'Nobody Wants This' Season 3 Splits Critics Over Morgan and Sasha

Kristen Bell and Adam Brody's couple finally moves in, and the drama shifts to his brother and her sister.

In season three of Netflix's "Nobody Wants This," the couple at its center has run out of reasons to split, and they can't stop gloating about it. Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody) have moved in together, and both critics whose Oct. 22 premiere-day reviews we read describe the two cooing "We live together" at each other again and again, even in the middle of the night.

We read both of those reviews, Angie Han's in The Hollywood Reporter and Kate Erbland's in IndieWire. Nobody at The Globe has watched the season, so every scene described below is one these critics described. They agree that the peace is good for the show, which Erbland reports its team had billed as the champagne season.

They split over where the show sent its trouble instead. It went to Joanne's sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), and Noah's brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons), who has only just separated from his wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn). Whether the season works comes down to how much you mind what that does to Esther.

Erbland, who gave the season a B+, argues that the settled couple's missing drama belongs with Morgan and Sasha, and she wrote in IndieWire that "a flirty and lightly terrified Sasha and Morgan add some real fizz." She singles out the seventh episode. It takes the two out of their time zone while Joanne and Noah are off their phones for the Sabbath, and it makes a choice about the pair that can't be undone.

Han doesn't deny the spark. She calls the Lupe-Simons chemistry undeniable, stronger than the leads', and a pull the series couldn't dodge forever. Her problem is how it handles it: without subtlety, she wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, "barreling over what should have been a poignant storyline" about Sasha and Esther's separation. In her account, Tohn is still excellent and still given too little to do.

On Esther, Erbland doesn't really disagree. She calls herself truly devoted to Esther and Sasha as a couple and admits that cheering on the new pairing feels wrong. She also notes that the show drew backlash for floating Morgan and Sasha in season one and then veered away from the idea in season two. Both critics are on Esther's side, and only one of them decided the fizz was worth it.

Han's sharpest note is about the sisters. She writes that the show plays Joanne's sniping whenever Morgan gets good news as cute sibling rivalry, while Han sees it as cruel. That sits awkwardly beside Erbland's account of Morgan's season. In it, Morgan goes viral on a one-off podcast episode with Sasha and then tries to turn that moment into a book.

The leads, meanwhile, get a pass from both. Han still isn't fully sold on the chemistry between Bell and Brody, but she argues it matters less now that the show has stopped asking viewers to believe their passion can beat every sensible objection. Erbland says the pair are cute enough to survive a running gag that would wear thin on any other couple.

What cleared the board, Han writes, is that Joanne, a onetime agnostic, has started classes to convert to Judaism. Noah's old temple now wants him back on a trial basis, and his mother (Tovah Feldshuh) sets about grooming Joanne to be a rebbetzin, a rabbi's wife.

Yet a Christmas episode late in the run shows how differently the two read the season. Han counts it against the show: Christmas gets a bigger showcase than any Jewish holiday, and the conversion classes, with Sarah Silverman as Rabbi Eden and Andrew Rannells as a classmate, mostly sit in the background. Erbland treats the same episode as a rescue. Its flashbacks finally make sense of a subplot about Joanne's ex, Travis (Avan Jogia), who turns out to be the couple's new neighbor.

The critics' verdict: IndieWire's Erbland gave it a B+, the warmer read. Han gave no letter grade. Her bottom line in The Hollywood Reporter was "As endearing and exasperating as ever."

Joanne and Noah have their "We live together." Meanwhile, Erbland writes, Sasha and Esther take turns moving out of their own family home so their daughter, Miriam (Shiloh Bearman), feels secure. The two critics part ways over whether the show keeps that sadness in view while it chases the bubbles.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, retrieved October 28, 2026. Other sources: IndieWire.