Nobody Wants This: Adam Brody has always been the internet’s favourite boyfriend

When Emerald Fennell was casting for her provocative debut feature Promising Young Woman, she needed a slate of male actors who had been typecast as “nice guys”.

It was crucial that they came with that baggage because they would play these “nice guys” who are revealed to be just as predatory as other men.

Among the list were Max Greenfield from New Girl, Sam Richardson from Veep, Chris Lowell from Veronica Mars and GLOW, Bo Burnham from Eighth Grade and Adam Brody from The OC.

Brody’s inclusion in this list speaks to the space the actor has occupied for two decades, ever since he broke out as Seth Cohen. He has played a bunch of roles, ranging from a superhero in Shazam to a regretful killer in the twisted comedy-horror Ready or Not.

But he’ll always be remembered for playing Seth Cohen, the witty, insecure and slightly neurotic teen hero who made comic book and indie music geeks cool for the mainstream.

Brody’s stocks have shot up again in the past week with the release of Nobody Wants This, a Netflix rom-com series in which he stars opposite Kristen Bell. He plays Noah, a hot rabbi who is quietly confident, funny and makes faith seem sexy.

He loves his family, is considerate and decisive, pretty upfront, and he’s not interested in wasting Joanne’s (Bell) time. Not since Fleabag’s Hot Priest (Andrew Scott) has a spiritual leader seemed so alluring.

That Noah is this week’s “internet boyfriend” is down to Brody’s easygoing onscreen charisma. Noah also feels like a grown-up version of Seth, if Seth had spent the past 15 years in therapy because he was so hung up on everything.

He and Bell have electric chemistry, and their dynamic is familiar in part due to the fact that the two know each other in real life but also because they’re both stepping into roles that draw from previous iconic performances. For her, it’s Veronica Mars.

Brody generously credited the love for Nobody Wants This to not his and Bell’s chemistry, but to the writing.

“We’ve been together in different shows and nobody said, ‘Your chemistry is amazing’, he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, we had a great time working together and it certainly worked, but there’s a reason this time that the show is getting more of a response in this way. That has to do with the shape of the writing.”

Because the internet will do what the internet will do, it’s also been a week of memes, thought bubbles and nostalgia evocations of Brody’s best boyfriend roles.

Of course there’s Seth, who was not the perfect guy by any stretch. He strung along both Anna and Summer and he had a tendency to catastrophise. But he was also a teenager — and for a lot of the audience at the time, so were they — so a lot is forgiven.

Seth was adorable, made all the more endearing due to Brody’s compassionate performance even though he named Seth’s “most toxic trait” as selfishness.

The other boyfriend role that is getting his time in the sun again is Dave Rygalski, a character he played on the third season of Gilmore Girls in nine episodes. Dave was a local musician that sparked with Rory’s friend Lane.

They hit it off because of their obsession with bands and witty-repartee. He also went to great lengths to try and win over Lane’s mother, Mrs Kim, who had very strict rules about dating, especially dating non-Korean boys.

Brody, though, is less convinced Dave was, as some have put it, the only good boyfriend in Gilmore Girls (the “best” boyfriend among Rory’s three main paramours is a persistent, unsettled debate).

In a recent Ask Me Anything video from Elle, he argued that Dave didn’t stick around that long and hadn’t really proven himself. “We don’t know how he would have been in the long term. He could have been love bombing her,” he argued.

Of course, that’s the kind of answer that only made admirers swoon even more. That Brody, the actor and husband to Leighton Meester, had the maturity to recognise the title of best boyfriend couldn’t be earned from a fleeting recurring role. You had to be in it for the long haul.

You could draw a line from Dave Rygalski to Seth Cohen to Noah as evolutionary stages in the pop culture boyfriend who was right for the moments they came along. That line runs through one man: Adam Brody.