At the end of high school they gave out informal awards, and I got “Biggest Drama Queen,” ha ha ha. I’d love to claim this is inaccurate and shocking, but nah, it’s deserved. In no world am I described as low-maintenance, easy, or just a chill gal. I don’t think I have a single chill bone in my body, including my tailbone, as that’s supporting a rather sizable ass. I operate at 200%, whether that’s happiness, sadness, anxiety, love, hate, hunger, disgust, horniness, or whatever else emotions they’re casting for Inside Out 3 — use me as a case study!
Every ex at some point has declared me to be too much. Every friend has told me I’m too loud. I’ve been too much in my grieving, too much in my drinking, too much in my passions, just too fucking much.
Over the years and heartbreaks, I’ve learned to dose myself out, like dairy or Lexapro; a little bit is fun and great, a lot is a night spent on the toilet or an embarrassing trip to the ER. But then came Nobody Wants This, the Netflix rom-com series that is literally breaking women across the globe. We haven’t been this united since Normal People decimated our will to live. Starring Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, this unlikely romcom is fooling me into thinking maybe, just maybe, someone could love and support a high-maintenance girlie? No… but what if?
In case you’re not chronically online and inundated with Nobody Wants This content, lemme give you an elevator pitch of this fucking amazing show. An agnostic sex podcaster and a rabbi fall in love. Their lives, beliefs, families, and personalities are so wildly different that everyone wonders if there is any hope for them.
Joanne is a high maintenance girlie, she admits this herself. I mean, the woman is wearing a chinchilla coat in the heat of LA. Upon meeting Noah, she suggests they immediately share their biggest secrets. I have never related more to a character.
In one particularly touching scene towards the end of episode four, Joanne turns away from Noah and chokingly admits, “I think I’m realizing an even bigger fear is…this. That I will become emotionally dependent on a guy who will one day realize that I’m too much and break my heart.” Her other fear is a bad face lift, which I also totally get.
Noah turns her around and assures her, “I want this. I want all of this.”
SOBBING. LITERALLY HYSTERICALLY SOBBING.
Seeing all of Joanne, including the fear, the jealousy, the crassness, Noah unhesitatingly confirms that he wants all of her. This is him recognizing that you can’t pick and choose the parts of someone to love. You get the whole Happy Meal or you don’t get the little toy.
I didn’t realize how badly I needed a stable, emotionally mature male love interest until now. In episode six, when Noah takes Joanne’s shoulders and tells her, “Joanne, I’m on your side, I can handle you,” it felt like Adam Brody was healing the entire nation. He is working against the evils of fuck boys and ghosting.
It’s such a simple phrase, “I can handle you,” and yet it’s not one I’ve ever heard. It’s not one I’ve ever felt. And while some naysayers would argue they don’t want to be handled, they want their flaws to be what someone loves about them, I’m not that delulu. I don’t think or want someone to fall in love with me for my jealousy and neediness. I’m working on that shit with a therapist for a reason. I want someone to be able to handle me at my worst because I promise it passes, and I promise there’s some good in there, too.
I want Adam/Noah/anyone to take me by the shoulders and earnestly say, “I can handle you” when the doubts creep in because it will happen; it always does.
High-maintenance girlies tend to get a bad rep in TV and film. We’re not usually the love interest that’s reserved for some cool, chill girl who supposedly only uses soap on her pristine, glowing skin. She’s the right amount of clingy, the right amount of personality, the right amount of feminine. She’s not… well, us. We are loud, neurotic, needy, dramatic, sensitive, sarcastic, and every other fucking adjective out there. We are usually the ex-girlfriend that everyone can’t wait for them to dump. The audience cheers when we are splattered by a pie or humiliated in public. We exist only to highlight how perfect a low-maintenance girlie is.
If we are main characters, we’re always in the shadow of the chill girl. We’re the Blaire, not the Serena. We’re the Brooke, not the Peyton. We’re the Caroline, not the Elena. The list goes on and on. Don’t expect to see us in Gone Girl, as we’re more at home boiling bunnies in Fatal Attraction.
We got a brief moment of recognition in Friends, when Chandler took Monica in all her high-strung, neurotic glory. He said, “So, they can say that you’re high maintenance, but it’s okay because I like…maintaining you.” And yet, this was our only moment of reassurance, our only hope of being loved without silencing ourselves, until now.
By all accounts, Noah and Joanne shouldn’t work. A sex podcaster and a rabbi, it literally sounds like the start of a bad joke about a bar. But they work, and this is entirely the result of Noah. He just never seems fazed by her. Whether it’s Joanne admitting she looked through his personal box of things, accusing him of contacting his ex or retreating from his eagerness. He is there. He is standing firm and unafraid. How does he do this? How does he look into the eye of the storm that is Joanne, that is any high maintenance girlie, and not back down? I am literally asking!!
It’s not that Noah loves how high-strung she is, as then you fall into that toxic cycle of mistaking arguments for passion. Instead, it’s that Noah sees her, really sees her, and isn’t afraid. He uses that holy patience that must come in handy at his job, and works through whatever fear or problem with her.
Maybe it’s not about finding someone who can handle a high maintenance girlie, but rather someone who wants to for the right person.
I have to believe that Noah isn’t merely a dream catered to the sad, high maintenance girlies out there. And I do believe this. Firstly, because I think high maintenance girlies are the most fun and unique people out there. I see this in my friendships, the people I love unconditionally in all their messiness and faults. Secondly, because Nobody Wants This is based on a true story and the creator’s own marriage. I have to believe that she was Joanne who found a Noah who wanted her in all of her damaged glory, and so the rest of us will, too. Until then, I’ve got a packed bedside drawer and dreams of a season two of this show.
