Thank God for Leighton Meester

Meet “Abby Loves Smoothies.”
Photo: Erin Simkin/Netflix

If you watch enough television, you start to derive a sick pleasure from seeing people who used to be on other TV shows suddenly back together on a different TV show. It’s like a high-school reunion that you don’t have to attend, or rather: That’s what it feels like watching the fifth episode of season two of Nobody Wants This, which reunites former Gossip Girl co-stars Kristen Bell and Leighton Meester, who also stars opposite her IRL husband, Adam Brody. It’s a short stint for Meester — who somehow gets less screen time than, say, fellow guest star Seth Rogen — but she brings a much-needed levity and grace to a show often in need of both.

Meester plays Abby Kaplan, a.k.a. an influencer who goes by “Abby Loves Smoothies.” “I’m obsessed with how much I hate her,” Joanne tells Noah. Joanne doesn’t love that Abby is always talking about hanging out with her beautiful kids and husband — “So she loves her family?” Noah clarifies — but she really hates Abby for cutting the hair on her Felicity American Girl Doll at a middle-school sleepover. Still, despite her bias, Joanne wants to go with Noah to the brit bat — a naming celebration — to support him and judge Abby’s life off on the sidelines.

We’re used to seeing Meester play iconic mean girl Blair Waldorf on Gossip Girl, but Abby is a different creature entirely. She’s simpering and polite and bubbly — but is that effervescence masking a deep cruelty? Modern insincerity? Or is Abby just kind of annoying? Meester holds her cards close to her chest, leaving us to wonder whether Joanne is being spiteful and shallow (given her trajectory … probably) or whether this woman is really that unbearable.

So much of how Joanne and her sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), move through the world is with a vengeful, self-conscious internalized misogyny. They are mean women who hate basically every other kind of woman — including each other, depending on the circumstances. Joanne has friends — Ryann (D’Arcy Carden) and Ashley (Sherry Cola) — but those relationships are underexplored and mostly played for laughs. There’s also Esther, her kind-of-sister-in-not-quite-law, who is a frenemy. Being in Abby’s house, however, forces Joanne to confront one of her worst qualities. She’s ostensibly there to celebrate Abby’s life but only so that she can make snide comments.

Like any once-middle-school enemies, Joanne comes to learn that she and Abby aren’t that different deep down. “Abby Loves Smoothies has always been annoying,” Morgan reminds her, but Morgan and Joanne are just as annoying — if not more so. It’s not a crime for Abby to be precocious and loved. “The most annoying part about her is that she had a better childhood than us,” Joanne realizes. To grow up is to realize revenge is optional, if not completely unnecessary. When Joanne and Morgan finally confront Abby about the American Girl Doll incident, the latter is apologetic.

“You guys can make fun of me all you want, but posting about my life is how I make money for my family,” Abby explains. She remembers, with some prodding, that she did cut the hair of Joanne’s American Girl Doll, but Abby is “mortified” to think back on it. “I was, like, 11, and so tired, and you guys wouldn’t let me go to sleep! But I’m sorry! So psycho!” Meester plays about five different emotions all at once: earnest, embarrassed, cloying, humble, and desperate. Abby might be the most likable character to ever grace the screen of the show — she is flawed, and she knows it, not pretending to be anything otherwise (minus whatever’s on her Instagram account).

In many ways, Abby rehashes the best of Blair Waldorf — a misunderstood beauty queen who had to be hated before she could be loved by her peers. Meester has long transcended playing a high schooler, but there’s a divine pleasure in watching her enact those dynamics alongside Bell and Lupe. The three together have an energy and playfulness otherwise absent from the increasingly dreary second season of Nobody Wants This, which turns into a show about being either too or not Jewish enough. When the show turns away from its Jewish question(s), the characters are actually allowed to grow — to reckon with who they are in the context of each other. Abby might be the only character who’s ever been able to talk to Joanne and Morgan on their level. “It was really good seeing you,” Abby tells them at the end of her party, before asking, “Can you get out of this room, please?”

Related