Season 2 of Nobody Wants This picks up a few months after the end of Season 1, and the first half of the season focuses on many of the same hijinks and tensions. Bina—Noah’s mom—has returned to her inexplicable flip-flopping love-hatred of Joanne. Morgan—Joanne’s sister—has continued with a not-so-subtle jealousy of Joanne’s relationship with Noah. Joanne herself remains blissfully unaware of many core facets of Jewish tradition. The result is a stagnated first half of the season, where viewers relive the most stereotyped and shallow facets of Season 1 without diving deeper. 

The lack of forward movement proves grating as comedy bits used in the first season tire of their humor and border on disrespect. Joanne’s continued disrespect for basic Jewish traditions—a point of supposed comedy in the first season when she brings a charcuterie board with pork to meet Noah’s deeply religious parents—continues as she uses her phone during a family Shabbat dinner. 

While it can be debated whether serving a kosher-keeping family pork and not researching dietary restrictions is indeed funny, for me, it was the phone usage that pushed my annoyance with Joanne over the line. Screenwriters clearly wanted to make it obvious to viewers that Joanne’s secular and podcasted life clashes with Noah’s religiously Jewish one. However, I would argue that the point they made is a different one. To me, lack of faith or engagement in another faith is not in contradiction with Judaism—disrespect is. I have dated partners of other faiths or no faith, and while I consider myself reform, I would also point out that Judaism has never been a barrier to dating, except in cases where there is a lack of interest in exchange, understanding, and reciprocity. Joanne doesn’t fit in with Noah and his family, not because she isn’t Jewish, but because she has no interest in caring about the cultural nuances of Judaism, with particular attention to how Noah’s family practices. 

Thankfully, the second half of this season makes up for the subpar beginning. A key development for viewers is the increased attention to Esther’s character. While she is treated as a stereotype in the first season—and a negative one at that—we begin to learn more about who she is when she’s not “Noah’s Sister-In-Law” and see nuance in her own relationship with Judaism. 

I appreciated the scenes where she expressed exhaustion with the domestic responsibilities and family expectations she faced. Such honesty stripped away the facade of the perfect housewife that she portrayed in season one, and instead offered the chance to see her as someone struggling to figure out her own place in the world. 

Interestingly, her own rebellion against heteronormative conditions of marriage and workload split was contrasted with the rather traditional desires of Joanne and Morgan in their respective relationships. Joanne even says at one point that her vision of being a wife for Noah includes staying home, having kids, and denying him nights out with the boys, a rather outdated trope for a modern show. I did find myself sticking on this point. While I believe that women should absolutely take on the role in family engagement that they wish to have, including that of being a stay-at-home mother, I found myself disappointed that showrunners chose to reinforce abundant examples of female domesticity through Joanne and Morgan, rather than highlighting their strength and independence. Such a positioning towards the trad-wife aesthetic was particularly interesting in light of Esther’s desires to move away from marriage and raising children, positioning Esther again in contrast to other women by suggesting deviation rather than allowing her to exist in harmony. 

Along the way, this season is filled with the deeper theme of questioning Jewish identity. Esther wonders how to reconcile her Jewish beliefs with the fact that she and her husband, Sasha, may be falling out of love. Joanne struggles to feel a spiritual match with Judaism as pressure mounts for her to convert. Noah grapples with a new offer to be Head Rabbi at another temple that is decidedly more open-minded than he is. And less prominently, Noah’s mother, Bina, feels torn between the traditional Judaism of her cultural history and the Judaism of today, where people wear sexy costumes to Purim parties and Noah serves as the Rabbi to a more flexible community. None of these questions have direct answers, yet along the way, none of these characters are demonized for their questioning, creating an important openness to the show that indeed reflects the Jewish value of asking questions. 

It is Esther, however, who puts forward what I find to be the most compelling answer to this cumulative struggle of Jewish identity. Judaism, she asserts in the final episode, is not about checking boxes, but rather about feeling and engaging in the Jewish culture. This is not to say, of course, that there are no other solutions offered. Indeed, Noah remains steadfast in his devout return to Torah study as a way to grapple with tribulations. And the multiplicity of these answers creates nuances that the first season lacked in portraying Jews as a monolith of practice. Season 2, in its second half, ultimately shifts away from the superficial comedy of the first season and the first half of the second season. Instead, viewers must watch the first half with the same patience required to endure Season 1, but ultimately are in for a reward of deeper engagement with Judaism and questions of what it means to love yourself and someone else.