Nobody Wants This Review

We’re in a time where love seems more hard to find than ever. Silicon Valley coders creating and gamifying connecting in their dating apps. The world is still trying to recover after a year indoors and young people are more socially isolated and advice-pilled than ever. Who really is right for you? Does she treat you like the alpha you are? Is he the provider he set out to be?

Based on a true story from the life of showrunner Erin Foster, Nobody Wants This drops us right into this modern world; following Joanne (Kristen Bell) and her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) as the two hosts of the dating podcast “Nobody Want This”. The two self-proclaimed “slutty single sisters” use this podcast to air their grievances about their eventful dating lives, allowing their romantic failures to catapult them to success. But a wrench is thrown into the works when Joanne meets Noah (Adam Brody), the hot, charismatic, responsible man she could see herself being with forever… and also seems to be a rabbi.

The tightly paced 10 episode series follows Joanne and Noah as they continue down the road of their relationship and obstacles that come with it. How will Joanne have content for an ongoing podcast while in a healthy relationship? Can Noah, the rabbi, still be dedicated as a spiritual leader while seriously dating someone who isn’t religious. The show smartly uses its episodic structure to explore topics from the ick, meeting the family, meeting the friends etc. which is rather refreshing in a time where shows ape cinematic form more than ever, Nobody Wants This fully embraces it’s episodic nature to isolate topical issues in modern romance while allowing these characters to grow into each other over time.

And these characters could not be better assisted than the likes of Kristen Bell and Adam Brody as the leads. Beyond solid writing and direction, a series like this is dead in the water without some solid lead chemistry and it is here in spades while the show shuffles from subject to subject and episode to episode, making this quite an inviting and easy watch. The supporting cast shine too, from Succession’s Justine Lupe, Timothy Simon as Noah’s older brother Sasha, Sherry Cola (Shortcomings) and Paul-Ben Victor (The Wire) all providing well needed laughs and poignancy to the rom-com series.

Nobody Wants This isn’t going to solve the existential qualities to current dating life but it’ll try it’s damndest to forget about your own worries and invest into its often hilarious and heartwarming adult world of romance where things can be solved in the length of a 20-30 minute episode; feeling refreshing in a world (and Hollywood media landscape!) that has often forgot about the ideas of love. Stay for the sex podcast, please don’t create one of your own.