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!
When Noah tells Morgan her relationship is going fast, she replies: “When you know, you know.”
Joanne couldn’t hate that line more — but Noah feels that way about the two of them! Maybe, Joanne says, that’s how it will be with Temple Ahava and Noah? They’ll be the right fit for each other. He entertains the idea: “A progressive temple is exactly what I need,” he says. It could be the perfect solution for him, and for the two of them.
Joanne is sure Morgan “doesn’t know what she knows” and doesn’t actually want to get married. Her plan to get Morgan to realize this is to… ruin Morgan’s wedding dress shopping? The event takes place on the same day as Noah’s first day of work. Big days for everyone!
We get to meet Cami, played by genius Kate Berlant, another rabbi at Temple Ahava. She and Rabbi Neil tell Noah about how non-rigid their temple is, and that they’re trying to get more asses in those seats. (Is “The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down” co-host and Houseplant ceramist Seth Rogen holding a Seth Rogen-crafted mug in this scene? Can we get a pottery class with Rabbi Neil??) As a way to explain his MO as a rabbi, Rabbi Neil tells a story about Steven Spielberg not planning anything on set — which feels like a “The Studio” nod — and also kvells about Spielberg being a congregant.
Neil also tells Noah he doesn’t need his kippah. “We kippah it casual here,” he dad-jokes once again.
At the wedding dress fitting, Lynn can’t stop raving about Temple Ahava and how much she loves it, while Joanne kvetches about every dress Morgan tries on. When she’s accused of being a bit too dramatic, she tells Lynn and Henry that they’re not dramatic enough about Morgan and her relationship with Dr. Andy. “I’m judging the two of you for not judging this,” she tells them.
Rabbi Neil and Cami don’t only torture Noah with their ideas about Judaism, which they believe shouldn’t be hard or strict or too much work — “we think it’s hard out there, fun in here,” they say — but also by not telling him they bring lunch from home. Poor Noah is starving and really hating on Temple Ahava, but when they suggest he jump in to teach the afterschool program, he agrees and tries to channel the Temple Ahava spirit. He tries to teach about the Torah portion, but the kids want to talk about themselves, so he lets it go. He sits beside them, despondent.
Joanne levels up her wedding dress shopping antagonism by trying on a wedding dress herself. It… does not go voer well.
The wedding dress shopping leads into a very hostile podcast episode taping. At a loss of what to say, Joanne kvetches about her landlord, Fabrizio, and shares that she is the one who threw up in the apartment complex pool (and then hid it from him). Morgan then broaches the subject of the wedding and says that Joanne can’t be her maid of honor; she says Ashley, their podcast producer (who she says has turned into a real friend from a work friend) will get the role instead.
This obviously upsets Joanne and the two argue about how private Joanne is about her relationship with Noah on the pod, and about Dr. Andy’s lack of boundaries. Joanne later says they need to stop the pod; Morgan takes it one step further and suggests they take a break from their entire relationship. Morgan confronts Joanne about her not talking to Noah about how she wishes conversion was not an issue, while Joanne tells her sister she regrets not telling her she was jumping into a bad situation the first time she got married.
Back at Temple Ahava, the teens play a four corners game — with signs that read “strongly agree,” “agree,” “disagree,” “strongly disagree,” — that they use to explore their relationship to Judaism in their daily lives. Noah can’t seem to agree with any of the laxness of Temple Ahava; he’s not OK with skipping Shabbat for a “Fantastic Four” movie (even if The Thing is Jewish and so is star Julia Garner, as Rabbi Neil channels his best Kveller writer voice to say). He’s not OK regifting something from your bubbe. He even disagrees about Mel Gibson movies and has no idea about who the best Kardashian is (it’s Timothée, Kylie’s boyfriend, Neil can’t help but say).
Noah gets home, starving, and calls Sasha to kvetch about Temple Ahava, Neil and Cami. “I like this stuff on paper, I really do,” he says about the progressive synagogue, but unfortunately, when you’re not the right fit, you just know…
Of course, when Joanne comes home, Noah doesn’t share all that. In his mind, if Temple Ahava isn’t a fit, then there’s no place in the Jewish world for a couple like them. (Realistically, that is absolutely not true.) He lies and says his day was great; Joanne lies and says her was too. Things are just allowed to be secrets and fester.
The wins
Seth Rogen’s character calling out all the Jewish stars Kveller has articles about, very happy about that, thank Seth!
I do feel like this episode does a decent job at showing how a synagogue can just not feel right for someone, even if it looks good on paper — even if Temple Ahava is made to look vacuous and vapid, which I don’t love.
The icks
Reform and more progressive streams of Judaism aren’t what this show makes them out to be. Judaism can be rigorous and deeply felt in all kinds of different ways.
