The actors Adam Brody and Kristin Bell stand and look at each other in a synagogue in a scene from ‘Nobody Wants This’
Adam Brody and Kristen Bell in ‘Nobody Wants This’ Credit: Netlfix

This essay contains spoilers about Season 2 of “Nobody Wants This.” 

Humans are predictable creatures. When the weather gets cold, we want soup. When the world gets frightening, we want comfort. Hence the palpable sigh of relief last fall when Netflix’s cozy series “Nobody Wants This” released to great acclaim. Like rom-coms of old, it was warm, funny and unapologetically romantic. For an extra dose of nostalgia, it even starred early-2000s heartthrob Adam Brody of “The OC” and Kristen Bell of “Veronica Mars,” whose unmistakable chemistry as lovers Noah and Joanne gave the show its spark. 

What gives “Nobody” distinction, however, is its habit of winking at rom-com tropes and then veering sharply in another direction. At first, the show’s setup seems straight from the WB—but then there’s a twist. Girl meets Adam Brody. Girl likes Adam Brody. Adam Brody turns out to be—a rabbi?

And not only a rabbi, but one who makes clear that he can only be with someone who’s either Jewish or open to converting. “I play up the Torah bad boy,” his character Noah admits (Joanne just saw him smoke weed), “but I’m all in on this thing.” Joanne, meanwhile, isn’t sure she even believes in God. Yet the two are smitten with each other—and there, friends, is our story.

It’s a story much like my own. Fifteen years ago, I, too, fell for a cute boy of another religion (in his case, Greek Orthodox) dedicated to a life of service. Soon after we started dating, my boyfriend shared that he felt called to the priesthood. (Like rabbis, Orthodox priests can be—and are encouraged to be—married, but Orthodox clergy must either be married or commit to celibacy before their ordination.) Like Noah, this boy loved me, but made it clear that he could only have a future with someone who shared his faith, especially given his calling. 

Unlike Joanne, I had grown up with faith (I had been raised evangelical and was roaming from church to church, searching for something I couldn’t describe). But like her, I was intrigued by my boyfriend’s religion, and after I started attending services with him I faced the same dilemma: How could I commit to something as serious as conversion (and, eventually, becoming a clergy wife) with my heart in the way? 

When I met with my husband’s priest to discuss all this, he warned me against joining the church just for my boyfriend’s sake. “Only convert if you know you’d do it even if you broke up,” he said. “Otherwise, you’ll doom the relationship down the road.” Wise words, but hard to follow: If you love somebody, and you want to be with them, it’s hard to discern why you do what you do. How can you know if you’re choosing faith for the right reason?

This is the predicament Joanne faces in the newly released Season 2 of “Nobody Wants This.” She and Noah are closer than ever, but they struggle to find common ground on matters religious. “Joanne’s going to convert,” Noah assures his skeptical boss, the head rabbi—whose job Noah hopes to soon inherit—“just on her own time.” Joanne, meanwhile, tells all their friends at a dinner party that they intend to “do the interfaith thing,” gutting Noah. 

In the confrontation that follows, Joanne admits that the decision of whether to convert—and its implications for Noah’s career and their future—weighs heavily on her. She’s interested in Judaism, but isn’t sure it’s for her. “I can’t decide if this is something I want with that pressure on me,” she says. Later, when Joanne’s indecision ruins Noah’s chances at his dream job, the stakes become clear: For Noah and Joanne to have a future, she has to come to a decision—and soon.

Watching this season, I felt so strongly for Joanne—especially when her sister accuses her of faking interest in Judaism just to please Noah. (I, too, faced skepticism from loved ones. “Why can’t he just come to your church?” my best friend asked, dubious of my interest in Orthodoxy.) But when Noah’s sister suggests she just “fake it,” Joanne, to her credit, refuses. “Noah said if I’m going to convert, I have to do it for myself,” she says. “But I haven’t had that feeling yet, whatever it is.” 

Lines like that are why “Nobody Wants This” is no ordinary rom-com: It’s also an investigation of what it means to be faithful. While the show’s depiction of religion isn’t exactly robust (God and prayer are rarely mentioned), it is sincere, and—just as importantly—belief is never the punchline. Noah truly believes, and Joanne is truly curious about that belief. In the show’s first season, when Joanne asks why he became a rabbi, Noah says the stories of the Torah brought him comfort in his childhood. “They made the world seem like a safer, more meaningful place,” he says. “I knew from a young age I wanted to spend my life keeping that alive.” 

