Nobody Wants This was one of the biggest shows from last year, thanks to stars Kristen Bell and Adam Brody (and their insane chemistry, which is basically a third character), and now finally the second season is ready to drop. Starting October 23, the next installment of Joanne and Noah’s story will be available to all on Netflix—and you’re gonna want to binge it before it gets spoiled for you.
That being said, you might not remember everything that happens in Season 1, and you also might not feel like you have the time (or the interest) in going back and rewatching the whole thing. That’s okay! That’s why I’m here to give you an episode-by-episode breakdown of the entire first season.
Let’s begin, shall we?
Episode 1
Episode one begins with sisters Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Morgan (Justine Lupe) discussing their dating lives on their shared podcast, called Nobody Wants This. It’s clear that neither sister really knows what a healthy relationship is as they see red flags in normal dating behavior and quickly get the ick from anyone who shows them too much attention.
Elsewhere, rabbi Noah (Adam Brody) calls of his relationship with longtime girlfriend Rebecca (Emily Arlook) after she finds an engagement ring in his drawer and begins wearing it on her ring finger—even though Noah never officially proposed to her. He realizes that their relationship has become checking off items off a list and tells her that he doesn’t believe that this is how love should feel.
Later, Joanne goes to a dinner party thrown by her friend and podcast producer Ashley (Sherra Cola), who tells her that there will be plenty of interesting men that Joanna can talk about on the podcast—including a boorish divorcé and a rabbi. Joanne shows up to the party and a comedy of errors begins: She meets the divorcé, who she assumes is the rabbi because of his beard, and immediately begins flirting with Noah, who she believes is the divorcé. Joanne and Noah hit it off and spend the evening talking, though Joanne is later thrown off during dinner when it’s revealed that Noah is actually the rabbi. When Joanne gets up to leave the party, Noah goes with her and walks her to her car, and they discuss religion and whether he’s allowed to be in a relationship before deciding it’s better to go their separate ways.
Over the next few days, both Noah and Joanne struggle with trying to stop thinking about the other, and after a bad first date, Joanne finally gives in and goes to Noah’s temple to see his sermon. The episode ends after Noah finishes his sermon and goes to find Joanne, and they immediately reconnect.
Episode 2
This episode picks up immediately after the last one. Noah asks Joanne to wait for him as he finishes saying his goodbyes, but he gets caught up when the members of his temple realize he’s now single and begin trying to set him up with their family members. Joanne waits outside until she’s asked to stop loitering on the lawn, and she feels so rejected that she calls Morgan to pick her up.
Noah finally manages to make it outside right as Morgan arrives, and he begs Joanne to give him another chance. Joanne and Morgan tell him they’re going to go for a drink to discuss work, and Noah and his brother Sasha (Timothy Simons) join (but only after Noah makes sure Joanne wants him to come along).
At the bar, Joanne and Noah go off on their own, and Noah admits he listened to Joanne’s podcast but that it didn’t put him off—instead, he admired how comfortable Joanne could make her guests feel. They begin to open up to one another about their own lives. Morgan and Sasha are left alone, much to Morgan’s annoyance, though they are quickly interrupted when Sasha’s wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn), who force Sasha and Noah to leave with her—and reveals to Joanne that Noah was recently in a serious relationship.
Later, Noah’s parents (played by Tovah Feldshuh and Paul Ben-Victor) tell him that they know he was spending time with Joanne and that they disapprove, and that they also think he made a mistake when he broke up with Rebecca.
Over the next few days, Joanne and Morgan meet with media company studio heads who are interested in buying their podcast, while Noah, in the midst of counseling a couple, realizes that the lessons Joanne taught him about opening up has actually helped him with his work. Touched by this revelation, he texts Joanne and asks her to get dinner, and though she’s resistant at first, she agrees to go as friends.
Throughout the dinner, Joanne confronts Noah about his past relationship, and he quickly clarifies that his ex simply wasn’t the right person for him. After dinner, they get ice cream and continue talking, and though they agree that it’s better if they’re just friends, Joanne remarks that it’s funny that they never actually kissed. They continue flirting, and Joanne finally says they should have one goodbye kiss, which Noah quickly agrees to. After one life-changing kiss, Noah asks, “I mean, is there a world where this works?” Joanne immediately says yes.
The two are interrupted when Noah gets a call and tells Joanne that it’s his work. They say goodbye (after one last kiss), and as Joanne goes to meet her uber, the camera pans to Noah’s phone—which shows multiple missed calls from his ex, Rebecca.
Episode 3
Joanne tells Morgan and her mom (Stephanie Faracy) about her kiss with Noah, though neither seem very impressed. Elsewhere, Noah shows up at the hospital after learning Rebecca was in a car accident, though he immediately finds out that she’s fine. However, her family and his are there, and they both express their disapproval of Noah for breaking up with Rebecca.
After filming her podcast episode, Joanne begins spiraling about the text she sent Noah after their kiss (“That was a great kiss. I think I might be pregnant.”), especially when he doesn’t answer. After a few hours, she leaves her mom’s house to go home, and on the way, she begins to worry that she isn’t a good enough person for Noah. However, when she notices a stray dog in the road, she gets out and rescues him, taking him back home with her (and ruining her favorite sweater in the process).
Back at the hospital, Noah’s dad tells him that he can’t listen to what other people want and that it’s important for him to find the life that makes him happy. Noah immediately drives to Joanne’s house, where he finds her with the stray dog. He apologizes for not responding to her text, explaining that he’d left his phone in the car, and he tells her that rescuing the dog was a “mitzvah”— a good deed. The episode ends with the two of them sitting side-by-side, leaning into one another.
Episode 4
Joanne and Noah prepare for their first date. Joanne begins obsessing over Noah’s ex Rebecca and tries to cyberstalk her, though she’s unable to find her online.
When Noah comes to pick up Joanne for their date, Joanne gets a call from Morgan, who says that she wasn’t able to get the sex toy they need for the next episode of their podcast. She tells Joanne it’s her job to find it, and when Noah sees how stressed out she is, he says that instead of going to the restaurant, they can go find what she needs. They end up going to the sex shop together, where Noah asks Joanne about her biggest fear, a question she quickly deflects.
While at the shop, Noah ends up running into one of the members of his temple. Noah worries this will become a problem for him professionally, but Joanne looks up the man and points out that the woman he was in the shop with wasn’t actually his wife, and therefore he isn’t likely to tell anyone that he saw Noah there.
Joanne and Noah go back to his apartment, where he cooks her dinner instead. Noah brings up their earlier conversation, where Joanne deflected his question, and tells her that he wants them to be real with one another because he doesn’t want their relationship to be a rebound, and that he’d like to know if she’s on the same page as him. She finally admits that her biggest fear is that she’ll become emotionally dependent on a man who might later decide she’s too much and break her heart. When she asks if that makes her seem unattractive to him, Noah tells her it’s actually the most attractive thing he’s ever seen. The two officially decide to embark on a relationship
Later, Noah runs into the head rabbi, who says that he talked to the member of the temple that Noah had run into at the sex shop—and that the man said he’d felt so inspired by Noah that he’d given the temple the biggest donation of the year.
Episode 5
Joanne and Noah plan to go on their first trip together as a couple, though their plans are thwarted when Noah is forced to cover a shift at the Jewish summer camp for work. Joanne is disappointed, but agrees to go when Noah invites her to come with him to the camp.
Later, Joanne learns that Spotify execs want to have a dinner about her podcast on the same weekend that she’s already agreed to go with Noah to the camp. She thinks about cancelling her romantic weekend, but Morgan says she capable of doing the dinner by herself.
When Joanne and Noah get to the camp, Noah introduces her to rabbi Shira, Noah’s rabbi from when he was younger, though he calls Joanne his “friend”. When Shira pulls Noah away to show him something, Joanne explores the camp and meets a group of teen girls who call Noah the “hot rabbi” and tell Joanne that they heard him call her his friend, not his girlfriend.
While at camp, Joanne gets a call from Morgan, who has learned that a powerful exec will be at the dinner meeting. Joanne wonders if she should go back to attend the meeting, but instead tells Morgan that Sasha can get her notes from Noah’s apartment and then bring them to Morgan to use. When Sasha makes it to Morgan’s apartment, Morgan immediately begins insulting him, though quickly begins to warm up to him.
Back at camp, Noah runs into the head rabbi, who he didn’t know would be attending the camp. He freaks out, not wanting the rabbi to see that Joanne is there with him, and asks her if she can stay in the cabin. Joanne is upset and decides to go out into the camp, where she runs into rabbi Shira who teaches her about Shabbat. She also runs into the group of teenage girls, who she confides in about Noah not treating her like a girlfriend. Joanne decides to leave to go to the work dinner, which Noah finds out when he runs into the group of teen girls.
Noah talks to rabbi Shira about Joanne, who tells him that even though his relationship with Joanne might not seem appropriate to the other rabbis, things can change—after all, women weren’t allowed to be rabbis for thousands of years, but now she was able to be one. She encourages him not to give up on something great just because it’s difficult.
Joanne makes it to the business dinner, and partway through she sees Noah arrive at the restaurant. He apologizes for what happened and performs the Shabbat ritual for her, since she was disappointed about missing it at camp. After, Noah officially asks Joanne to be his girlfriend.
Episode 6
Morgan reads Joanne some of the comments from their recent podcasts, in which their fans claim Joanne has gotten boring ever since she got into a relationship. Later, Joanne decides to bring Noah along to her weekly viewing of Vanderpump Rules with Morgan so the two can bond. While the two quickly get along, though the tides change when Joanne and Morgan’s parents call and say they’re coming to join (along with their father’s new boyfriend).
Noah freaks out when he learns Joanne’s parents are coming, mostly because he’s obsessed with giving off a good first impression. He temporarily leaves and shows up again after Joanne’s parents arrive, wearing a sports coat over his hoodie and bearing a giant bouquet of sunflowers.
Joanne visibly grows uncomfortable as Noah begins to perform for her parents, and Morgan pulls her aside to tell her that she knows she now has “the ick” for Noah. Though Joanne initially refuses to admit her sister is right, after the conversation between Noah and her parents gets more and more awkward, Joanne finally admits that yes, she has the ick from Noah. She tells Morgan that she’ll probably have to break up with Noah now.
Noah recognizes that Joanne is acting weird and decides to talk to her mom, who tells her that Joanne has an avoidant attachment in relationships, especially because of her relationship with her father, who was never emotionally available to her. Noah begins to understand that many of Joanne’s relationship issues stem from not feeling comfortable with affection.
Noah finds the sisters outside and asks to talk to Joanne. Joanne clearly is ready to end their relationship, but Noah tells her that he thinks she has her guard up because of her family issues, and that he knows she’s self-sabotaging. He tells her that he’s on her side and that he can handle her, and Joanne realizes that he’s right—she’s playing out old patterns, but that she likes him enough to overlook it.
Episode 7
Noah finally meets Joanne’s friends, and they all quickly fall in love with him. Afterwards, Noah says he’s excited for Joanne to meet his friends at his basketball game.
At the game, Joanne has fun and gets along with the other guys, though things go wrong when she tells them that everyone is invited to go to a bar after for drinks. Noah’s friends invite their wives and girlfriends, all of who are friends with Noah’s ex—including Sasha’s wife, Esther. The group ices Joanne out, much to her dismay.
Later, when Joanne calls Morgan to complain about it, Morgan tells her that she needs to come up with a plan to win over the other women. Morgan also admits that she had a sex dream about Sasha.
Determined to become friends with the basketball WAGs, Joanne goes to Noah to learn about each one, hoping that she can find a way to become buddy-buddy with them individually. This plan seems to work when Joanne sees them all again at the regional tournament—that is, until she gets to Esther, who also happens to be best friends with Rebecca and has no interest in becoming friends with Joanne. Dismayed, she calls Morgan, who shows up with a bottle of tequila. The women turn the basketball game into a drinking game, and even Esther seems to have a good time. Later, however, Esther meets up with Rebecca, and it’s clear she feels guilty about it.
At the very end of the episode, Joanne and Noah go back to his apartment to debrief about the game. When he goes to the kitchen to get a snack, Joanne finds a box of Rebecca’s things in his drawer.
Episode 8
Over the next few weeks, Joanne grows obsessed over Rebecca’s box, though she stops herself from looking in it.
At work, the head rabbi tells Noah that he’s going to retire, and that he thinks Noah should be his replacement. Noah is over the moon, but the head rabbi remind him there’s a lot of rules that come with the job, and that dating a non-Jewish woman could be a problem. However, he does tell Noah that converting Joanne could solve that problem.
Morgan and her mom visit Joanne at Noah’s apartment, where Morgan finds Rebecca’s box and opens it without Joanne’s permission. Joanne still tries to resist, and Morgan tells Joanne that she thinks she’s changing too much for a man.
Noah decides to host havdalah with Joanne and invites Sasha, Esther, and their daughter, Miriam, to join. Esther still hasn’t warmed up to Joanne, but does appreciate when Joanne is able to convince Miriam that the New York City batmitzvah theme her grandmother chose is actually very chic.
Meanwhile, Morgan goes to a bar to grab food and recognizes Rebecca reading a book there. She decides to pretend to be someone else so that she can talk to Rebecca and try to get information out of her. She sends voice notes to Joanne with the things Rebecca has told her, including that Noah has called his new relationship “not that serious” and that Rebecca and Noah had an emotional reunion when Noah returned her box.
Joanne confronts Noah about these claims, which he vehemently denies. He tells her she can go through his phone if she doesn’t believe him, and though she starts to open his phone, she ultimately tells him she doesn’t want to look because she trusts him. Joanne tells him that in her past relationships, she would have gone through the phone, but that she wants to be different in this relationship.
Later, Joanne confronts Morgan, accusing her of lying to ruin her relationship with Noah. They get into a huge fight, and when Joanne goes back to Noah’s apartment, she says that she’s confused about a lot of things but that she’s 100% sure about Noah. When he doesn’t immediately respond, he admits that if he’s going to spend his life with someone, he needs them to be Jewish. He tells her he’s not breaking up with her—but he wants her to consider converting to Judaism. When Joanne asks what would happen if she says no, Noah simply responds, “I don’t know.”
Episode 9
Joanne and Morgan are still fighting, and Morgan is so upset she ends up calling Sasha to ask him what the deal between Noah and Rebecca is. She tells Sasha about her conversation with Rebecca in the bar, and Sasha seems surprised to hear about it.
Meanwhile, Noah takes Joanne to meet his parents. His mother, Bina, is clearly uninterested in Joanne, and when Joanne gifts her a charcuterie board, Noah’s mom throws it away because it isn’t kosher (because the prosciutto is pork). Esther and Sasha also show up for lunch, and while alone in the kitchen, Esther admits that Rebecca saw Morgan at the bar and knew exactly who she was—and then told her a bunch of lies to mess with Joanne and Noah.
The lunch is rocky, especially since Bina clearly dislikes Joanne. Esther is so glad to see her mother-in-law’s antagonism toward Joanne that she invites Joanne to her daughter’s batmitzvah, since Joanne makes Esther seem like a good choice in comparison. At one point, Bina gets so upset that she leaves the table, but when Joanne goes to find her, she finds Bina eating the charcuterie board out of the trash. Realizing she now has the upper hand, Joanne forces Bina to rejoin everyone at the table.
Later, Sasha realizes that someone at the prosciutto off the charcuterie board (even though it was in the trash), and Joanne lies and says it was her to save Bina’s dignity. Afterwards, she and Bina hit it off. When Joanna and Noah leave, Bina tells Joanne that she likes her so much more than she thought she would—but that she would still make sure that Joanne doesn’t end up with Noah.
Episode 10
As Miriam’s batmitzvah grows closer, Joanne pretends she’s coming down with a cold so that she can skip out now that Bina has made it clear that she doesn’t approve of Joanne. Later, when she talks to her friends about it, she admits that she’s open to converting to Judaism.
Later, as Sasha and Noah prepare for the batmitzvah, Noah tells Sasha that Joanne and Morgan are still fighting and haven’t been speaking to one another. Sasha immediately realizes it’s because of Rebecca’s lie, and he calls Morgan to tell her the truth. The two sisters quickly make up once the truth comes to light. Finally reunited, Morgan tells Joanne that she shouldn’t let Bina intimidate her and convinces her to go to the batmitzvah. In the end, both Joanne and Morgan make a glamorous appearance.
Joanne tells Noah that she’ll convert for him because she wants to be with him. He’s overjoyed, though Bina seems less excited by the decision—and Joanne tells her she isn’t going anywhere.
As they dance, Noah can’t stop talking to Joanne about how excited he is that she wants to convert, and quickly becomes clear that she’s overwhelmed by his enthusiasm. Later, she sees Rebecca leave the room and runs after her so the two can talk. They both admit that they’ve been obsessed with each other, and Rebecca tells Joanne that she gets to live out her dream as the head rabbi’s wife. Joanne realizes that she might not be prepared to be the wife of a rabbi, especially after Rebecca tells her that her life will change in a big way and that she’ll be expected to be a good example for the community.
Back in the batmitzvah, Esther sees Sasha and Morgan talking (and flirting) and realizes that the two have been building a friendship behind her back. She doubles down on her belief that the sisters have to go.
Later, Joanne finds Noah, and as she’s about to tell him that she loves him, he beats her to the punch. She tells him that she loves him too, but because of that, she can’t convert. She knows she isn’t ready, even if she wants to be, but she doesn’t want to hold him back from his dream of being head rabbi. She breaks up with him and asks him not to follow her as she leaves the party.
Noah sits down with his father, who’s elated to hear that Noah is going to be the head rabbi. But Noah clearly isn’t excited, much to his father’s surprise. Noah sits alone at the batmitzvah, clearly reeling from the breakup.
Joanne takes the shuttle back to the parking lot. She gets off the buss, and when it pulls away, it reveals Noah breathing heavily by her car—he says he missed the shuttle, so he had to run the whole way. Joanne says she told him not to follow her, and he replies, “But you didn’t mean it.”
“How does this work?” she asks.
“Well, you were right,” he responds. “I can’t have both.” And then he kisses her.
So what’s in store next for our favorite couple? We’ll have to watch and find out.
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