Photo: Adam Rose/Netflix
Well, Joanne couldn’t avoid this forever. Amidst all the drama of considering conversion and her huge fight with Morgan over Noah, it has come time for Joanne to get face-to-face with Bina Roklov. Gird your loins.
To be honest, Joanne doesn’t seem all that nervous. Sure, she wants this to go well since Noah impresses upon her how important his parents are to him and how well he wants this to go — no pressure or anything, dude — but she does seem to be embracing being herself and letting whether people like her or not be their problem. Her own parents offer very little usable advice on this major relationship milestone. Lynn tells her meeting Henry’s parents was “easy-peasy.” “That’s because they were both dead already,” her ex-husband reminds her. Nor do they really have any advice regarding converting to Judaism. In fact, when she tells them that Noah asked, she has to explain what words like “converting” and “Judaism” mean. Her mother’s only response is, “Oh, that’s fun. Is it? I don’t know.” Lynn remains my ride or die, and that was even before we learn that she ignores all jury summonses because she “always side[s] with the accused.”
Lynn and Henry may not offer any help whatsoever when it comes to Joanne’s relationship with Noah, but they are very concerned about the riff between their two daughters. “I can feel my uterus ripping in two,” she tells them when they realize they’ve been Parent Trapped. This ambush does nothing to ease the tension between them: Joanne still thinks that Morgan is a lying liar who lies and Morgan still thinks her sister is delulu for a man that isn’t a serious option. (And still very much hurt by her sister calling her desperate)
Joanne may think that Morgan is lying, but we know she’s telling the truth because immediately following this blowup, Morgan calls up her pal Sasha to figure out what is going on with Noah. She tells him the same thing she told Joanne: The Rebecca said they are definitely getting back together. Sasha doesn’t believe it — Noah tells him everything. “Oh, now, what if he’s hiding that from me? That’s a hard pill to swallow,” says my man, making this all about him. It still seems way out of character (and out of step with the tone of this show) for Noah to be gaslighting Joanne, but Morgan is adamant that this is what Rebecca told her. Something nefarious is afoot, my friends!
Surely, the truth will come to light eventually, for now: The Main Event. Joanne seems confident rolling up to the Roklov mansion. Noah bought a gift for her to give to his mom because he knows what she’ll like, but Joanne refuses — she has her own gift, and she is going to nail this.
She does not nail this. Joanne’s brought a gorgeous, custom-made charcuterie board … that definitely has pork on it. Although Joanne swears prosciutto is fancy Italian beef, Joanne is very, very wrong. She asks if they could just eat around it, but none of it’s kosher, the prosciutto has tainted the whole thing. Bina immediately has their housekeeper toss it in the trash. (Noah’s gift is, of course, perfect.) The charcuterie incident, paired with Bina walking in on Joanne and Noah making out on his childhood (canopy) bed, makes for a rough start.
Well, it’s a rough start for Joanne, at least. Esther, on the other hand, is loving this. With all Bina’s disdain focused on the new girl, Esther has suddenly become the prized daughter-in-law. Bina even lets her, get this, cut up the cucumbers in her kitchen. Esther looks like she might faint when her mother-in-law utters the words, “I trust you.”
Things escalate when the fam sits down to brunch, mainly because Joanne refuses to pretend to be someone she’s not in order to make her acceptable and Bina has no qualms about judging Joanne’s life choices. Things take a turn when Bina starts asking about the podcast. She can’t believe people actually pay to hear something like that. “Yep, that’s how I make my money,” Joanna responds, letting the insult roll right off of her. “How do you make your money?” she asks. I’m surprised no one else at that table chokes. No one ever talks to Bina that way. Bina digs in, talking about how she was too busy raising her children and how important that is, rather than discussing “all my former lovers for public consumption.” By the time she goes off on how embarrassing it is and says, “no woman should act this way,” the unthinkable thing happens: Noah stands up to his mother to defend his girlfriend. “Mom, enough,” he snaps at her. The room is deathly silent when Bina excuses herself. “Oh my god, I am going to remember this moment for the rest of my life,” Esther exclaims. She knows for a fact that now no one will care that it’s her fault they aren’t allowed to drink red wine in this house. Esther is living.
Joanne knows this is between her and Bina, so she is the one to get up and check on her in the kitchen. Listen, I’m not totally loving that Nobody Wants This is going with the straightforward meddling Jewish mother stereotype here, but if that is what we have to go through to give us this moment between Kristen Bell and Tovah Feldshuh in which Joanne finds her boyfriend’s mother housing prosciutto secretly in her kitchen, so be it, I guess. Bina has been caught, and immediately, Joanne knows that she now has the upper hand. Oh, she could out her so bad, but instead she uses this power to force Bina to be nice to her. The glee on her face as she drags her back to the table, calling her “my girl, Bina” is delightful to watch. Kristen Bell squeezes every comedic drop out of this whole setup. Joanne will cover for Bina as long as Bina plays nice.
Next thing you know, Joanne has a glass full of red wine, and Bina asks her real questions about her podcast. The pact seems especially sealed once Sasha walks out and announces that someone, in fact, ate all the prosciutto and Joanne takes the hit. Yep, even though the whole charcuterie board was tossed in the trash. She isn’t proud of it, she says, but admits that she “fished it out of the garbage and [she] ate it, like a raccoon.” Bina owes her big time. And yet, she seems to genuinely come around on Joanne by the end of the afternoon. When Joanne tells her she hasn’t gotten married yet because she’s “a hopeless romantic — [she] just hasn’t found the right mother-in-law yet,” Bina laughs so much that Sasha asks if she’s having a stroke; He’s never seen his mom laugh so earnestly. She’s done such a 180 on the podcast thing that now she thinks she could be a good guest. Noah confirms that his mother is a great storyteller, and every story comes with a lesson. Bina launches into a long-winded story about being in New York City for the first time with her grandmother, who got a cold, and Bina winds up alone at the hotel bar. It ends with “Anyway, Frank Sinatra got me drunk and then he stuck his thumb in my mouth.” Confused, horrified, impressed maybe, Noah asks what the lesson is in that story: “Keep your mouth shut around Frank.” Honestly, you know Bina would be a great podcast guest. Sign her up! She’s definitely better than that aura guy.
So, Bina is either a good actress or has taken to Joanne because the rest of the brunch goes off without a hitch.
It turns out, it’s a little bit of both. When Bina gets Joanne alone to say good-bye, she tells her that she is surprised to find she likes Joanne much more than she ever thought, and then she pulls her close: “But you’re never going to end up with my son.” Just when I thought Nobody Wants This was going to do something different with this character, we’re back to square one.
Hey, at least Joanne won’t be on the outs with her sister for much longer. Thankfully, Sasha has a zero percent success rate at keeping secrets, because over the course of brunch our guy learns two very juicy pieces of information. First, Esther spills that Rebecca set Morgan up — she knew exactly who Morgan was the entire time and made up all of these lies about her and Noah just to mess with them. Sasha is, of course, sworn to secrecy by his wife; however, on the way out, he hears how bad Joanne and Morgan’s fight about Rebecca was. He’s the only one who knows the full story, and there’s no way this guy’s going to be able to keep it to himself. He’s just too nice, and this gossip is just too juicy.
