Netflix enters the shiksa discourse in a very dumb way with ‘Nobody Wants This’

Meghan Daum contrasts her 1996 essay 'American Shiksa' with the hit 2024 rom-com.
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody star in 'Nobody Wants This', a new Netflix rom-com series that asks a question that maybe seemed bold 30 years ago: can Jewish men love non-Jewish women? (Image courtesy of Netflix)

Whenever there’s a new mainstream TV show with a Jewish bent, Jewish audiences share a familiar reaction: excitement over representation, followed by dread over how bad that representation will be. The latest example is Nobody Wants This, the new Netflix rom-com series about a sex-advice podcast host (Kristen Bell) who, despite not being Jewish, falls for a hot young rabbi (Adam Brody). Gasp!

One key theme in the show is the nuance and viability of interfaith relationships, which, for Bonjour Chai co-host Phoebe Maltz Bovy, brought to mind the writer Meghan Daum. A prolific writer, Daum once penned a 1996 GQ piece called “American Shiksa”, which appears in her 2001 collection of essays, My Misspent Youth, and which describes the common Jewish-guy-meets-non-Jewish-girl love story from the female perspective. On this week’s episode, Daum joins to recall the origins of that article and helps dissects Netflix’s latest take on the age-old trope, which is both new and stale at the same time.

And after that, the hosts turn south to examine how Donald Trump spent the one-year Oct. 7 anniversary… by visiting the grave of Lubavitcher Rebbe and allegedly offering to sign siddurs.

Credits

  • Hosts: Avi Finegold and Phoebe Maltz Bovy (@BovyMaltz)
  • Production team: Michael Fraiman (producer), Zachary Kauffman (editor)
  • Music: Socalled

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