As for the supermarket, AWESOME catch. You ought to call the show and find out b/c it’s really a moronic mistake.

I, like Naftali, felt that the plot was a bit of a non-starter, and for the same reason. Surely an observant Jew is not only permitted, but required, to break any Shabbat law which might (if strictly observed) endanger life. Would a trailing eruv wire not be considered sufficiently hazardous to justify the act, on Shabbos, of tying it temporarily out of harm’s way?

The Friday night phone call also bothered me; since the Loebs would celebrate Shabbos together, when would Anna even have the opportunity to make a phone call unobserved? unless she did so while Isaac was attending the synagogue service marking the beginning of Shabbos. (Although that, it seemed to me, would place the call too early to be referred to as Friday “night” by the characters who weren’t observing Shabbos; I got the impression that the episode might well be placed at a time of year when it starts in the afternoon.)

I forget whether we learned enough about Isaac to be able to surmise what his schedule might be. Are there no other occasions during the week when he’d routinely be out of the house? Was his ignorance of her phone calls Anna’s primary consideration? Or might she believe that an act of reconciliation, such as calling her estranged father, consituted an act of piety somehow specifically appropriate to Shabbos? (Particularly in the light of his developing dementia, which she may already know about, although the audience at this point doesn’t.) I wondered whether you thought there might be any Talmudic justification for such a belief…

BTW, I’d assumed the portrayal of Anna the ex-party girl’s revival as chasidic wife not as a suggestion that you had to be crazy to be attraced to chasidic Judaism, but as a device for pointing out Kalinda’s cynicism and judgmentalism, in doubting Anna’s commitment to her new life. And then deflating the cynicism with Anna’s evident joy, and those subtle displays of intimacy between the Loebs (cruelly emphasised by the distress caused with the revelation of the cellphone calls). Maybe to invite us, the audience, to sympathise with Kalinda’s point of view, and address those same character flaws in ourselves? I think TV writers rarely pass up an opportunity to play Aesop.

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I didn’t think that the Kosher market was a plot hole, I don’t know the situation in Chicago, but in other cities (I’m thinking Toronto as an example) there are large non-Jewish supermarkets in Jewish areas with big kosher sections that are open on Shabbat, I got the impression that this was the type of store she was referring to.

I also liked the way the couple didn’t embrace (which was in character), the point when they discreetly touched hands was a great way to portray affection in the Hassidic community (and they contrasted it nicely with the way the lawyers touched in a similar way)

If an eruv wire breaks on Shabbos, even though the eruv cannot be fixed on Shabbos, it is absolutely muttar to pick up the wire and wind it around something or some other similar procedure to move it out of the way l’imnuyei hezeika (to prevent damages). This is the same reason one can sweep up the pieces of a broken glass on shabbos even though the pieces themselves become muktza.

Thus, unless the characters were real amei-haaratzim, if they were aware the wire broke, they would have moved it away and the story wouldn’t start.

I am unfamiliar with Chicago so I figured the neighborhood was at least close to W. Rogers Park – I guess not!

The accent was awful.

I can excuse them for not knowing about a lechi. That is an more intricate detail.

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It was completely unnatural.

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2. Why the semi-accent on the husband? He was clearly not European or Israeli, but he spoke English with a slight hesitation, as though not fully at home in that language. Again, emphasizing the otherness?

3. The closeup of the juncture between the eruv wire and the house did not appear to have a lechi; the wire went straight into the wall, horizontally.

4. The frum nieghborhoods in Chicago — West Rogers Park and Peterson Park — look nothing like the NY-style row houses in the episode. You can find those row houses in older, gentrified neighborhoods of Chicago like Linclon Park, but the West Rogers Park and Peterson Park are a mix of single family houses WITH front and side yards, and two-to-four story brick apartment buildings. Were they trying to make the scene look more like NY?

The fact that the chassidic guy doesn’t smile could be because he was getting sued and upset about it then he finds out that his wife was being mechalel shabbos when calling her father. I understand your point, I’m just sayin’.

We have an eruv issue in Venice so I have explained it very rationally to many uniformed people. Use the explanation I gave in the post, it is very simple for a non-OJ to ‘get’.

His background was not significant. He may have also been a baal tshuva but he was more devout than she as he was visibly hurt by her breaking of Shabbos.

The phenomenon of a party girl becoming “chasidic” exists. I would say, though, while the number of former party girls who became “chasidic” is not negligible, they would be married to other baalei tshuva, not to an FFB chasid. Since I don’t watch the show, I don’t know if the husband’s background was mentioned.