Nobody Wants This is back October 22: yay or nay?

Netflix has made it official: Nobody Wants This returns on Thursday, October 22, with all ten episodes at once. Joanne and Noah are moving in together, Sarah Silverman is teaching an Intro to Judaism class, and the group chat has already split into two camps.

So let’s have the argument properly. Yay, or nay?

Season 1 was a butterflies delivery system

Let’s remember what actually happened in the fall of 2024, because it was genuinely strange. A Netflix half-hour about an agnostic podcaster and a hot rabbi showed up with no fanfare, and within a week everybody was texting everybody else the same sentence: I think the rom com is back.

And it was. Not the glossy, algorithm-shaped version, the real one. Season 1 had no fake drama, no villain twirling a mustache, no shocking betrayal engineered for the end of episode six. It just had two people who liked each other, a pile of reasons that should have stopped them, and an hour and a half of total, uncomplicated pleasure spread across ten episodes.

Was the love story realistic? Absolutely not. But that was never the point, and anyone arguing about plausibility missed the assignment. You did not watch it for a documentary about interfaith dating in Los Angeles. You watched it because reality is grey and expensive and full of news, and here were twenty five minutes where the worst thing that could happen was an awkward dinner with the in-laws.

Kristen Bell and Adam Brody made it work by doing something most screen couples cannot: they made you believe the liking, not just the wanting. The pauses, the interruptions, the way both of them talk slightly too fast when they are nervous. And then there is the cringe, deployed on purpose, pure Michael Scott energy, the kind that makes you physically slide down the couch before the scene rescues itself. Every episode ended with that little exhale. You fell asleep smiling. That is a real thing a TV show can do for you, and almost none of them bother.

Season 2 was the same rodeo, and we all noticed

Then October 2025 came around, and the feeling was more complicated.

Genuinely lovely to have the gang back. Morgan still stealing scenes, Sasha and Esther still the funniest marriage on television, Noah’s family still incapable of a normal conversation. Still charming. Still funny. Still warm.

But the engine was making the same noise. Will they, won’t they, the religion problem, a wobble, a grand gesture, reset. Somewhere around the middle of the season I caught myself thinking the least romantic thought available: okay, and what else? When the obstacle stops evolving, the butterflies start clocking out. It was not a bad season. It was a season that had already shown you its best trick, and then did the trick again.

That is the reason the season 3 announcement landed to a chorus of shrugs in some corners of the internet. Fool me twice, etc.

Why season 3 might actually be different

Here is the thing that made me sit up when the details came out. The show seems to know.

Season 3 does not open with another round of will they. It opens with Joanne and Noah moving into a house together, committed, building a life, going through all the ordinary firsts that come with it. That is a deliberate handbrake turn away from the exact loop that made season 2 feel like a rerun. Co-showrunners Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan have talked about judging every pitch by whether it is “Champagne,” which is an unbearably charming way to describe a writers’ room and also, frankly, exactly the correct brief for this show.

The new faces point the same direction. Sarah Silverman as a rabbi running an Intro to Judaism class, Andrew Rannells as the classmate who exists to make Joanne’s life harder in the pettiest possible way. That is a setting with actual comic engine in it, not another lap around the same relationship track. Creator Erin Foster even turns up in a guest role.

Ten episodes, half an hour each, all at once. Could it still collapse into the same rhythms? Sure. Cosy shows love their comfort zones. But the setup, at minimum, is not the setup that stalled last year.

My verdict: still a yes, and unapologetically

Let me be honest about my bias. A 90s style rom com was long overdue, and right now nothing else is filling the gap. Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, all of them are pouring their money into gorgeous, punishing, psychologically devastating prestige drama. Excellent television. Also: I have a job, and a life, and a news app I should delete.

So when something light shows up and asks for twenty five minutes of my brain switched off, and gives me back a nice feeling, I am taking the deal. Every time. Comfort viewing is not a lesser form of watching, it is just the one nobody wins trophies for.

Also, and I am saying this with my whole chest, Kristen Bell and Adam Brody are extremely easy on the eyes. I will not be taking questions.

Now tell me I’m wrong

That’s my yay. I want to hear the nays, because I know you are out there and I know your argument is “season 2 already proved it.”

Follow Nobody Wants This on Seriesly and October 22 lands on your calendar automatically, right next to everything else you are behind on. When you finish an episode, mark it and the comment thread for that episode unlocks, so you can argue with people who are exactly as far in as you are and nobody from episode nine can wander in and ruin your night.

And when the binge is done, rate the episodes. I want to see the season graph for this one. If season 3 really did break the loop, the shape will show it.

See you on October 22. Bring snacks and low expectations, and let the show beat them.

Sandy