“Two Jews, three opinions” as the age-old, painfully accurate saying goes. After watching the Netflix Original Nobody Wants This, I’m officially changing the expression to “10 episodes, l really don’t know how I am supposed to feel…”

To hear about any Jewish representation in as widespread of a media outlet as Netflix is extremely exciting. 

My inner first grader was delighted; for all these years she had to keep the secret of Santa not being real to her friends. Rabbi Weinberg told her not to tell her friends because that would ruin their holiday. She nodded along during Fridays before winter break as her friends bragged that Santa would put them on the Nice List, eat the cookies they set out for him, and, of course, deliver presents. She has stayed silent and dormant all these years, but guess what? Someone on TV is like her, and they get it!

This first-grade passion is fleeting though, as there are numerous problematic elements in Nobody Wants This. When protagonist Joanne (played by Kristen Bell) enters a healthy, stable relationship with Rabbi Noah Roklov (played by Adam Brody), Joanne’s sister Morgan (played by Justine Lupe) criticizes Joanne for no longer appearing interesting to viewers on their shared podcast. In fact, Morgan blames the podcast’s recent low views on Joanne’s relationship, insinuating that Joanne should revert back to her rendezvous with shallow, toxic men as those encounters made her more interesting and marketable. 

What sort of message does this send to young women, who make up a large percentage of the audience of Nobody Wants This? Not only does this scene subliminally promote women tearing each other down because of a man, but it also stresses that toxic relationships ultimately benefit women, whether it be through marketability or personality. 

The way Nobody Wants This handled attitudes of Judaism is, to put it extremely lightly, a separate can of worms, but I digress. I could go on for millennia about the problematic dialogue that surrounded Judaism in this show, which shouldn’t be the case in 2024. My core issue with how the show handled Judaism boils down to the way Jews are depicted in Nobody Wants This. 

“A SHIKSA!” Joanne is called during her first Shabbat service ever. This situation couldn’t have strayed farther than reality. It is a core Jewish value to be accepting of all faiths. Jews have been prosecuted throughout history and in the present, we wouldn’t turn around and do it to someone else, especially on the basis of their religion. 

Furthermore, one of the largest tensions in the show is Rabbi Roklov’s struggle with his Jewish family and friends’ slowness to accept Joanne as his girlfriend, and even potential wife. While I cannot speak for all Jews on this topic (and probably fall on the more progressive side of the broad spectrum of beliefs surrounding whether Jews should marry Jewish), the fact is that intermarriage rates among Jews are around 60%, and among non-orthodox Jews, it is higher than 70%, according to the Pew Research Center. Whatever your thoughts on these figures are, one cannot deny that our world’s attitudes to intermarriage are rapidly changing, and Jews are no exception to that.

So really, I shouldn’t have been surprised when they wrote Rabbi Roklov as a character with substantial generational wealth, complete with a massive childhood mansion equipped with a maid. But I was in fact, truly shocked that the writers decided to include the most blatant antisemitic trope of the wealthy, powerful, and controlling Jew. In the wise words of Taylor Swift, “I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.”

Well actually, season two is on the way, so there’s still hope for redemption. Maybe season one was all a nightmare, and our real protagonist will wake up, and battle the harmful stereotypes enforced on Jews. I mean it when I say that only a full 180-degree turn from whatever season one was is the only way that Nobody Wants This can be saved.