Revisiting: SOON BY YOU

Friends. Will & Grace. Seinfeld. How I Met Your Mother. Sex and the City. What is this universal fascination with shows about groups of friends living in New York City? Many of these stories are essentially about nothing, really, so why have they become so famously popular? In these shows, we follow a group of likable, everyday characters as they navigate romance, comedy, mayhem, and occasionally grief in short, fast-paced episodes set against the crowded streets of the city. The comedy in the writing is a huge factor, no doubt, but I think there’s more to it than that. Regardless of if you live in a city or not, there’s a significant honesty to these shows that everyone can relate to. We all have friends. We all have trouble at work occasionally. We have trouble falling in love. If you watched Friends, for example, we all knew a Rachel or Ross in our lives or even found ourselves in their situations. These shows are a reflection of our lives, and the vastness of the Big Apple setting is just really aesthetically pleasing.

SOON BY YOU takes the decades-old comedy formula of friends + New York City but does one thing: makes it Jewish. VERY Jewish. With only two seasons and eight episodes total, this show may be small, but it made such an impact when it premiered on YouTube in 2016. Called the “Jewish Friends” of this generation, it became the talk of the town, garnering thousands and thousands of views on the digital platform. Obviously, 2016 was quite a while ago, and a lot has changed in the Jewish film/TV/digital media world. Everything has expanded rapidly. Writers have flocked to their rooms to whip up ingenious works of art from the Jewish perspective.

Coincidentally, I first started working at Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media when SOON BY YOU premiered. I wasn’t familiar with the show, but in retrospect, I don’t remember seeing a lot of Jewish shows/films in my research. They’ve always been around, of course, but seven years later, they are EVERYWHERE. (Why do you think PJFM started this blog last year? To talk about the hundreds and hundreds of Jewish content out there!)

I say all this because SOON BY YOU was very ahead of its time when it premiered. In 2016, “woke” culture perhaps wasn’t as prevalent as it is now. It was still “risky” to address topics or try something new (artistically) that others would find outrageous. That statement puts it very broadly, I know, but to make a simple, ordinary NYC comedy, except make the theme Modern Orthodox, must have been daunting back in 2016. Not necessarily controversial, I’d say, but so different. So daring. Modern Orthodox Jews are represented like ordinary people exploring their own insecurities on this show, a choice that deserves immense recognition. Apart from more recent shows like Broad City¸ I’d say (another Jewish comedy/friendship show set in New York), there isn’t much else like SOON BY YOU out there, and I want them! I want more Jewish, situational comedies in New York City. If this show is any indication, writers have the chance to craft really fun, important comedies that give voice to the Jewish experience.

Funnily enough, SOON BY YOU was never meant to be a digital series. It all started when writer/director Leah Gottfried debuted a short film she made, titled The Setup¸ at film festivals in 2015. This 15-minute comedy followed a young Jewish man, David (Danny Hoffman), meeting the wrong woman, Sarah F. (Sara Scur), on a blind date. Hilarity ensues. This setup (no pun intended) is already an ingenious one that could make for a feature film or series. It’s like a modern take on a Shakespearean comedy of errors. After making waves at Jewish film festivals and winning Best Short Film at the Washington Jewish Film Festival in 2016, Gottfried decided to turn her short into an online series. Cast and crew returned to set with one objective in mind: give Jewish singles accurate onscreen representation.

“When you see Jews on screen, you either see really secularized Jews or you see ultra-Orthodox Jews,” says Hoffman, the lead of the show, in an interview with The Daily Beast. “[SOON BY YOU] shows people devoted to their faith and religious practice, while at the same time living in the secular world with the same popular culture, dealing with the same demands as people who are not observant.”

Jessica Schechter, co-producer and another star of the show, echoes this sentiment by arguing that SOON BY YOU gives another perspective.

“We gain knowledge of things from TV and movies, and if the only depiction of Judaism you’ve seen is Broad City, Seinfeld, or Curb Your Enthusiasm, you’re going to have one interesting and inaccurate picture of what the full spectrum looks like,” she says. “We’re trying to give another picture.”

This “other picture,” as well, isn’t portrayed in an exaggerated fashion. Sure, it’s meant to be comedic, but Jewish stereotypes – apart from a couple scenes involving overbearing relatives – are not the focus of the show. Overall, SOON BY YOU is just a really sweet love story. Gottfried has made a soft and simplistic tale of Jewish people trying to find themselves, a task we ALL go through in our 20s. I applaud this show so much for its willingness to place Jews, a group that has been targeted since the beginning of time, on a platform to act, be silly, and remind us that we’re human just like them. In SOON BY YOU, they have the freedom to accurately depict their lives.

Had this show come out in 2023, I’m not sure it would have made such a splash as it did seven years ago. Without giving away spoilers, I’ll briefly dive into the synopsis of the show. As we see in episode one, The Setup¸ David accidentally started chatting with Sarah F. on his date when he should have been meeting with Sarah J. (played by Gottfried herself), sitting around the corner from him. Sarah F. was also supposed to meet with Ben (Nathan Shapiro), a very haughty fellow who is so awkward that he asks her at one point what her favorite hashtag is. After the miscommunication, everyone is correctly paired up, but neither David nor Sarah F. see a connection with their original dates. There is a connection between them, and David knows it. With the help of his eccentric roommate, Z (Noam Harary), and his friend, Noa (Schechter), he finds Sarah F. and starts going on proper dates with her.

So what happens? Do they end up happily ever after? You’ll just have to find out! We get a lot of fabulous Israeli comedies with Jewish characters front and center. (Recommendation: The New Black. Now streaming on ChaiFlicks.) New York City is the American epicenter for Jewish life. It’s time we get more US Jewish comedy series made like this one.

SOON BY YOU is now available to stream on ChaiFlicks and YouTube.

By Matthew Bussy, Program Director of PJFM