Your Friends & Neighbors’s Passover Episode Is Exactly What I Needed Right Now

Instead, something happened that I’ve never experienced while watching a Jewish holiday play out on TV: I smiled. The entire time. I delighted at the beauty of a Williams-Sonoma-ready seder table. I salivated at the matzoh balls cooking in the kitchen. I laughed as Nick, Mel’s ex-boyfriend, walked into Gretchen and Hari’s house and said, “Shana Tovah” (which means “good year” and is only said during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah) and the group replies, “Wrong holiday!” (As I tell all my non-Jewish friends, it’s the thought that counts.)

I loved when non-Jews Ashe and Coop—played by James Marsden and Jon Hamm—wish each other a Happy Passover upon their arrival. I loved when Mel and Coop’s son, Hunter, sings the Four Questions in Hebrew, but it’s Suzanne who comes to his aid when he starts to trip up over the Hebrew words. And I loved that even though Coop isn’t Jewish (his ex-wife, Mel, is), he says in a voiceover that despite never being a fan of organized religion, “a celebration of wine and freedom needs no sales pitch.” Amen.

“It was fun featuring people who had probably never been to a Seder before, like James Marsden’s character and Olivia Munn’s character,” creator, writer, and executive producer Jonathan Tropper tells me. “One of the themes of Passover is to open your door and invite people into the meal.”

It was also also personal for Tropper, who comes from a traditional Jewish family. “Given how Jewish representation seems to not be included in the need for representation when everyone talks about everything else, I just thought, we’ll do our part. If a Jewish showrunner isn’t going to do it, who is?”

But it also made sense for the show, which is set in Westmont Village, New York. It’s based off of the tony community of Westchester, New York, which has a vibrant and large Jewish population. “I lived out there for quite a while, and there were always Seders happening during Passover, so I thought this feels very true to the environment, and I love the notion of Gretchen throwing a Seder for all her friends of all faiths,” Tropper says. (In fact, according to the Jewish Community Study of New York, Westchester is home to over 100,000 Jewish adults and children in 56,000 households.)

Plus, given that the episode was going to air in the spring, the timetable made sense to find a communal event where the entire cast could come together and advance the story. And while Tropper was very much open to doing an Easter episode, he acknowledges that they’re more common in the TV landscape. “We had the ability to do something different, especially when you look at the composition of our friends and neighbors who are a real mixed bag,” he says. “It just felt like a great way to integrate it without really having to explain it…just make it a fact of life.”