Forget the fairytale, 'Nobody Wants This' shows what real love looks like in 2025

It starts with an ice cream. 

In Nobody Wants This, Joanne, the quick-witted podcaster and Noah, the hot rabbi, are standing on a Los Angeles street, having ice cream that’s melting faster than their attempts to hide how into each other they are. It’s awkward, it’s tender, and it’s painfully real—the kind of love story that doesn’t need a slow-motion kiss in the rain or a perfectly timed soundtrack cue. 

The first season followed their unlikely connection as it turned from casual flirtation to something that actually mattered. It explored faith and desire colliding, the chaos of falling for someone who doesn’t fit the checklist, and the small, raw moments that make love both beautiful and exhausting. It wasn’t about finding “the one” as much as it was about figuring out what love even means when you are not 22 and idealistic anymore. The season ended with Joanne pulling out of the relationship, but Noah running to her dramatically, and saying that he would try to balance his contrast personal and professional life.

Fast forward to Season 2, and things aren’t just about flirty banter anymore. Joanne and Noah are dealing with religion, family pressure, emotional baggage, and the weird, unglamorous parts of trying to make adult love actually work after the honeymoon phase is over. There is no fairy-tale gloss here—just two people trying, failing, and trying again.

The evolution of romcoms

For years, the genre was stuck in a loop of high school crushes, prom-night confessions, and exaggerated meet-cutes. Think To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before or The Kissing Booth—fun, sure, but built on a version of romance that feels way too airbrushed now. As Gen Z grows up, so do their love stories. The new wave of romcoms and the audience's inclination towards these more mature stories reflect that shift.

Shows like Nobody Wants This, When Life Gives You Tangerines, and One Day are all about what comes after the chase—when real life seeps in. Cue the awkwardness, the communication gaps, and the mismatched love languages. These stories aren’t afraid to explore the “unsexy” parts of love, and that’s exactly why they feel sexy in their own way. Because love in your thirties doesn’t look like a perfect montage anymore; it looks like two people trying to grow without growing apart.

Why Gen Z is over the typical love story trope

We have outgrown the fantasy of the it girl and the bad boy and overly done enemies-to-lovers tropes. The generation that once romanticised toxicity on social media now wants therapy-core romance, aka relationships that heal instead of hurt. Romcoms today are built for the emotionally literate audience—people who talk about attachment styles over brunch and know what “boundaries” mean.

In One Day, for instance, the love story between Emma and Dexter isn’t about instant chemistry; it’s about timing and growth. Similarly, When Life Gives You Tangerines explores the weirdness of falling for someone and starting a life together while juggling rent, jobs, and existential dread. The love is still there—it’s just messier, more vulnerable, and (finally) believable. Gen Z doesn’t want love that looks perfect on screen; they want love that feels possible off-screen.

What’s refreshing about Nobody Wants This is how it blends humour with heartbreak and doesn’t shy away from the messy middle. The jokes don’t come from punchlines but from the discomfort of real life—the silences, the misunderstandings, and the little acts of love that only make sense to the people inside them.

Early in the first season, Joanne admits that she doesn’t know how to open up in relationships. “I wait for the other shoe to drop,” she says quietly, half-joking but fully serious. It’s the kind of line that makes you wince because it’s so familiar. Then there’s Noah, her complete opposite—steady, sincere, and emotionally fluent in a way that makes her both drawn to him and terrified. When he looks at her after another one of her emotional meltdowns where she thinks she is "too much" and simply says, “I can handle you,” it’s not a grand romantic gesture—it’s an act of patience.

Their love story isn’t driven by dramatic twists; it’s made of small, deeply human moments. Like the night Noah doesn’t text Joanne after what she thought was a perfect date, sending her into a spiral of overthinking. She paces her apartment, drafting and deleting messages, wondering if she said something wrong—a feeling anyone who has ever dated in the age of read receipts knows too well. Or when she accidentally brings a pork charcuterie board to dinner with Noah’s family—an awkward, very real cultural clash that turns into a quiet lesson in understanding rather than a romcom-style explosion.

Even the little things hit hard, like when Noah gifts Joanne a bedside table in Season 2 so she has a space for her things at his place. It’s not flowers or jewellery—it’s something stable, something that says, “You can stay.” Joanne’s reaction, that small, tearful smile, is the show in a nutshell: love that’s quiet but deeply felt.

These are the moments that make Nobody Wants This feel like a mirror rather than a show. The “happy ending” isn’t about marriage or a proposal—it’s about two people learning to stay even when it’s uncomfortable, to communicate even when it’s hard, to choose each other without pretending it’s easy. And that’s what modern audiences connect with, because who among us hasn’t had to choose ourselves before choosing someone else?

Why this trend works

It’s no coincidence that the best grown-up romcoms are all streaming hits. OTT platforms have given writers the freedom to build nuanced love stories—slow burns that don’t need to rush to the “I love you” in 90 minutes. This format allows relationships to unfold naturally, episode by episode, showing that love doesn’t have to be grand to be great.

It’s no coincidence that Nobody Wants This has become a word-of-mouth hit. The show isn’t trying to sell us a fantasy but rather show us what real relationships look like in our thirties. They are complex, funny, fragile, and often held together by mutual effort more than passion. We watch the characters have tough conversations, fall into patterns, and try to break them again. That’s the slow-burn intimacy that audiences are craving and connection that feels earned.

Visually, too, Nobody Wants This strips away the gloss. Joanne doesn’t wake up with perfect hair; she wakes up late, mascara smudged, running through voice notes and unfinished thoughts. Noah’s apartment isn’t some Pinterest-ready set—it’s lived in, cluttered, full of mismatched furniture and emotional history. Even the show’s Los Angeles feels different—less shiny, more human.

At its core, Nobody Wants This is less about escaping life and more about understanding it. Watching Joanne and Noah makes you feel seen in yours. It reminds us that love doesn’t always have to be cinematic to be meaningful; sometimes it’s just showing up, again and again, for someone who makes you laugh even when you’re tired of everything else.

So even though the show is called Nobody Wants This, let’s be honest, we all want this. Because what we want now isn’t fantasy. It’s love that listens, screws up, apologises, and still stays for breakfast.

Lead image: Netflix

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