Rachel Berry moved to New York and we stopped watching, Annie Edison and the rest of Community was pushed to 2013 (though that didn’t stop us from getting our Alison Brie fill in other ways, and we’re still confused about how we feel about Shosh (but not Zosia, never Zosia) making 2012 very much the year of men for our Network Jews series (with sincere apologies to Hanna Rosin).

While there were many worthy candidates, here are the Top 5:

1. Schmidt:

Our first Network Jew is also our favorite. While we remain mixed about the merits of New Girl (even if it did lead to this) we can always rely on the real star of the show: Schmidt. He may have started out as a douchebag, but somewhere along the line he’s become, as Willa Paskin dubbed him, an “aspirational douchebag”—somehow going from disgusting to endearing.

Of course a major part of all this is his Jewishness. But perhaps the best part is that the actor who plays him, Max Greenfield, is up for anything, whether it’s dressing up as a Jewish Assassin or making in-character spin videos. Let’s just hope he stops guest–editing GOOP.

2. Saul Berenson:

Dov Friedman called Mandy Patinkin’s turn as the CIA Middle East division chief “the most accurate depiction of an American Jewish identity ever portrayed on television.” And for good reason. Homeland finished off it’s second season [spoiler alert] with Saul saying kaddish yet again as David Estes and a whole bunch of other characters were blown to smithereens. It isn’t just Claire Danes who thinks of challah (or was it holla?) when she sees our favorite bearded CIA agent. Just watch this video.

OK, we may be getting distracted, we’re talking about Berenson, not Patinkin, though it can be difficult to separate the two. Inspired by the Israeli show—and some would say superior—Hatufim, there’s at least one place where there’s no competition: the character of older, wiser intelligence officer. We only hope that in Season 3 they figure out some way to let him sing.

3. Max Blum:

Probably the most underrated show on this list, Happy Endings’ six-person ensemble is held together by Max Blum. I know, I know. We just talked about how great Schmidt is, and here we’re saying that Happy Endings’ anti-Schmidt is also our favorite. You know what, we can have our cake and eat it too … with Max, while listening to Mandona.

The pop culture-obsessed sarcastic slob of a gay best friend is everything you’d want in a pop-culture obsessed sarcastic slob of a gay best friend. Don’t just take our word for it, Emily Nussbaum thinks the man who brought us Boyz II Menorah is Amahzing too.

4. Eli Gold:

The Good Wife may have started out as an Eliot Sptizer-style, ripped from the headlines, procedural-style show, and it might still be that, but somehow it rises above. While there’s lots to say about the shows women, and even Jewcy favorite Josh Charles, the biggest surprise has to be Alan Cumming’s Jewish turn as Eli Gold.

As Abe Fried-Tanzer wrote, “It’s no coincidence that Gold has been compared to a real-life famous Jew with a similar profession. Rahm Emanuel, former Chief of Staff for President Obama … has quite a reputation for winning at all costs, and Gold has managed to earn that same status in what could easily have been (and originally was) merely a guest-starring role. Gold may reinforce the stereotype of Jews wanting all the power, but he’s definitely someone you’d want on your side.”

5. Ruxin:

There’s no getting around it: Nick Kroll’s Ruxin is a self-assured asshole. (In one episode, Ruxin defends a paint company whose cans explode by arguing that anyone buying such a cheap item should have “a reasonable expectation that that product will explode in your face.” “And, morally, you’re good with this?” asks his friend, Pete. “There was just one word in there that I am not familiar with,” Ruxin responds.) But, for Sala Levin, this is all the more reason to love him—and love him we do!

After all, “A man who coasts through life on his assimilated rudeness but maintains some iota of his people’s historical dread is, after all, every girl’s dream.”

The post The Best of Network Jews 2012 appeared first on Jewcy.

• OMG. Bette Midler might appear on Glee—as Rachel Berry’s grandmother.

• Paul Shaffer says he might not always be the band leader on the Late Show with David Letterman.

• That famous Edvard Munch painting, ‘The Scream,’ about to be displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, has a Nazi-era history that’s not being disclosed by the museum, say descendents of the painting’s Jewish former owners.

• Someone bought the Tribeca townhouse Dominique Struss-Kahn was renting while on house arrest in New York. Hope there aren’t any ghosts of libertines past.

• Urban Outfitters is coming out with a Lisa Frank line. Suburban girls everywhere completely freak out.

• Mindy Meyer brought an elephant to her Long Island fundraiser—that 15 people attended.

The post Daily Jewce: District Diva Mindy Meyer’s Elephant, Bette Midler on ‘Glee’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Noah Puckerman (Mark Salling) is the coolest kid at McKinley High. He’s the guy at the beginning of Season 1 throwing Slushies in the faces of the glee club kids (on Glee, Slushee-thrower equals popular person), roaming the halls in his letter jacket and throwing the Marc Jacobs-clad Kurt (Chris Colfer) into a dumpster. But soon he, like fellow football jock Finn (Cory Monteith), joins the glee club—and the rest is spontaneous-bursting-into-song history.

