I am always in the market for a new crush. I wouldn’t consider myself a person of many passions or hobbies. (What am I going to do in my free time, whittle wood?) But harboring crushes on fictional characters, people online I will never meet, and/or Hollywood actors? I am somewhat of an expert in the field. A savant, you might say.
I am also, apparently, enough of a veteran in the area that, decades later, old crushes have come back into my life, inducing swoons more intense than before. That whole thing about getting better with age? Couldn’t be me, but it definitely is some people. Specifically, “people” is Adam Brody, the former star of The OC who is now asserting himself as one of the industry’s most charming romantic leads in the Netflix hit Nobody Wants This.
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody
Hopper Stone/Netflix
Those of us who are proud members of the Seth Cohen Generation have been waiting for this moment. I’m glad it’s finally here. Why more Hollywood projects don’t mine former teen crushes to be romantic leads now that they’re handsome, self-assured, less chaotic, full-grown men is beyond me. Once again, I am asking Mr. and Mrs. Show Business why they haven’t hired me to run the town.
Nobody Wants This ricocheted from a soft launch on Netflix last Thursday to a rocket launch this week, as more and more people spread the holy word of its sweet, adorable watchability, counteracting what were confusingly tepid reviews. (It’s currently even besting the much buzzier Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story on Netflix’s ranking of most-watched series.) My skeptical sampling of the show, dipping a toe into the pilot out of curiosity, quickly escalated to a swan dive into a warm lake of millennial nostalgia, thanks to the casting of Brody and Kristen Bell, tempered with just the right amount of modern commentary to make things relatable at my [redacted] age.
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody
Adam Rose/Netflix
Brody plays Noah, a progressive, dedicated rabbi who has perfected the art of wearing a crew neck sweater, and Bell is Joanne, a digital-age Carrie Bradshaw who chronicles her sex and dating escapades on a podcast with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe).
Noah recently broke up with his girlfriend, who everyone in his family and congregation, including himself, thought he was going to marry. At a dinner party soon after at a friend’s house, he encounters Joanne, whose rascally confidence is irresistible.
They have a meet-cute while struggling to open a bottle of wine that—trust me on this—manages to be one of the sexiest, flirtiest scenes I’ve seen in a while. It’s midway through the evening when Joanne finds out what he does for a living. “You’re a real life rabbi?” she says, incredulous. “It’s hot, right?” he responds. Yes. Yes, it is.
What follows is exactly what you’d expect from watching a million of these things, differentiated by the fact that it is never-better Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, almost impossibly irresistible, hopscotching through the standard hijinks. He walks her to her car, and sparks fly as if as if a ghost was following them shooting off a flare gun the entire time. They have a perfect first date. When they have their first kiss, he cradles her face in his hand with just the right balance of force and tenderness that my heartrate spiked to medical-alert levels and I immediately started sweating.
The roadblocks and obstacles to happily ever after all unfold as expected, too, in this case largely orbiting the question over whether a rabbi and a shiksa could feasibly work out. (Side note: There’s been criticism of the show’s portrayal of Noah’s Jewish family, which is definitely worth reading.)
Is everything mostly predictable? Sure. Is every piece of banter so flawlessly witty and cute that it’s almost entirely untethered from the awkwardness of real-life interactions, especially when it comes to difficult conversations about relationships? Of course. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
The surprise, though, is this specific kind of rom-com fantasy character that the show crafted by casting Brody: the so-called dork whose endearingness is made apparent immediately because, while nerdy, he is also objectively hot—a modern man who holds steadfast to his values and goals while having a remarkable open-heart to compromise, understanding, and change.
While I’d like to think I’m special in my week spent crushing on Brody in this show, a quick sweep of social media reveals that, well, I’m anything but alone:
