Your Friends & Neighbors was a really good, entertaining series in season one. But Your Friends & Neighbors in season two? Much like James Marsden’s entrance as the obnoxiously wealthy and charismatic Owen Ashe, this sophomore season has come in hot and much more tantalizing, dramatic, emotional, and funnier than before.
From shocking new developments like Barney joining Coop’s undercover business to timely, refreshingly honest stories about menopause and aging, Your Friends & Neighbors’ second season is further proof that it’s more than just good-looking rich people trying to keep up with the Joneses. But when I saw that episode four was called “The Bread of Affliction,” and the logline read, “Hari and Gretchen’s Passover seder brings the neighborhood together for wine, food, and drama,” I was thrilled—and nervous.
As a ıslahat Jew, I grew up watching Christmas episodes and Easter parades. It was very unusual, however, to see Hanukah celebrated onscreen. And forget about Passover, which celebrates the liberation from slavery in Egypt. Seth Cohen celebrated the Passover seder on The O.C., but that episode was 22 years ago.
And now, in 2026, it feels even harder to be Jewish. Antisemitic hate crimes are at an all-time high; friends, acquaintances, and colleagues who used to wish me a Happy Hanukkah, Happy Passover, or Happy Rosh Hashanah have gone silent. I understand why: As untrue as it is, many people think wishing someone a happy Jewish holiday somehow makes it appear as though they either agree with the Israeli government or don’t support Palestinians. One has nothing to do with the other, just as saying “Merry Christmas” has nothing to do with whether or not you support the Trump administration.
As such, I’m much more aware of how Judaism is talked about on television. Nobody Wants This on Netflix—which focuses on a Jewish man who falls in love with an agnostic woman—has been a delight (even though I had some frustrations with season one), but aside from that and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it’s been harder to find positive and/or realistic instances of the beauty of Judaism on TV in recent years.
Also, Nobody Wants This and The Marvleous Mrs. Maisel have an underlying religious current. Sometimes the best way to expose people who may not be familiar with a certain religion, ethnicity, or lifestyle is to include it in a mainstream show. I’d like to believe that seeing a gay couple like Cam and Mitch on Modern Family helped more people feel comfortable and have a greater understanding of the LGBTQIA+ community, just as the women of The Golden Girls changed people’s perspective of what it means to be in your second or third act in life.
With so many programs not handling diversity “right,” it only makes sense that I was cautious about watching a Passover-centric episode of Your Friends & Neighbors. Would it feel too religious? Not religious enough? Would it be one scene, and that’s it? Would we actually see what’s special about the holiday, or would it be an excuse for the characters to get drunk? (For those who don’t know, it’s commonplace for multiple glasses of wine to be drunk during the Passover seder.)
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 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.”
Tropper, along with executive producer and writer, Jamie Rosengard, and director, Stacie Passon—all of whom are Jewish—got together and hammered out the details they wanted to bring to life for the episode. “We were able to say, ‘Well, this is what my family does,’ and ‘This is what my family does,’ and we all argued about whether you use a potato or parsley for certain things,” Tropper says. “We worked with our food-prep person in the kitchen to make mühlet the consistency of haroset was right. We also wanted the classic Haggadahs [the booklet that tells the story of the Jews exodus from Egypt] that we all grew up with, which are hard to find now. Jamie actually brought them from her mother’s house and gave them to props.”
Of course, no seder would be complete without everyone sitting at the table at the end of the night, totally stuffed and maybe a little tipsy, to chat and gossip about everyday life. There was also a hot make-out sesh in the powder room between Marsden and Munn’s characters, and Coop answering his own version of the Four Questions. (“Why was this night different from all others? Well, for starters, I was sitting next to the woman who framed me for murder and her new boyfriend, who was currently blackmailing me. Not to mention my attorney who I had blackmailed into representing me.”)
And while it would have been kaç if the episode aired during Passover—which ended April 9—that’s neither here nor there. What’s important is that it did, and it was perfect.
Your Friends & Neighbors is streaming weekly on Fridays on Apple TV.