With his good looks and hunky guitar serenades, Puck is McKinley’s resident womanizer. He starts a pool-cleaning business to try and seduce moms. He impregnates Finn’s girlfriend, Quinn (Dianna Agron) in the first season—she blames wine coolers and her having had “a fat day” for her indiscretion. And then he tries to woo Shelby (Idina Menzel), the adoptive mother of their child and a teacher at their school. But thanks to Glee’s ‘anything goes’ plot structure, by the time he graduates at the end of the third season, he’s become a halfway decent guy.

We learn about Puck’s Semitic upbringing in Season 1, when we are introduced to the Puckerman family’s most memorable (and only, really) tradition: watching Schindler’s List while eating moo shu pork on Simchat Torah. Glee really doesn’t do subtle. His mother asks him why he can’t date a Jewish girl, sparking one of the show’s more remarkable dream sequences. In it, overachieving Jewish glee club star Rachel Berry climbs through his bedroom window wearing a nightgown and a gleaming Star of David around her neck.

Of course, in Puck’s dream Judaism is more a means to an end than anything else. “Rachel was a hot Jew and the good Lord wanted me to get into her pants,” goes his epic mid-dream voiceover. Barring the line’s inherent absurdity, the most incongruous part of the statement is his use of the term “the good Lord.” Jews don’t really say that. Puck’s brand of Judaism is distinct—and in contrast with Rachel’s—in how much it is influenced by his predominately Christian surroundings in Lima, Ohio. His expression of faith feels very New Testament. Later in the episode, Puck chooses to show Rachel his commitment to her (and to Judaism, presumably) with what he calls a “personal tribute to a musical Jewish icon:” a performance of “Sweet Caroline”

Rachel’s Jewishness, frequently referenced on the series, is part of why she is constantly made to seem different (Kate Hudson, playing a vicious college dance teacher in Season 4, refers to her only as “Schwimmer”—you know, the Jewish guy from Friends), while Puck being MOT is much more peripheral to his identity. It does, of course, have its plot-driving elements. In Season 2’s “Born This Way” episode, Rachel suffers a kick to the face during dance practice and is given the option of a nose job. After she decides she wants to do it, Puck confronts her in the women’s bathroom at school and tells her to be proud of her Jewish heritage. And that girls at temple always come back after their 16th birthday looking different and less hot. It might just be his character’s most profound cultural commentary. (Spoiler alert: cheerleader Quinn, who has the nose that Rachel wants, had actually gotten a nose job but nobody knew!)

Later, at the mall, Kurt points out that Rachel’s idol, Barbra Streisand, ended up being pretty successful even with her natural nose, at which point the whole Glee gang breaks into a performance of Duck Sauce’s “Barbra Streisand.” A literal end to an overwhelmingly literal episode (they sing TLC’s “Unpretty“), but it works: Rachel cancels her appointment with the plastic surgeon.

As Puck’s character got more three-dimensional, he also neared the end of his senior year. After a touch-and-go finals week (and one My Fair Lady cover), he graduates and moves to Los Angeles, leaving behind broken hearts and pristine pools at the end of Season 3. This season, we got introduced to Puck’s younger half-brother, Jake, who shares a father with the legendary McKinley High alum and so far seems to have the same pre-glee club bad attitude. But instead of the letter jacket, little Puck wears an even more badass leather jacket. By episode two, Puck is back in town to talk some sense into his little brother, who—you guessed it!—ends up joining the glee club.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a Puckleberry Jr. sweeps-week fling. Until then, feast your eyes on this fan-made tribute to the original Puckleberry:

Previously on Network Jews:

Andy Botwin, the promiscuous playboy on Showtime’s Pot Comedy Weeds

Saul Berneson, the CIA Middle East division chief on Homeland

Cristina Yang, Grey’s Anatomy’s Atheist Jew

The post Network Jews: Noah Puckerman, the Coolest Jew in School on ‘Glee’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Looks like Puck’s got a little brother. Jacob Artist has been cast as Jake Puckerman, the younger half-brother of mohawked Noah Puckerman, McKinley High School’s resident lothario. The end of Season 3 saw the elder Puckerman, whose best line of the series remains “Rachel was a hot Jew and the good Lord wanted me to get into her pants,” defying logic and grade point averages to graduate from McKinley, presumably leaving Jake at the helm of the family’s annual Simchat Torah Schindler’s List-watching tradition.

Little Puck will reportedly audition for the glee club, “but his attitude could derail his audition.” Drama alert! Puck did set the badass bar pretty high, seducing his teachers and impregnating a classmate and all, so we’re expecting big things from Jake (though we’d settle for a Thanksgiving break fling with college student Rachel Berry). Whatever it is, he better be singing about it.

Artist, who will likely quickly exceed his current 700 Twitter followers, was previously in the ABC family series Melissa and Joey and TV movie Blue Lagoon: The Awakening. Glee Season 4 premieres September 13.

