‘Nobody Wants This’ season 3 is charming enough to forget the Adam Brody controversy

The new season of the popular Netflix series, Nobody Wants This, about a character the Internet has dubbed the Hot Rabbi and his romance with a gentile woman, just started streaming, and the timing of its release brings to mind that old joke, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

That’s because a recent political controversy involving the show’s cast threatened to obscure everything enjoyable about it. Up until now, the series has been a truly charming and funny look at upscale Jewish life in Los Angeles, with a well-rounded portrait of two quirky families, one Jewish and one, to quote an Aaron Sorkin line, “incredibly not.”

It’s also been a way to spend time with American Jewish characters that the series creator, Erin Foster, who based the series on her own conversion and her life, designed as a kind of respite from rising antisemitism and controversies over support for Israel.

Engaging third season

It functioned well as witty (and sometimes silly) escapism, with an overarching affection for Jewish tradition. But obviously it’s hard to keep reality at bay forever.

So when Adam Brody, who plays Noah, the rabbi on the series, recently made a comment accusing Israel of genocide in words that were inane and annoying even by the very low bar of political statements by Hollywood actors, it seemed that it might no longer be possible to enjoy it.

The first season’s rabbi advisor, Steve Leder, called Brody’s comments “flippant” and “disgusting,” and Tovah Feldshuh, who plays Noah’s mother, fired back as well, calling the genocide accusation “wild” and “right out of Hitler’s playbook.”

It was with trepidation that some fans, myself included, tuned in to the new season. But the good news is that Foster, her cast, and crew have made season three engaging enough that you can forget the controversy while watching it.
I still had fun spending time with these very attractive, sweet characters, and enjoyed the eye candy and real estate porn that goes along with their lifestyles.

The new season is increasingly predictable, but that doesn’t really matter, since sitcoms are almost always predictable – and that is part of what is soothing about them.

Joanne (Kristin Bell) is busy taking a Judaism class at the temple where Noah used to be the rabbi to prepare for her conversion, and her blunt teacher is played by Sarah Silverman, a welcome addition to the cast. Noah is trying to find a way to get his old job back, and the two are living together for the first time, which provides The Odd Couple-fodder.

But it’s the supporting characters who are especially appealing this season, with a lot of will-they/won’t-they drama involving Joanne’s sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), and Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons). Sasha’s estranged wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn, GLOW), is also around, and it’s still nice to see a character named Esther who isn’t 90 or haredi (ultra-Orthodox).

There is also an unexpectedly touching backstory about how Joanne and Morgan started their sex/lifestyle podcast. Fans will binge this season quickly and will eagerly await the fourth season, hoping that there will be no more idiotic statements by anyone involved to cloud its arrival.

Israel will soon be able to See Everything

A new documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of a blood-testing start-up currently serving a prison term for fraud, called You Can See Everything, has achieved a very difficult feat: it has gotten a lot of people excited about going to the movies.

There is even a lot of buzz that it may be the first documentary to win a Best Picture Oscar. The movie, by Nathan Fielder, creator of the HBO docu-comedy show The Rehearsal, is set to open in Israel at the end of November. But while you’re waiting, there is some Holmes-related content currently available here.

Disney+ offers The Dropout, a miniseries about Holmes and the investigation by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, The Bear) that brought her down. It’s well-made and entertaining, although Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews, who play Holmes and her former romantic and professional partner, Sunny Balwani, who is also behind bars, are a little too movie-star good-looking to be completely convincing in their roles.

I think the fascination with Holmes is not so much that she is a criminal but that she is creepy. The strange, Steve Jobs-adjacent persona she created for herself, with her fixed stare, black turtlenecks, and bizarrely deep voice, seduced investors, including Rupert Murdoch, former US secretary of state George Schultz, and much of the media into backing her long after the initial fraud allegations came to light.

Seyfried is much softer, and as television usually does, the series wants us to feel for the heroine, portraying her as someone galvanized into choosing her path of fakery and self-promotion because her father was laid off from his job.

But it details how she tried to stonewall Carreyrou and investigators, and how she ruthlessly threatened employees who raised questions about the technology. It ends with her finding romance with her new partner, which is the starting point for You Can See Everything.

If a miniseries seems like too much of a commitment, a movie by master documentary director Alex Gibney, called The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, is available on HBO Max.

The Walk-In, which is currently available on Hot VOD and Next TV, is an excellent British series that is very difficult to watch because it deals with neo-Nazis and far-right extremist groups in the UK about 10 years ago.

There is some violence shown, of course, but what makes it a tough watch is how sad and twisted these racists and antisemites are, and how they lure lonely and confused young men into joining their ranks.

The main character is a real person, Matthew Collins (Stephen Graham, the father on Adolescence), a journalist and researcher who was once a neo-Nazi himself and who gradually awakened to the fact that this was an evil cause. He has since devoted himself to spreading the word about the virulence of this movement, meaning he and his family are constantly threatened and have had to move over and over again.

In a parallel story, a quiet, underemployed young man, Robbie (Andrew Ellis), who lost his father to cancer, finds himself drawn to the zeal and certainty of members of the National Action group, and starts spouting conspiracy theories about how Jews have concealed the cure for cancer so they can make money off useless treatments.

While Collins works tirelessly to combat these groups, it seems that there will never be an end to the cycle of hateful antisemites manipulating lost young men like Robbie into joining them.