the second season of Nobody Wants This. As you may recall from season one or (anything’s possible) my review of the same, it’s a Netflix serialized rom-com about a hot rabbi, Noah Roklov, played by real-life hot Jewish non-rabbi Adam Brody, and his meet-cute with a gentile relationship-advice podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell). It’s based on creator Erin Foster’s real-life marriage-and-conversion story. In an unusual twist, Foster herself is at least as conventionally attractive as the stunning actress playing her. In addition to being a show creator, she works as an influencer, partnering with all manner of brands. This will be relevant to our story.

I’d found season one watchable in a Hallmark-movie way, but a bit odd, this strange and sometimes unpleasant throwback to mid-century Jewish tropes: the nagging mothah, the air-headed, fine-haired, breath-of-fresh-air shiksa, the buzzkill ‘JAP.’ It was nasty to Jewish women, yes, but also just seemed geared towards a set of preoccupations from another time, with just enough nods to the present (mainly in the form of superficially diverse minor characters who are a notch less straight and white than the central cast) to place the action in the 2020s. It was not clear to me why you would opt for this show referencing and gesturing at quality mid-century American Jewish entertainment when you could simply pick up Fear of Flying or put on Annie Hall. But it keeps getting renewed, so I guess somebody wants this.

Like I said, I was thinking I’d give season two a miss. But something happened between September 2024, when the first season ran, and October 2025. Yes, Oct. 7 was already behind us, and there had been rumblings about these times of rising antisemitism for a few years prior to that. But these days, something seems grim on a more fundamental level. These days, it can feel as if there’s a cross-ideological consensus that Jews are at the root of whatever is wrong with society. A return to bygone days when Jewish was spoken in a whisper, even in places with a lot of Jews.

There’s now a GOP “civil war” over exactly how nice of a welcome mat to lay out for overt antisemites. Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League has set up a task force to “track and monitor” what New York City’s newly-elected mayor Zohran Mamdani is up to on the Jews front. Even if you are sitting reading this in your Jews for Mamdani t-shirt, it would be fair to say that........

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