A year after Adam Brody and Kristen Bell’s Nobody Wants This kiss changed lives, Season 2 arrived on Oct. 23 — and fans wasted no time marathoning the new episodes to see how Noah and Joanne would navigate their swoony but star-crossed relationship. In one episode in particular, a few eagle-eyed viewers spotted a surprising reference to the classic Halloween movie, Hocus Pocus.
In “Anything Can Happen,” Joanne attends a Purim celebration with her rabbi beau, Noah, who explains the costume party by saying: “The idea is that anything can happen, and what’s hidden might become revealed.”
While Joanne hopes that she might “feel something” that helps her decide whether to convert to Judaism, it’s ultimately her mom, Lynn (Stephanie Faracy), who has that epiphany — suddenly but sincerely declaring her connection to the Jewish faith.
All the while, she’s sporting a gold cone bra and high ponytail inspired by Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour — an ensemble that took her “an hour-and-a-half to get into,” she says.
As it turns out, the costume is layered with hidden meaning. Fans on social media pointed out that it’s a riff on the same look Faracy sported in Hocus Pocus. One fan called the recreation “absolutely iconic.”
A Millennial Moment
Faracy’s nostalgic look arrives just in time for Halloween — but referencing the 1993 film is just one of many ways Nobody Wants This embraces the nostalgic millennial zeitgeist. For example, Season 2 sees Leighton Meester step into a hilarious guest spot as momfluencer Abby. She’s also Brody’s IRL wife. “They are both like these millennial icons, and the idea that they somehow got together in real life and started a family I think kind of blew people’s minds,” creator Erin Foster told Bustle earlier this year.
In an interview with Parade, Foster responded to the show’s resonance with viewers of her generation. “I think that millennial women are really sick of watching toxic relationships,” she said. “If you’re a millennial, that means that you’re in mid 30s to 40s. And it means we’ve been through our 20s where we were in so many bad, toxic relationships. And now we’re landing in a place where we want normalcy, and we want something healthy. And I think watching that on TV just feels fresh and new, which it shouldn’t be.”
Brody playfully responded to the idea of the show being “the millennial version of the Avengers assembling,” as Entertainment Tonight put it. “That’s 100% what we were going for,” he joked.
