Can Nobody Wants This Survive Happiness?
Joanne and Noah have reached the moving-box stage. When Nobody Wants This returns on Thursday, October 22, the couple will be sharing a home for a ten-episode season. Getting them together was the obvious attraction. Keeping them funny together could be the better achievement.
Kristen Bell and Adam Brody now have the everyday business of a relationship to play. A shared address should create plenty of friction without requiring either character to become inexplicably awful.
The breakup shortcut
There is an easy version of this season: introduce a misunderstanding, split the couple, then reward us with a reunion that restores where we began. We'd prefer to watch two people discover the small, annoying habits that courtship lets you overlook. Keep the attraction. Let them argue about something neither can charm away.
Season two made conversion a source of conflict. Its finale has Joanne choose Judaism while Noah decides he wants her regardless. Those decisions deserve to change the relationship. Sending them back through the same argument would make the progress feel disposable.
Nor should happiness turn Joanne into an agreeable accessory to the hot rabbi. Let her want something that inconveniences him. Let him be wrong without making him secretly horrible. Being in love ought to give the writers more to work with.
Watch the people around them
Sasha and Esther's separation puts them back into dating, while Sasha's friendship with Morgan becomes harder to define. Morgan is also getting more ambitious about her podcast career. For the central couple, other people's problems could be a welcome source of trouble.
That is why the announced direction deserves a chance. Yes, this comedy can survive happiness. It needs to let commitment change the jokes instead of treating a breakup as the only way to find new ones. We still have to see whether season three can do it.
If season two is a blur, revisit its final two episodes before October 22. New viewers should start at the beginning. Then try the new premiere: the question is whether you want to spend time with these two once neither is chasing the other.
