The Netflix series is throughly entertaining, but it gets one thing very wrong.
Nobody Wants This – the new Netflix rom-com starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody – is being hailed as the series that has “healed” millennial women everywhere. The ten-part series follows the love story between a rabbi (Brody) and a sex and relationship podcaster (Bell) who must navigate the complexities of not only an interfaith relationship but also the inevitable unpacking of trauma and expectations that come with meeting a partner later in life (usually after years of dating wildly inappropriate and emotionally unavailable people).
While the comedy takes a refreshing approach to romantic dialogue – eschewing the typical rom-com coyness and instead showing the characters (gasp) actually saying what’s on their mind – I can’t help feeling that the series, while exceptionally entertaining, has missed the point of what a healthy relationship is.
Throughout Nobody Wants This – which is loosely based on the love story of creator Erin Foster and her husband – Brody’s character, Noah, never sets a foot wrong. He is thoughtful, forthcoming and understanding every step of the way – even when Joanne (Bell) admits to rifling through his possessions in search of intel on his recent ex-girlfriend. Even when she gets the ‘ick’ from him trying too hard to impress her parents and even when she tells him, repeatedly, that she is a little chaotic and a lot to handle.
Noah’s character, while supremely endearing, is simply not realistic. Credit: Netflix
Yes, it’s a nice change to see a TV show depict a relationship where the guy is not treating the woman as an afterthought or inconvenience, but the lack of nuance in Noah’s character is, quite frankly, unrealistic.
I say this as someone who met my partner much later in life after years of (somewhat deliberately) dating the wrong people and being “too much” for many guys to handle. For over 20 years, I gravitated toward the typical “bad boys” and “alpha males” – certain that my future involved a happily ever after with someone as extroverted and eccentric as I am.
So imagine my surprise when the love of my life turned out to be the shy, quiet guy with completely opposite interests to me yet who understands me in ways I never thought possible. Someone who can “handle me” despite my chaotic nature, much like Noah tells Joanne he can “handle” her. Yep, I ended up with the nice guy – which is why I can say with some (self-appointed) authority that nice does not mean perfect.
What Noah’s arc (sorry) misses is the opportunity to show that guys can be emotionally available, faithful, kind and understanding while still being fallible. While still f**king up and saying the wrong thing or being unintentionally thoughtless. In other words, they can still be human.
Although my partner differs from every other guy I’ve dated in that he is patient and gentle and puts me and our little family first, he can still be annoying AF. He still makes mistakes and pisses me off sometimes, and we don’t always see each other’s point of view right away. While we don’t fight very often, when we do, the resolution is rarely, if ever, as simple as him saying, “Oh, it’s ok, I totally get it” the way we see Noah respond to Joanne’s neuroses.
Nobody Wants This may have gone too far in its desire to portray a nice guy. Credit: Netflix
In Nobody Wants This, it is Joanne who faces the terrifying prospect of evolving past her previous disappointments and breaking down her walls while Noah arrives on the scene, arms and mind open and ready to be the model boyfriend. And as much as this depiction is said to have “healed” women everywhere (I’m sure you’ve seen the memes), I think what it’s actually done is set us up for more disappointment because my belief is that guys like this simply do not exist
Relationships are not about people being perfect and saying the right thing all of the time – and the later in life you meet your person, the less likely this outcome is anyway. Instead, they are about people coming together, making mistakes, saying stupid shit, fighting and choosing to love each other anyway. In its desire to show that not all men are terrible and that even the most extra women are deserving of love, I think the series overcorrects and fails to point out that sometimes the best relationships are the ones where both parties come into it flawed, but ready to learn and do better.
While I thoroughly enjoyed Nobody Wants This, I hope the second season will delve deeper into Noah’s shortcomings and his willingness to work on them. We may be a generation of women who need healing from the plethora of ways men have disappointed us, but there’s nothing more redemptive than real, imperfect love represented on screen, reminding you that, for the right equally imperfect weirdo, you will never be too much.
