'Nobody Wants This' Is Millennial Magic In The Best Way

Millennial hearts, be still. Adam Brody is returning to TV as an endearing Jewish man, Noah, who loves a very non-Jewish woman, Joanne (Kristen Bell), in Netflix’s new romantic comedy series, “Nobody Wants This.”

The premise of the show is as simple as the title makes it sound. Noah, a junior rabbi, and Bell, a podcasting shiksa (a Yiddish insult that essentially means “hot, blonde, non-Jew”), meet at a dinner party. They are immediately drawn to each other, but “nobody” wants them to be together.

Over the course of the season’s 10 half-hour episodes, Noah and Joanne try to figure out if their relationship is a realistic possibility in a world where he is supposed to find a good Jewish woman to play the role of a rabbi’s wife, and she is supposed to be gathering dating fodder for the relationship podcast she co-hosts with her sister.

The will-they-won’t-they and should-they-even-bother-trying premise that drives “Nobody Wants This” is fun from the start, and it helps the show find its balance as both a romance and a comedy, a balance that is rarely achieved in most rom-com series. However, it’s not the humor or swoon that makes the Netflix show stand out. Instead, where the rom-com really shines is in its casting. From leads Brody and Bell to their siblings Sasha (Timothy Simmons, known for “Veep”) and Morgan (Justine Lupa, known for “Succession”), the cast is a tableau of millennial fan-favorites.

Also, as someone who grew up watching both “The OC” and “Veronica Mars,” the teen dramas that catapulted the careers of both Brody and Bell, respectively, I can admit that I am unquestionably the target audience for this show. I will watch Brody play a Jewish man with a bagel in a kitchen who exudes a specific brand of Seth