Previously: Network Jews: Rachel Berry from FOX’s ‘Glee’
Welcome to ‘Glee’, Jeff Goldblum! [Tablet Magazine] Jewish Characters on ‘Glee’ to Reunite [Tablet Magazine] The Outsiders [Tablet Magazine]

The post Meet Jake Puckerman, Puck’s Newly Cast Younger Brother on Glee appeared first on Jewcy.

• The difference between NPR Fresh Air host Terry Gross and Howard Stern? Gross doesn’t ask about penis size during interviews.

• The new New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief goes to the Jerusalem Film Festival.

• Jewish porn star James Deen lost his virginity at summer camp.

• Don’t try going into these Jewish-owned Williamsburg businesses immodestly dressed.

• Gina Gershon hopes her new movie, Killer Joe, will make audiences forget about Showgirls.

• Glee’s Lea Michele talks the show’s next season at the Teen Choice Awards.

The post Daily Jewce: Lea Michele Talks Glee, James Deen Went to Jewish Camp appeared first on Jewcy.

• A museum in the shape of Albert Einstein’s head is opening in Jerusalem.

• Forget kosher dog food—this week, we are all obsessed with raw dog food.

• The best comic ever about Bob Dylan’s birthday is from 1971.

• Fresh off profiling Glee’s Rachel Berry for Jewcy, Hillary Busis names the television’s 13 most unfortunate characters (Quinn Fabray is totally on there).

The post Daily Jewce: Israeli Cat Lady Divorces, Shaping Einstein’s Museum, and more appeared first on Jewcy.

But even in the midst of chaos, a few things remain relatively steady from episode to episode. (Yes, this contradicts everything I just said. How very Glee!) There are the songs, of course, which form the show’s backbone even as they become increasingly irrelevant to its plot. And then there are the characters, who, in the grand tradition of long-running TV comedies, can each be described by a handful of rigid defining traits. Brittany Pierce (Heather Morris) is a dumb cheerleader. Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith) is a sensitive jock. Santana Lopez (Naya Rivera) is a bitch. And Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) is a talented, obnoxious, and Jewish superstar in training.

During Glee’s first few seasons, Rachel’s Semitism was as ingrained as her thirst for a Broadway spotlight. The character’s middle name is Barbra, as in Streisand—another Jewish performer who doubles as Rachel’s idol. Early in Season 1, she briefly dated fellow Member of the Tribe Noah Puckerman after he supposedly received the following message from God: “Rachel was a hot Jew and the good lord wanted [him] to get into her pants.” (Puck seduced his non-shiksa goddess by singing “Sweet Caroline,” presumably because Glee couldn’t get the rights to “Miracle of Miracles.”) During a second season episode that’s themed on religion, Rachel even told her once and current boyfriend that if the two of them ever have kids, they must be raised according to her faith. When Finn agreed, she allowed him to round second base.

Rachel, then, is the classic prudish overachiever with a kosher twist—Election’s Tracy Flick with a better voice and a bigger nose. (TV creators really need to think of a more creative way to describe their young, type-A female characters.) Or, at least, that’s who she once was. As time has passed and Glee has burned through storylines with increasing manic frequency, the series’ writers have been forced to take shortcuts. And instead of slowing down Glee’s breakneck pace or sacrificing potential iTunes singles for extra scenes of dialogue, they’ve chosen to neglect previously established characterization—thus making their show’s already archetypal characters even less dimensional.

Much like Will Schuester’s redeeming qualities or Tina Cohen-Chang’s entire personality, Rachel’s Jewish-ness has been a casualty of this downsizing process. There was a time when an entire episode—Season 2’s “Born This Way”—focused on Rachel’s yearning to transform her Semitic schnoz into a dainty, goyish nose like blonde cheerleader Quinn’s. (The irony: Quinn is played by Dianna Agron, a Southern Jew who’s a card-carrying bat mitzvah. By contrast, Lea Michele has a Jewish father but was raised Catholic.)

But as Season 3 draws to a close tonight, Rachel’s once-vital religion has been all but forgotten. In this year’s emphatically denominational holiday episode, for example, Rachel presented Finn with an exorbitant Christmas list, enthusiastically participated in an homage to The Judy Garland Christmas Special, and cheerfully sang a bevy of Christmas carols—only remembering her heritage during a quick, barely audible “Happy Hanukkah!” shouted just as the hour ended. And when Rachel noted during last week’s episode that she’s “still Jewish,” her remark was more of a sheepish reminder than an affirmation.

Demanding some semblance of reliability would be asking too much of Glee at this point. Nonetheless, it’s disappointing to watch one of network TV’s most visible Jews lose an affiliation that used to define her—even if her rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” can still put Barbra to shame. (Provided, of course, that she can remember the words.)

Previously on Network Jews:

Maurice Levy, the Jewish lawyer from David Simon’s HBO drama The Wire

Krusty the Clown from FOX’s long-running animated classic The Simpsons

Annie Edison from NBC’s cult favorite Community

The post Network Jews: Rachel Berry from FOX’s ‘Glee’ appeared first on Jewcy.