'The Nanny' Passover episode is actually so beautiful
I'm not crying you're crying (ok, fine, I'm crying).
Passover is coming up on April 12 and I’m preparing by procrastinating on my cooking and rewatching “The Nanny” and crying?? For some reason, the 1997 Passover episode of the show moved me to tears. I was not expecting to get emotional while watching the show about the nanny from Queens, created by and starring Fran Drescher, but there was something so touching to me about the interfaith seder it portrays.
At the very end of the episode, Fran, her mother Sylvia, her always faceless father Morty and the WASPy Sheffield clan Fran lives and works for and loves, are sitting together at an overflowing seder table. The young Grace Sheffield is reciting the Four Questions — that task for the youngest child — in English, as Fran answers them back, reciting from the Haggadah. Grace isn’t Jewish, but there’s such warmth and tenderness in the way Fran welcomes her into this special Jewish ritual, one that is meant to honor the children at the table, and in this case, also creates this bridge to Judaism not just for Grace and the Sheffields, but for TV viewers everywhere.
The lovely, solemn moment is soon broken when Sylvia nudges Grace to ask a last question. She addresses her father Maxwell and asks: “When is daddy gonna marry my daughter already?!”
After they talk about the suffering of the Jews in Egypt, Fran asserts that that fifth question is “a reminder of my suffering.”
If all we had gotten from that episode in the show’s fourth season was this beautiful moment of the Passover meal, it would have been enough (DAYENU!) but we also get a ton of great jokes that, like the rest of the show, perfectly channel the specific New York Jewish experience — one filled with Yiddish words and a rich cultural and ritual Jewish world.
The episode is called “The Passed-Over Story,” and in it, Fran’s former high school rival, who is now a big Hollywood star, Morgan Faulkner (in high school in Queens her name was, of course, Marcy Feldman), gets hired to star in Mr. Sheffield’s new play. Sheffield’s oldest, Maggie, who is struggling to get accepted to college, gets hired to be her assistant, much to the chagrin of her father, who doesn’t want her to forsake her future studies. It’s an episode about crossroads and roads not taken (pretty deep for about 20 minutes of laugh-track-laden TV) as Fran ponders if she too, could have had a more glamorous life like Morgan, and Maggie needs to decide what she wants to do with her life. Fran is also torn between wanting to support Maggie and honoring Sheffield’s wishes.
She settles on not pressuring the young woman, but just voicing her concern that she’ll one day regret not going to college.
"I can't dwell on all the terrible things that might happen in my future," Maggie replies. A truly boggling line, to which Fran then responds: "I forget it, you're not Jewish.”
When early in the episode, Butler Niles reports to Mr. Sheffield that Sylvia has invited them over for the Jewish holiday, the master of the house is unsure about what Jewish holiday is approaching (relatable as some of us are still googling the exact date of seder night).
“Is this the holiday you can’t eat all day then stuff yourself, the one when you light candles then stuff yourself or the one where you build a straw hut then stuff yourself?” he asks, perfectly summing up Yom Kippur, Hanukkah and Sukkot in a way only a show co-created by Fran Drescher could.
Niles responds with an accurate description of my upcoming seder night: "I believe it's the one when you hide crackers from small children then stuff yourself.”
“Ah, Passover,” Sheffield confirms.
We later see Niles filled with Yiddishkeit, surrounded by pots and pans of what he describes to Fran in perfectly enunciated Yiddish as “kreplach, kneidalach, tzimmes and gribenes,” referring to Jewish dumplings (which, to nitpick, aren’t usually eaten on Passover as they are traditionally made out of dough), matzah balls, the beloved sweet holiday side tzimmes and crisp chicken skin crackling that you usually eat with onions. He also laments that he’s been eating like a “chazer,” a pig.
"My pants I can't zip and when are you getting married already???" he asks Fran, channeling his best stereotypical Jewish mother — the style icon from Queens then reminds him that “it takes a whole lot more to being Jewish than cooking, there’s a whole other weiner you’ve gotta schnitzel.”
The episode is full of other funny Jewish celebrity moments. When Maggie tells Fran that she’s met Woody Allen, Fran replies with an “isn’t that exciting” followed shortly by a warning to stay away from the Jewish director (prophetic???). And then, at the end of the episode, when Maggie lets Fran take over driving Barbra Streisand and James Brolin from the airport (there are, as usual, multiple Babs mentions in the episode) Fran exclaims: "It's the miracle of Passover, the messiah is coming!"
But the most viscerally real moment to me is at the end of the seder when everyone is so stuffed and lying in the living room, saying they couldn’t possibly eat another thing. “Why do you think we wandered the desert for 40 years, we were walking off the meal!” Fran tells Sheffield. But then, as everyone rubs their overextended bellies, sweet Gracie, who has been welcomed into Fran’s Jewish world from the beginning of the show, utters the most perfectly Jewish line: "Call me crazy, but I could go for a little sweet.”
You can watch “The Passed-Over Story” on Peacock and Prime Video! Now tell me what you’re doing for seder in the comments, and if you need some fashion inspiration, I want to wear all of Fran’s outfits from the episode to mine:
