Whose group chat hasn’t been lit up this week with messages like “Oh my God, Seth Cohen at 40 is so hot!”? In just 10 joyous episodes, Nobody Wants This, the new Netflix series about the unlikely romance between cute rabbi Noah (Adam Brody) and sharp and sassy podcast host Joanne (Kristen Bell), has delighted a whole generation in ways we didn’t realize we needed.
In particular, the first kiss between the pair has been blowing up social media, with many viewers breathlessly declaring it the best kiss of the decade. So, what was so perfect about the smooch which went down at the end of episode two?
Well. First, there’s the simple fact that we just love these two people. Frankly, we would lap up a Brody-Bell union even if they didn’t execute it so perfectly. When we watch Nobody Wants This, we’re not just seeing Noah and Joanne, we’re seeing Seth Cohen and Veronica Mars, or even Dave Rygalski (Gilmore Girls) and Gossip Girl — but not really Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place) or Princess Anna, that wouldn’t feel right.
(Kim Kardashian, on the other hand, appears to be seeing the guy from The Pianist: she tagged Adrien Brody in her Insta story about how much she loves Nobody Wants This! Oops.)
The nostalgia factor here is huge: between them, these two have been in a ton of great, funny, romantic shows that millions of viewers devoured, often multiple times, in their teens, twenties and beyond.
It means it’s genuinely exciting to see them all grown-up and sexy but, refreshingly, the show actually makes a point of not revealing the characters’ ages, with Bell saying, “I loved the fact that we weren’t 22. It felt very real.” IRL, both stars are 44, but their characters are supposed to be somewhere between five and ten years younger, making them firmly, classically millennial.
And who else is classically millennial? An awful lot of people watching Netflix — maybe with one eye on the baby monitor — who grew up obsessed with The O.C. and Veronica Mars, and who, in some cases, might also feel nostalgic for the distant concept of going out, meeting new people and kissing them really sexily in the street. Even if we wouldn’t actually do that — especially as we get into “hunkering down” season — living vicariously through these teen TV legends feels just perfect.
Then there’s the fact that, while both Brody and Bell are clearly very good looking people, it’s not their main thing. Their main thing is being funny and smart. They’re not conventional straight-up sex symbols; they’re slightly awkward, very fun people whose characters aren’t completely aware of their own hotness.
The kiss actually reminds us of when two other hot, funny, slightly awkward people finally hooked up on screen: Jess and Nick in New Girl, way back in 2013. Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson’s unexpected (for her, anyway) hallway smooch is the last great TV first kiss we remember, but in their case they made us wait two whole seasons to get what we desperately needed.
The Nobody Wants This writers were kinder and didn’t make Us wait that long: Noah and Joanne lock lips at the end of episode two after getting ice cream and chatting about Noah’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca, but it still felt like a long time coming, since they did such a good job of building up the tension.
A lot of that is down to a natural chemistry: Brody and Bell have a palpable spark, and when Noah says “I’m very aware that we haven’t kissed yet” it’s with a sexy confidence that Seth Cohen, being a nerdy teenage boy, lacked. Seth would never have said “Hand me your ice cream, put your bag down”, he probably would have just fumbled around and dropped it on the ground. And Joanne’s suggestion that they have “just one goodbye kiss” comes with the saucy self-assuredness of a grown-up, sexually confident woman. It’s not her first rodeo, and that’s OK.
They look great together, too. Brody is 5’11” and Bell is only 5’1”, but used to kissing up — her real-life husband Dax Shepard is 6’2” (while Brody’s wife, Leighton Meester, is a more average 5’5”). In the show, Bell is wearing heels but still needs to tip-toe to meet Noah’s mouth, giving her slightly brash character a little sprinkling of vulnerability.
And then there’s the ambience. The lighting is warm and sexy, also softening the sharp banter between the pair, and the whole Nobody Wants This soundtrack is exquisite; the song that was playing while they kissed, See Her Out (That’s Just Life) by Francis and the Lights, has been impeccably chosen.
Brody also gives good smooch, and Rachel Bilson definitely deserves some credit: during Seth and Summer’s first kiss in The O.C., as well as the infamous upside-down Spider-Man kiss that came later, she showed herself to be an accomplished face-grabber, which has now been declared Brody’s signature move (we need Meester to weigh in on this at some point).
Bell herself says she thinks it’s “the best on-screen kiss I’ve ever done,” telling TVLine, “There’s a math to it, you have to have two actors who know how to stare dopily into each other’s eyes, and you have to have the confidence to expand that and to really sit in the anticipatory value before the kiss.” And thankfully, Shepard is on board too. “My husband said the same thing,” says Bell. “Watching the first episode he was like, ‘Oh my God, I want you to kiss him so badly.’”
Yep, it’s fair to say, literally everybody wants this. And by this, we 100% mean a second season (but we’re still waiting for confirmation on that one…).
