FORGIVE ME FATHER, for I have sinned. I am no longer kneeling at the altar of Andrew Scott’s “Hot Priest”, and Jude Law’s Young Pope has left the building. There is a new man of the cloth in the synagogue, and he ain’t no challah back boy. It’s Adam Brody’s hot rabbi in Netflix’s Nobody Wants This.
For those of you who were welcomed to Orange County, California in the aughts, you will remember Adam Brody as Seth Cohen, the nerdy but adorable high school student who befriends his father’s ward, bad boy Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) on teen soap The O.C. But now he’s back in a new series where he plays—wait for it— a hot young(ish) rabbi. The setup of the series is easy enough: a young podcastress, Joanne (Kristen Bell) and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe, or Willa from Succession) tell their listeners about all their dating woes in LA, rife with the emotionally unavailable, hot mess men at every corner on a Call Her Daddy-esque podcast titled, you guessed it, Nobody Wants This. At a dinner party Bell meets Brody’s Rabbi Noah Roklov in a case of mistaken identity that gets quickly sorted, and throughout the series, he continues to surprise her at every turn by subverting her often-mistaken ideas of what a rabbi is (He smokes weed! He has sex!), and who a single man dating in LA can be.
From the beginning, Nobody Wants This sets its viewers at ease, assuring us that Brody’s Rabbi Roklov isn’t your typical love interest. He is not the brooding, silent type whose icy exterior has to be warmed, and chipped away at by the right (read perfect, pure) woman. He is not the cheating womanizer who finds the right (read perfect, pure) woman that makes him stop his cheating ways, and finally see women not as objects for him to use and conquer, but as sentient, human people who also deserve respect.
When we meet Brody’s Noah, he is funny, besweatered, and charming. (Would I trust him to open a vintage bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape? No, but you can’t win them all.) Not only that, but somewhat refreshingly for male love interests, he is soft, observant, and tender, and emotionally available—all of which scare Bell’s Joanne. And all of which other men can learn from! Sure there’s a mishap with a sportcoat, but he comes back from it, and that’s the power of being emotionally available!
Suffice to say, a religious man being hot is not a new thing—there was Mandy Patinkin’s yeshiva student in Yentl, and Ben Stiller’s hip rabbi in Keeping The Faith. Sadly, even the young Mandy Patinkin bathing naked in the lake, with droplets of water burrowing beneath his forest of chest hair, down his abs, and finding their way to his—ahem, even young Mandy can’t compare to Adam Brody’s hot rabbi in Nobody Wants This. I can’t lie.
This is a glorified thirst-piece, but it’s not just about how utterly stricken I am by his soft tousled curls, or his puppy dog eyes, and it goes beyond how much I want to see Brody’s character out of that sweater. It’s more so about how tender he is, how he speaks to Bell’s character Joanne (terrible name, but I digress) and holds her face when they talk. How at every point when she wants to run, he reels her back in by being open and honest, by being accountable for his actions (and sometimes even hers), by providing assurance and certainty when she needs it the most. By being a good partner.
All too often when it comes to romantic comedies, or romantic dramas, we’re faced with romantic heroes who are allowed to be flawed, denigratory, and imperfect. If we’re being honest, they’re kind of allowed to be a dick, while the women they encounter are given no such leeway, mirroring the gendered double standards that we often see in real-life dating. Nobody Wants This subverts that notion. First with Joanne, a flawed woman who is afraid of love, runs at the sight of a healthy relationship, and gives up when things get even a little bit too hard. And just as importantly with Rabbi Roklov, a man who sees her misgivings, soothes her distrust, assuages her ick, and loves her through it all.
Beneath this extremely well-written, well-acted television series replete with some of the most insane chemistry I’ve seen in years, is a lesson for men. That providing emotional security and stability, instead of leading with money and a plot of land, will always win out in the end. Even as bad as things get (wearing a sportcoat with basketball shorts), you can still come back from “the ick” and that is no small feat. Trust, everybody wants this.