Keeping that alive, of course, isn’t easy. In this second season, Noah finds himself at odds both with his new progressive congregation (who thinks that discussing the Kardashians qualifies as religious education) and some of the people he’s trying to serve, for whom the rites and rituals of Judaism are mere fodder for their Instagram feeds. He’s frustrated when the young mom at a baby-naming ritual is more interested in having Noah take pictures of her than discussing the meaning of the rite at hand.

Even so, witnessing the baby naming deeply affects Joanne, who tags along to support her boyfriend—and to settle a decades-old score with the child’s mother. It’s the first time she’s really seen Noah at work, and she’s delighted to see how good he is at his job. (When he bungles a parent’s name, he recovers quickly, telling the crowd he doesn’t like making mistakes as a rabbi. “Thank God it wasn’t a bris!” he jokes.) She sees firsthand that Noah’s vocation is to witness and lend meaning to life’s biggest moments. 

When Noah blesses the baby, Joanne is visibly moved. “That was beautiful,” she whispers to her sister, who’s surprised by Joanne’s sincerity. She’s so moved by all this that she’s able to let go of the beef with the child’s mother—much to the chagrin of her revenge-hungry sister. As the season unfolds, she seems to be falling for Noah and for the beauty of his faith all at once. 

I know how that feels. After months of study, attending liturgy and incorporating the traditions of the Orthodox faith into my life, I realized that I did want to join the church for myself, boyfriend or no boyfriend. I knelt on the white marble floor of our church and was chrismated as an Orthodox Christian. Soon, I married my husband in that same church. Years later, at my husband’s ordination, I told the gathered crowd how beautiful it was to fall in love with my husband and the church at the same time. Now I’m married to a priest (one serving, coincidentally, the same congregation where we were married—life is funny and strange). 

Being a clergy family means having a most unusual life. The risks of such a life are well known to the point of cliché (thanks, “The Preacher’s Wife”): The blurred boundaries between work and home—not to mention the feeling of living in a fishbowl—can lead to burnout and isolation. “Nobody Wants This” nods to many of these difficulties. Noah’s personal life looms large in his career, often to the point of discomfort, and his and Joanne’s first kiss is interrupted by a phone call from a congregant. “A rabbi is always on call,” he says wearily. 

Such a life, however, is also beautiful, and above all deeply meaningful. Because my husband is a priest, every quotidian reality of our life takes on a new resonance. When I cook dinner, I’m cooking dinner for a priest (though, to be honest, he’s a much better cook). When I buy him socks, I know he’ll wear them while he preaches the Gospel, visits the sick and offers a loving presence at life’s comings and goings. “In the last year,” a man once said to me, “your husband has officiated my wedding, buried my father and baptized my firstborn.” 

As luck would have it, my husband and I happened to watch the baby-naming episode of “Nobody Wants This” mere hours after he’d performed a baptism. I nudged him when Noah took the new baby into his arms and welcomed her to the community. “That was you an hour ago!” I said. This is why, as a clergy wife, I find myself so moved by “Nobody Wants This”: Witnessing Joanne’s pride and awe helps me recognize the beauty of my own life. Every time I see my husband preach, or serve communion, or offer a sacrament, I, too, feel pride and awe—and above all, gratitude that my life is connected to such a beautiful mystery. (“The same hands that hold yours,” a priest’s wife once told me, “hold Christ.”) Being a clergy wife is a mystery that will take me the rest of my life to unravel. 

Is Joanne ready to commit to such a life? Even as she finds herself inching toward Judaism over the course of the season (her mother advises her, wisely, that sometimes you can only make big decisions “inch by inch”), saying yes to being a rabbi’s wife is a whole other level of commitment. In the season finale, Noah worries about what he’s asking her to do. “Being married to a rabbi is a very specific lifestyle,” he says. “What if down the road you don’t want that?” He decides he doesn’t want to pressure her anymore, and suddenly, all seems lost for our couple.

Then something astonishing happens. Many viewers will tune in to “Nobody Wants This” to watch two beautiful people fall in love with each other, and that’s certainly a fine reason to watch. But at the end of the show, they’ll get to see Joanne realize she’s fallen in love with something else, too. In a wordless montage, Joanne sees the beauty of belief, the way her nascent faith has already moved and shaped her, has welcomed her into a community, has given her a home. I won’t spoil what happens next, but I’ll say that it deeply surprised me—and took my breath away. 

Will Joanne become a clergy wife? I sure hope so—because if she does, I can tell you for a fact that season three of “Nobody Wants This” will be moving, hilarious and above all, deeply meaningful. In other words, it’ll be like being married to a priest. 

Elyse Durham is the author of the novel Maya & Natasha, forthcoming from Mariner/HarperCollins in February 2025. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with her husband.