This recap includes spoilers for season two of “Nobody Wants This.” If you’d like to share your opinion about this episode or any aspect of season two, subscribe to our Substack, Jewish TV Club and join us in the chat!
It’s Morgan’s engagement party and things between Noah and Joanne are not good. They agree to fake it for the duration of the party, and it turns out Noah is really bad at that.
Joanne wears white, which is obnoxious, and Morgan calls her out on it. Joanne brushes it off and says she bought the dress when they were fighting as a way to make a statement but then didn’t have time to buy something new once they made up. Things are pretty awkward with everyone after the beer garden confrontation. Noah’s fake smile is fooling no one, and while Joanne is more skilled at hiding her feelings from the larger group, she and Noah keep breaking the facade whenever they’re alone to have relationship talks that go around and around in circles. We may or may not have heard this all already, all season long. (Spoiler: We have.)
Morgan is also struggling. She’s crying tears that she says may or may not be happy, and tells Joanne she doesn’t think she likes Dr. Andy anymore. Joanne asks Morgan what she wants her to do — she’ll concur and support Morgan in a breakup, but she doesn’t want to fall into a trap if Morgan isn’t ready to leave — as Dr. Andy dances the robot in the background. Morgan tells her sister she wants her to push them apart.
As Joanne begins to share all the terrible things she’s noticed about Dr. Andy, the other shoe finally drops for Morgan who realizes that the worst thing about him is how he weaponizes information he learned about her in therapy. No duh, but also sometimes in an abusive relationship, it takes a while for us to take stock of what is really happening, especially amid all the love-bombing and coercive manipulation. I still don’t feel comfortable about us laughing at this relationship, and it’s unclear if the show is playing it for laughs or realizes what a traumatic storyline it is. Do we think I’m taking this too seriously, or is the show not taking it seriously enough?
Obviously, Morgan can’t quit Dr. Andy on the first (second? third? She’s tried to leave a few times already this season, right?) try; he once again manipulates her to stay together. Sigh.
In a fun moment of levity, Sasha reprises his “7 rings” dance while Noah films him and argues with Joanne while keeping the camera phone extra steady. He may make a good influencer husband yet. Noah asks her if she understands the commitment of being married to a rabbi, and Joanne is telling him that maybe he should try to marry Rebecca instead. He sends her to go cool off, then comes back to her with an ask of six months together to figure it out. But Joanne is absolutely not OK with Noah essentially stringing her along; she wants commitment, she wants kids, she wants Abby Loves Smoothies house and her life OK!!!
She finds her parents and Henry is busy eating noodle kugel, which he calls “delicious noodle birthday cake” — I’m not mad about it. Joanne explains that it’s a Jewish food Morgan knows she likes, and Lynn, the convert in progress, says she can make a better one. She’s already channeling her best Jewish mom.
Lynn says she’s going in to help Morgan break up her engagement and perhaps the best moment of this episode is when she gets really real with Morgan about her regrets around not leaving Henry sooner, about her insecurities of not finding anyone else and not deserving happiness. Morgan has those same voices in her head, telling her that maybe she’s impossible to please, but Lynn reminds her that what she wants isn’t someone like Andy, but an equal partnership. Someone who sees the best in her, who holds her accountable — the way, Joanne realizes, Noah does for her.
Morgan realizes that wanting something like Joanne’s relationship with Noah is what made her want to rush into the relationship with Dr. Andy, and she finally manages to break it off with him. He tells her that as her fiancé, he’s heartbroken, but as her therapist, he’s proud of her, a line that hopefully rids us forever of this cursed plot line.
Joanne of course rushes back to Noah. It’s just one more rendition of what feels a little bit like endless rounds of them running together then breaking apart and rinsing and repeating. She tells him that she sees the best in him and he says he also looks at her with “ayin tovah” (Hebrew for “good eye”), which he explains is “to look at your partner with a good eye.”
And yet this time, Noah is breaking up with Joanne because it’s too hard not to know if she wants to convert.
Sasha tells Esther he is going to stay out of her way as she figures things out, but that’s not enough for her. While she calls him the greatest guy in the whole world, an amazing dad, a fantastic lovable weirdo who does everything for her and tries so hard… things just aren’t working between them right now. She needs to figure herself out, by herself. She seems shocked to have said that out loud, but we can tell she’s serious. And even though Sasha is heartbroken and shocked, he tells Morgan that he absolutely will patiently wait for Esther to figure things out, for as long as it takes.
Joanne takes comfort in wine and kugel. Noah has left the party and is walking down the sidewalk by himself with a montage of tender moments between him and Joanne running through his mind (and across our screens). It’s pretty obvious he’s going to change his mind about Joanne yet again. I’m tired.
In the meantime, Joanne and an exhausted Esther have a heart-to-heart, and Joanne seems devastated not just about the breakup, but about all the Jewish things she is going to miss from Noah’s world, from Shabbat to saying pu pu pu, because she loves being superstitious and it makes her feel good.
Cue Esther’s big speech about Judaism! She says it’s less complicated than Joanne keeps trying to make it. “You feel Jewish to me,” Esther tells her. “You’re warm, you’re cozy, you always want to chat about everything, you’d be a pretty good get for us,” Esther says, which, I mean, I don’t associate Joanne with warm and cozy, but I do associate Judaism with those qualities.
“You’re funny! That’s Jewish,” Esther continues when Joanne jokes about Esther not being warm and cozy (pot, kettle). She calls Joanne a “kibbitzer” and a “yenta.” She says her being obsessed with her family and her eating challah before you’re supposed to — all those little things, all those feelings — make her Jewish. We get a montage of Joanne’s Best Jewish Moments (TM) as Esther tells her that “with or without Noah, you’re Jewish.”
As they did in the season one finale, Joanne and Noah go on a wild goose chase to find each other. After several missed connections (one elevator going up, the other going down) they finally connect and Noah tells Joanne he loves her the way she is. Joanne tells him he’s in luck. Has she finally had her Mt. Sinai awakening?
The wins
I love Lynn showing up for her daughter, and the fact that being Jewish makes her a better person.
Comfort kugel is life.
So is Esther’s speech about what being Jewish is! It might not be true for everyone but I think it has parts in it that are universal to everyone’s experience of Judaism; being Jewish is about a feeling, a connection, a love of the little moments.
The icks
Maybe… this season? I am really struggling with this back and forth on conversion. I understand it being a big deal but I just feel like we labored on it way too much this season. I’m exhausted! I need comfort kugel.
