Anonymous wrote:I really disliked this show. Every single Jewish women character was a one dimensional caricature

+1. I was the “shiksa” who married a Jewish man, albeit not a conservative assistant rabbi. No Jewish woman I have met in Los Angeles fits these cariactures. I did not convert and neither did he. We’re happily married for 35 years with two adult children.

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Anonymous wrote:I loved it. Veronica Mars and Seth Cohen!

I'm not Jewish. I dated someone seriously in my early 20s who knew he wanted to become a rabbi (Conservative). I was willing to convert (and was much more knowledgeable about Judaism than Joanne in the show!). Some of his family members were supportive but a few were really not and ultimately we ended up breaking up in large part because of all of it.

All that said, I really related to the show. It was a long time ago so I'm very much over the guy, but it was still nice to feel a bit seen in these characters. I also don't think I would have been a very good rabbi's wife based on what the show represented!

wow! were they rude or just telling you you don't understand what you're getting into?

His very wealthy grandmother was dead-set against him dating someone who wasn't Jewish and she was the one paying for everything -- tuition, living expenses, etc. He was devoted to her and to his future career. We were very young and it felt wrong to pressure him to choose me over his future. It all worked out fine -- he did become a rabbi and I have no doubt he's a great one. He seems very happy.

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Anonymous wrote:What happened to Rebecca’s broken wrist that needed surgery? I really enjoyed this show but I was still stuck on how she’s driving a few days later after being in the hospital for surgery for a broken wrist (BTDT). I felt bad for her character.

Are you really that dense that you don’t see how her trumped-up health crisis is a big nothingburger?

Calm down, this is a just a TV show. Did Rebecca hurt you?

I feel like it started out incredibly strong and appealing (loved the dialogue and the characters) and then they started dating and both got somewhat annoying and the show slowed down significantly and got pretty repetitive. I kept watching and enjoyed it but wasn't enthralled.

I really disliked this show. Every single Jewish women character was a one dimensional caricature

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not seeing why we think Kristen did stuff to her face? I guess I’m not seeing it.

She’s 44 now, which means she was 43 when they filmed. It’s possible she just looks like this. I mean she’s clearly wearing make up and they do lighting to flatter her, but I’m not seeing obvious plastic surgery signs. Maybe some Botox. Not seeing any filler.

She looks late 30s, early 40s to me, which is about right.

I agree that she looks great and completely normal and didn't see anything with her top lip. I'll have to go back and look. She's always had big teeth and a small face. Like Elizabeth Banks.

I also don't see the strabismus that a PP is obsessed with. She just has very blue eyes. From certain angles it's a Barbra look or Jessica from Santa Claus movie

Well, Bell herself talks about having strabismus. She calls it her "wonky eye" and says it is more noticable when she is tired. I would guess she's the expert on herself, so.

That one feature and blue eyes is charming to me, reminds me of Siamese cats has many have that too. Physically she is starting to do stuff to her lips which is not good, and imo she was too old for the part to be believable because kids would have come up as a topic right away.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m not seeing why we think Kristen did stuff to her face? I guess I’m not seeing it.

She’s 44 now, which means she was 43 when they filmed. It’s possible she just looks like this. I mean she’s clearly wearing make up and they do lighting to flatter her, but I’m not seeing obvious plastic surgery signs. Maybe some Botox. Not seeing any filler.

She looks late 30s, early 40s to me, which is about right.

I agree that she looks great and completely normal and didn't see anything with her top lip. I'll have to go back and look. She's always had big teeth and a small face. Like Elizabeth Banks.

I also don't see the strabismus that a PP is obsessed with. She just has very blue eyes. From certain angles it's a Barbra look or Jessica from Santa Claus movie

Well, Bell herself talks about having strabismus. She calls it her "wonky eye" and says it is more noticable when she is tired. I would guess she's the expert on herself, so.

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Anonymous wrote:I love it, binged over the weekend. My mid 40s daughter also loved it. We have no preconceived notions about Jewish people so it's all new to us, plus with the generally low quality of sit coms and rom coms we'll tolerate some stereotyping and stretches of reality.

Overall, A+

Then you must be the intended audience. This felt like a Jewish primer in different places. I have Jewish in-laws (not my direct in-laws, my DH was the product of an interfaith marriage) and I have learned a lot of small things from them. However, I knew what a shiksa, Shabbat, etc. were before ever being married. Defining everything felt pedantic.

Super cute though!

This was weird to me too. How do you live in a large coastal city and not know a lot of Jewish people and be familiar with some basic Yiddish and the central Jewish traditions. I am not Jewish and didn't marry in but I've been to plenty of Shabbat dinners and attended Jewish weddings and know what shiksa and goyim and other common yiddish words mean. Just like I also know what baby hairs are and some basic things about black hair care even though I've personally never needed that info for myself. I thought that this was just common knowledge if you live in a reasonably diverse community.

The Jewish population is 0.2% of the world and 1,8% in the US.
Its unreasonable to think that the remaining 98.2% of the US would be familiar with Yiddish words/phrases and traditions- exception would be dense enclaves in coastal cities but many of those enclaves are insular. Black people are 12.4% of the US population and there is more intermixing so yeahhhhh these are ridiculous comparisons.

She's from LA though. A girl raised in Sherman Oaks would have had some Jewish kids around. I think not hearing of shabbat or the word shalom is very very weird. Yiddish words not so much.

This. If she were from Oklahoma or Louisiana or New Mexico these plot points would have been believable. But it's pretty silly for a 40 yr old woman from LA who works *in media* to have what appears to be NO exposure to Jewish culture. It strains credulity.

There was a lot that strained credulity. Their head rabbi selection process was ridiculously simplified. That was Sinai Temple used as a filming location, btw.

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Anonymous wrote:The Jewish tropes are ridiculous. When Bell's character shows up to the synagogue and camera zooms in on the woman playing Brody's mom I knew she was going to call her a shiksa before she spoke. And agree that the pushy women desperate to marry their daughters off to Brody were silly.

It was also INSANE when Brody's girlfriend digs up the engagement ring and just starts wearing it without talking to him and then tries to just force an engagement. This combined with the scene at the synagogue really rubs me the wrong way because it portrays all the Jewish women in his life as marriage-obsessed with no interest in romance and essentially justifies him doing something he knows will stir up a ton of trouble by pursing a relationship with a non-Jewish woman. It has "look what you made me do" vibes.

Having said all that I do enjoy the scenes between Brody and Bell and I actually do think this could be an interesting premise (without the broad Jewish tropes that are especially harsh towards Jewish women). It's a shame they went this route and betrays a really laziness -- this was the only way you could think of to make it funny. Lame.

I felt this way watching the Big Sick. It was mostly a good movie but the S Asian women the main character tried to date were all awful. A person can end up with someone of another background without it having to be about their own women sucking. It was lazy, disrespectful writing then and is here as well.

true. and also having been the non-Jewish partner myself for a long time, I’ve finally come to understand why Jewish culture prioritizes in-marriage. It really stems from the millenia-long history of intense marginalization. Judaism could never rely on people converting to survive because being a Jew was stigmatized. Conversely cultural and physical survival depended on a strong Jewish identity. The in-group pressure was strong. I dislike being mare to feel “other” as the non-Jew but I understand it.

That said Tova Feldsuh is hilarious as the mom. Her comment “that was a strange sermon” to Adam Brody was so 💯 what my Jewish immigrant MIL would say.

Tova as the Jewish mother is amazing, just as she was in Crazy Ex Girlfriend….

I am also adoring the female rabbi from camp. What a great role, and the actress nailed it.

Anonymous wrote:I loved it but I thought these actors looked way too old to be playing these characters. It seemed to be they were supposed to be in their mid-30s. It would be weird if they were really supposed to be in their 40s and neither had ever been married before, etc.

Yeah this was part of it for me too. I am willing to suspend disbelief a little because these are likeable actors. I can maybe buy that they are both like 39 or 40. She could maybe be 38? But even if that's what I'm supposed to believe I thought it was weird how their age is not discussed at all. It would be relevant because he would have intense pressure to have kids. Whereas Joanne seems to have decided that's not a priority for her and is probably rounding on the end of her fertility anyway. Unclear whether Noah wants kids but given how he strung Rebecca along my guess is he's wishy washy. Well you can be a 40-something guy who is wishy washy about kids if you are marrying a 30 year old. You can't do that if you are marrying a 40 year old -- you have to decide now together if that's what you want and then you have to get on it immediately. IRL people this age dating would be discussing the kid issue pretty much immediately because if they basically don't have kids immediately (if they can) it's not happening.

