Why everyone in the entire world fancies Adam Brody right now

What's that? Not you? Not yet? Oh - you will. You will.

James Norton - or maybe it was Jeremy Allen White of The Bear? Oooh! Not sure… Anyway. One or other of them, once told me in interview (I just will name drop periodically. Sue me) they thought the concept of “sex icon” didn’t exist any more.

Oh no! Sorry! It was Aidan Turner!

Aidan Turner told me he didn't think the concept of “sex icon” exists any more.

And while I agree with him in terms of language - it’s not a turn of phrase we use now, is it? – I really don’t, in terms of practise.

I’d argue we’re in a golden era of the mass, probably problematic, fancying of men on the telly. Why, barely six months ago, we could not speak whole sentences for our collective gibbering over Leo Woodall - Dexter, in One Day (who - I argued at the time - though technically only 28 years of age, it was fine for me to fancy, the show was set in the 90s, thus: Dexter is older than me. Why! Me fancying him was practically an act of enlightenment! Charity!).

After Dex, came Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan and all the other Hot Rodent Boys of summer ’24; before both of them: Carmy in The Bear (oh, Yes, Chef!), Paul Mescal’s Connell (with accompanying silver chain obsession) in Normal People, and so on and so forth all the way back to Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest in Fleabag, via that time Harry Styles said the only women too old for him, were those older than his mother, and the air rang thick with the sound of women Googling “How old is Harry Styles’ Mum?”.

And now? Why, now, we find ourselves fully immersed in a period of Hot Rabbi lust.

And that’s where Adam Brody, originally Seth of The OC, now Rabbi Noah of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, comes in.

Nobody Wants This is a deeply jolly, easy, comforting 10 ep-long rom com, which stars Brody and some other people ^[1] . I say “some other people”,  not to demean their craft, although it blatantly does. They’re all extremely good, extremely accomplished actors. They’re just not the point.

Adam Brody is the point. Of this show - it is his, no question, he is the most formed of the characters, the one who gets all the best lines, all the best storylines, any scene without him feels like a bit of a placeholder - but also OF THE ENTIRE FRIGGIN CULTURAL MOMENT. For Brody in Nobody Wants This is the embodiment of all our most modern, pressing, exposing romantic and sexual fantasies.

He is.

But hang on, for it is more, even, than that! Our lust for Rabbi Noah provides a window of insight into our psyches, our souls, our most hidden innermoist states (clearly this was meant to say “innermost”, I typo’d; but it’s so funny/ apt, it’s staying). Our all fancying Rabbi Noah, all at once, says so much : about who we are, where we are, what we want.

I’d go as far as to say- it’s like the code breaker on the condition of modern womanhood.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaa OMG I NEARLY CONVINCED MYSELF!

No, it isn’t.

Weeeeeeell – maybe it is? Like: a bit?

Let’s unpack it, as the young people would say.

In Nobody Wants This, Adam Jared Brody, (44 years old, 1.8m tall, Sagittarius; married since 2014 to actor Leighton Meester, they have a daughter together, stand down, women), plays Noah, a rabbi on the up, who ends one longterm relationship in a careful, kind, adult sort of a way, because he realises it’s not right for him (or - equally importantly, her!), then meets a sex podcasting Shiksa, Joanne (Kristen Bell), at a dinner party thrown by a mutual friend. The two fall deep in love, despite Joanne being a neurotic oversharey commitmentphobic semi-recovering hot mess who isn’t even Jewish. Noah absorbs Joanne’s bonkoness, her multiple attempts to sabotage their flourishing, healthy relationship, and her inability not to talk about their most intimate moments on her podcast, with good humoured, emotionally adept grace, and he does all this while somehow managing to be flamin hot in bed (NB Nobody Wants This lost me on this point. No one that well-adjusted is also that good in bed. That’s not how sex works. Sorry. I don’t make the sex rules.) He does things like, openly admit Joanne scares him: “You’re terrifying. You’re an unfiltered, complicated, vulnerable, beautiful woman…” before the end of episode one. By episode nine, Rabbi Noah has ensured that the only sequence of little words any woman wants to hear, are actually:

“Would you ever consider converting?”.

