Season 1 of Nobody Wants This explored all the fairy tale aspects of love, including the early days of romance, googly eyes, and warm, tingly sensations of new love. What viewers see in Season 2 is the deeper aspects of love, which are less about grand gestures and more about everyday tasks like doing the dishes or taking out the trash. In essence, this season focuses on the more relatable, less glamorous, everyday aspects of making a relationship work.
We catch up with the show’s main couple, Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody), as they navigate the kind of hurdles that make or mar a relationship. While these hurdles may look like just plot devices, they’re certainly more than that. They are the real-deal tests that explore what it’s really like when love stops being just a feeling and starts being a daily choice. Beyond this main couple, we’ll also look at other relationships in the show that redefine what it means to walk away when love isn’t just enough anymore.
Why Noah and Joanne’s Love Story Feels So Real This Season
From the early episodes of Season 2, the showrunners focused on showing the non-romantic moments of friction in a relationship. Those moments are clearly felt in the awkward exchange that follows after Joanne fumbles on the “leaving it at the tree” tradition with Noah’s mother, Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), for instance. Crucially, the writers did not create those scenes to fill a gap in proceedings, but to clearly illustrate how tiny cultural differences can strain intimacy.
Beyond the day-to-day skirmishes, the series gets real about the cause-and-effect aspect of relationships, too. Case in point, Noah’s tanked Rabbi promotion happened not because he lacks the necessary qualifications, but because his girlfriend won’t convert to Judaism. What’s worse is that everyone, including the couple, seemed to be walking on eggshells about the issue. Also, Joanne’s eviction isn’t framed as some cute “let’s move in together” plot device, but a genuine “can we afford to be us” faith and identity crisis. That’s why when they eventually fight, they don’t do so with the usual dramatic flair that audiences see in most rom-coms. They do so with that tired but familiar “we need to talk” energy that most viewers find relatable because it mirrors their real-life situations.
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Nobody Wants This Season 2 Redefines What It Means To Walk Away
Expanding the theme beyond the central couple, Noah and Joanne, and the effort they invest into their relationship, this season also asks the question: what if leaving a relationship isn’t treated as failure, but as the bravest thing one can do? Morgan’s (Justine Lupe) character arc describes this in detail. After serious self-reflection, she chooses to call off her engagement to her therapist boyfriend, Dr. Andy (Arian Moayed), at the engagement party, no less. She makes that choice after realizing that she’s just going through the motions and following a life plan she never really chose for herself. Her story tells viewers that sometimes choosing yourself isn’t selfish, it’s necessary.
This theme of self-preservation is further reflected in the relationship between Sasha (Timothy Simons) and Esther (Jackie Tohn). They’re the couple everyone viewed as the stable, sort of like a template of what other couples should aspire to be. But they still hit a rough patch. Not the kind where they’re consumed by hatred for each other, but the kind where they’ve simply grown apart from countless small disappointments. When they eventually decide to have a frank conversation, again at Morgan and Dr. Andy’s engagement party (someone must have sprayed some breakup virus there), they ultimately opt for space to figure things out. It’s important to note that their decision is seen as a mature step in the right direction, not a disaster.
The finale brilliantly offers the intriguing viewpoint that staying comes at a cost, as seen in Noah and Joanne’s decision to stay together and accommodate their differences. It also presents the viewpoint that sometimes walking away isn’t giving up on love. In fact, it can be the most loving choice someone can make, not just for themselves, but for the one they’re leaving behind.
Stream the complete second season of Nobody Wants This on Netflix now and see a very relatable aspect of romance that’s rarely discussed.