I think this story would have been more believable if he was just strongly Jewish and his family expected him to marry a Jew but wasn't a rabbi. But I think they plumb the rabbi thing for jokes effectively so I get why they did it. It just strains credulity.

I loved it but I thought these actors looked way too old to be playing these characters. It seemed to be they were supposed to be in their mid-30s. It would be weird if they were really supposed to be in their 40s and neither had ever been married before, etc.

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Anonymous wrote:All these complaints about the details are pretty funny considering what a huge hit this show is. I loved it.

I love complaining about it lol. I watched the whole thing and will watch the second season but there is a LOT wrong with the details. A show can be fun to watch but also have a lot wrong with it. It's ok to analyze it, even fun!

Same. We only just finished episode 3 but I have every intention of finishing it and watching the next season. It doesn't mean I don't think it's kind of stupid!

BTW Noah is sooooo unlikable in Ep 3 when he takes Joanne to the camp in Ohai. First off the very fact he takes her made no sense -- even if he wasn't worried about how his boss would respond to him dating a goyim the idea that he'd take his new girlfriend on a couple's weekend at a camp for teens where he will be leading them in torah study is just... unprofessional? disrespectful? I would not be surprised if some of the parents would catch wind of it and complain. Especially when Noah gets there and talks to the kids for like 10 minutes and then is like "hey let's go bang in the cabin."

And then at the end when he shows up to her WORK dinner to talk to her and then winds up announcing to the entire restaurant that they are "off the apps"? It's odd that Joanne is portrayed as some kind of uneducated screw up and Noah is supposed to be the "mature one" when actually Joanne seems to have healthy-ish boundaries and take her job more seriously. Noah seems like a giant tool.

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Anonymous wrote:I love it, binged over the weekend. My mid 40s daughter also loved it. We have no preconceived notions about Jewish people so it's all new to us, plus with the generally low quality of sit coms and rom coms we'll tolerate some stereotyping and stretches of reality.

Overall, A+

Then you must be the intended audience. This felt like a Jewish primer in different places. I have Jewish in-laws (not my direct in-laws, my DH was the product of an interfaith marriage) and I have learned a lot of small things from them. However, I knew what a shiksa, Shabbat, etc. were before ever being married. Defining everything felt pedantic.

Super cute though!

This was weird to me too. How do you live in a large coastal city and not know a lot of Jewish people and be familiar with some basic Yiddish and the central Jewish traditions. I am not Jewish and didn't marry in but I've been to plenty of Shabbat dinners and attended Jewish weddings and know what shiksa and goyim and other common yiddish words mean. Just like I also know what baby hairs are and some basic things about black hair care even though I've personally never needed that info for myself. I thought that this was just common knowledge if you live in a reasonably diverse community.

The Jewish population is 0.2% of the world and 1,8% in the US.
Its unreasonable to think that the remaining 98.2% of the US would be familiar with Yiddish words/phrases and traditions- exception would be dense enclaves in coastal cities but many of those enclaves are insular. Black people are 12.4% of the US population and there is more intermixing so yeahhhhh these are ridiculous comparisons.

She's from LA though. A girl raised in Sherman Oaks would have had some Jewish kids around. I think not hearing of shabbat or the word shalom is very very weird. Yiddish words not so much.

This. If she were from Oklahoma or Louisiana or New Mexico these plot points would have been believable. But it's pretty silly for a 40 yr old woman from LA who works *in media* to have what appears to be NO exposure to Jewish culture. It strains credulity.

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Anonymous wrote:I read all the comments and no one has mentioned how Noah's parents are supposedly former Soviet Jews, yet seem more like L.A. Persians or Armenians. We don't call "banya" the shvitz (that's a Yiddish term used by Eastern Europeans), moms aren't as overbearing as Middle Eastern/Far Eastern Jewish (or otherwise) moms, and the accents are way wrong. Former Soviets don't tend to go into real estate, don't tend to be religious, etc. If you're going to stereotype, do it right, the parents should have been scientists or computer programmers.

Totally agree! The only thing they got right was the name “Sasha” for the brother — absolutely everything was way off.

Exactly. The back story was like soviet refuseniks but they seemed way more like Sephardic Jews. The design, the style of the house, etc.

Everyone I know irl who has watched this show has loved it! Myself included.