And so forth.

Nobody Wants This premiered on Netflix on September 26^th, within hours, the internet was awash with women declaring their undying loins for Noah; by now , it’s awash with other people, studiously unpicking his blanket allure. You don’t need to read that though, because I’ve also unpicked his blanket allure, far better than they did… But I’ll surmise some of their best guesses for ya, before moving onto my own thesis (which, as I say, is much better. Infinitely superior. Solid).

Other people’s best guesses re why we all fancy Adam Brody

It’s because Brody used to play Seth Cohen on the O.C. in the 1990s, so all the geriatric millennials who fancied him in that, are reminded (by him, as Noah) of their youth, nostalgically triggered, if you will, while also being reassured that if Brody’s managed to mature like a fine, still-f**kable wine, into this deeply attractive, assured, actually-sexier-now-than-he-was-back-then way: then, hey! Maybe they have, too!

It’s because Noah’s “not a toxic gaslighty commitmentphobe; he is, in fact, the reverse,” so: an emotionally available non carcinogenic gently flickering tealight who’s… easy on the stomach? Actively supportive of your microbiome (gut, oral and vaginal)? Definitely not going to kill you? Noah is the fictional balm our dating-app-frazzled souls need, the assurance that, somewhere out there, might just be a man who won’t ghost us even before sleeping with us.

It’s because Joanne is in her 40s, so in the grand scheme of standard practice for rom coms WELL PASSED IT, but Noah fancies the shiz out of her anyway, which represents a potential forthcoming seismic shift in ageism on telly, and is also reassuring for millennial geriatrics amazed to discover ageism suddenly applies to them too - not just old people.

It’s because he’s fit. Nerdy skinny grizzled beardy fit. But definitely , inarguably, fit. Plus the whole Rabbi thing? Corrupting a man of the cloth - a different kind of cloth to yours’ at that - and so forth? Come to Mama!

That’s it, I think.

I’m not going to tell you there’s no truth in any of the above. There probably is. But I don’t think it’s the core of why we fancy Brody’s Noah.

Oh no.

I think the core of why we fancy Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah, is because he epitomises a bold new, devastatingly sexy male archetype, one I hereby officially identify as JUMPER BOYFRIEND MAN.

(NB That’s SWEATER BOYFRIEND MAN to you if you happen to be American, which, I understand, some of you are, hooray!)

Oh, Jumper Boyfriend Man is Everything We Need Right Now! A cosy chunk of secure, reassuring maleness, who looks great in knitwear. (The jumper is both literal and metaphorical, you see: a state of being - practical, sensible, strokable, warm - and a state of torso.) In a world full of men who think calling what you and they have a Situationship is “moving a bit fast, babe”; JBM is just so very perennially ready to be Someone’s Boyfriend. JBM yearns to be Someone’s Boyfriend, with every (100% organic) fibre of his jumper (Sunspiel / Uniqlo cashmere / this ancient one he had since uni, can’t even remember where he got it, but, oh! It really smells of him). He exists in a permanent state of eager pre-boyfriendness - until he is someone’s boyfriend. Ideally, yours.

He also answers to Cosy Man.

Jumper Boyfriend Man is the opposite of the Bad Boy archetype. Less Rebel Without A Cause (aka White T Shirt Man, see also: Carmy from The Bear), more, Social Compliance With Liberally Centrist Belief Systems. He is Gary Lineker, the millennial edition! He is also the exact opposite of Pete Doherty in the 00s. You remember. Wild eyed and dangerous, pork pie hat and a blazer over a (crucially) bare, tattooed, not-at-all-cuddly chest, fag in one hand, plastic beer cup in the other, grubby fabric wristbands all up one arm, testimony to how much he hadn't been to bed lately. Jumper Boyfriend Man went to bed at 10.30pm as per; he drinks his beer from his Special Glass which he won’t put in the dishwasher, he prefers to hand wash it.

JBM wears his masculinity lightly. Oh it’s there, absolutely: flickering away beneath the surface of his knit, but it’s not going to cause any bother. This means that while he’s not great in a fight - he is very good at calming everyone down, jollying them along, generally stopping a fight before it starts.

He is infinitely more emotionally literate than you, but he never makes you feel bad about that.

His skincare regime is modest, but consistent.

He is borderline unnecessarily cool about buying tampons. Keeps picking more up unasked, actually, which is causing a backlog in the bathroom cabinet. Also, he keeps taking chemists to task about labelling the tampon etc aisles “Feminine Hygiene”, because (he says) there is nothing unhygienic about natural body functions! Nothing at all! And to suggest otherwise is to deal in stigma and shame. This doesn't always go down that well with security staff on Boots.

He is indecently excited for menopause.

He knows the value of a good umbrella.

If you had to describe Jumper Boyfriend Man in two words, they would probably be “Wholesome urban”. He’d like to be a bit more lumberjack, but he’s not terribly outdoorsy.

He is quite good in an emergency?

He has a strong sense of justice (though has been known to hustle at Scrabble).

DIY is not JBM’s strong suit, although he will watch a YouTube video and have a decent stab, before failing gently, then having absolutely no issues at all about calling in a Qualified Professional.

Qualified Professionals adore him.

So do mothers, bar staff, law enforcement officials, dogs, senior management, post room boys, dry cleaners, babies (coming back to them), IT, call centre people, passport control and Literally All Women.

He doesn't share popular culture’s obsession with true crime (though he does think it stems from a widespread desire to just see justice done in an unknowable, unjust-feeling, out of control seeming world, rather than anything weird and creepy.)

He is deeply, quietly charismatic, but her doesn’t exploit it unless he’s doing karaoke, which he takes more seriously than he probably should.

Jumper Boyfriend Man is Big On Birthdays.

He specialises in having small, charming arguments with you over things which don’t matter that much, and which he will resolve in such a way as to make you like him more.

He makes a gorgeously silly drunk.

His hygiene standards are high - but not oppressively so.

Babies stop crying the moment he picks them up, but he only wants kids if you do.

He can get exactly the right kind of jealous. Not too much, but - you know: not, not-at-all. Goldilocks level jealousy.

If, years after the two of you split (consciously and kindly and having ensured you’re left in a better state, than that in which he found you - oh, JBM makes a wonderful ex!), you were to see his name trending on Twitter, you’d know, without even having to check, that it was because he’d rescued a load of puppies from the side of a motorway, not because of sexual impropriety.

This, then is Jumper Boyfriend Man, as epitomised by Adam Brody in Nobody Wants This, which should more accurately be called, Everybody Wants Him, but - I know, I know, question remains: why is JBM doing it, for all of us, RIGHT NOW? What is it about him and our current circs, which means that we are, for once, all united in fancying him?

WELL.

I think the answer might be buried in some knowledge I picked up circa the 2008 financial crash, which maintains that, in times of economic and social uncertainty, we find ourselves more attracted to classic ideas of masculinity (and femininity, hence, the uptick in lipstick sales when money’s too tight to mention). That’s why dangerous skinny-jeaned fey boys of the 00’s Pete Doherty variety had done swift business before the crash - and why chiselled beef cakes of the David Gandy variety, became popular afterwards.

And now? When we’re faced with apocalypse grade awfulness, war and ongoing economic misery and an incoming climate crisis? When we’re still reeling in our post Covid trauma? When nothing is sure and everything feels brutal at worse, faintly threatening at best? Now: we long for men who look like nothing more and nothing less than a good, long, hard cuddle.

(Though it could just be that he’s fit.)

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^[1] Kristen Bell, Justine Lupe, previously of Succession, Timothy Simons who was sublimely, beautifully awful in my all-time-fave-comedy VEEP)