Fox just delivered the most unexpectedly Jewish hour on TV
A new episode of ‘The Fixer’ blends turnarounds, Torah, and truffle drizzle — and gets Orthodox life refreshingly right
Marcus Lemonis, left, and Popinsanity’s founders in an episode of ‘The Fixer.’ Courtesy of FOX
By Benyamin Cohen July 27, 2025
In a dining room filled with kugel, whitefish, and a rabbi holding court like a board chair, Fox’s The Fixer momentarily became the most Jewish show on TV.
The scene unfolded on Friday night’s episode of the new reality series, in which Marcus Lemonis, a billionaire entrepreneur with a portfolio of hundreds of small businesses, parachutes into troubled companies and tries to make them grow — emotionally and financially.
And while the show is typically about supply chains and leadership struggles, this installment also became a study in religious authority, cultural inertia, and the art of saying “I’ll think about it” until the opportunity walks out the door.
The episode — now streaming on Hulu and Disney+ — featured Popinsanity, a gourmet snack brand run by three Orthodox Jewish men: Aaron, Jacob, and Jonathan. One is analytical. One is empathetic. One is creative. Together, they’ve built a $4 million popcorn empire out of maize kernels and hustle — and, not incidentally, religious tradition.
In a genre known for quick cuts and quicker judgments, this episode took its time. And in doing so, it gave Orthodox viewers something rare: a representation that felt neither cartoonish nor condescending. There were no fur hats. No shtetl accents. Just three guys in yarmulkes debating inventory management — and then breaking for lunch with their rabbi.
Yes, their rabbi.
The moment that might have baffled secular viewers felt instantly familiar to anyone raised in an Orthodox household. Facing a disagreement about the direction of the company, the founders didn’t hash it out in a boardroom. They asked their rabbi to mediate. Cue an instrumental version of “Hava Nagila” and a table full of bagels. “This is a real privilege for me,” Lemonis, visibly moved, told the rabbi.
It played like a lost episode of Shark Tank: Borough Park Edition — only here, the rabbi wasn’t the punchline. He was the final word.
TV is a medium obsessed with authority figures — judges, CEOs, Gordon Ramsay screaming at undercooked risotto. In The Fixer, the spiritual leader got a rare starring role not as comic relief, but as the moral north star.
I grew up Orthodox. And while our rabbis weren’t trained in business school, they were often the final word on everything from family feuds to questionable investments. What matters is nott the rabbi’s expertise in EBITDA margins — it is his the moral authority. To its credit, The Fixer didn’t exoticize that. It just filmed it, respectfully and plainly.
It was a moment of cultural translation: Lemonis, raised by adoptive parents who were Greek and Lebanese, meeting a world governed not by quarterly returns but halachic values. It’s not just that The Fixer treated religious Jews seriously. It treated tradition as part of the operational structure — less Silicon Valley, more Sinai.
Of course, tradition has its price. Popinsanity was offered not one but two game-changing opportunities during the episode: first, a potential deal with a 40-store nut chain; then, a $500,000 investment offer from Lemonis himself. In both cases, the team hesitated. Deferred. Asked for more time.
Lemonis, who has clearly seen this before (The Fixer is merely a new iteration of Lemonis’ long-running CNBC series, The Profit), responded with frustration: “You should have been doing the same calculus in your head. You didn’t think I was there to hang out with you.” (Spoiler: he wasn’t.)
If it sounds like therapy, that’s because The Fixer works best when Lemonis is less businessman, more analyst of human behavior. And in Popinsanity, he saw a familiar diagnosis. Not just dysfunction, but deference. Not just indecision, but a culture of waiting — for clarity, consensus, divine intervention.
It was not a critique of faith — it was a critique of what happens when process becomes paralysis.
Tradition without the tropes
Orthodox representation on television has long teetered between invisibility and caricature. Too often, shows portray religious Jews like extras from Fiddler on the Roof, preserved in amber. These men own a modern factory. They use Salesforce. They understand QuickBooks. They just also believe that a rabbi should weigh in before they accept a capital infusion.
That balance — between the sacred and the strategic — is where the episode shone. The Fixer found its drama in the push and pull between faith and flexibility.
And despite the fact that Popinsanity didn’t take Lemonis’ investment, they did take his advice., The owners bought Jacob, the soft-spoken co-founder who had been developing flavors at home, his long-promised test kitchen. Joe, the unheralded operations manager with six kids, got a raise and equity. And the rabbi? He was treated like what he is: a guide, not a gimmick.
That’s rare for reality TV. Too often, religion is either fetishized or flattened. My Unorthodox Life packages rebellion as liberation. Return to Amish — and its predecessor, Breaking Amish — merges Rumspringa with spring break. The Secret Life of Mormon Wives sells scandal with scripture. But The Fixer finds drama in something smaller: religious businessmen who want to grow, but not at any cost.
It offered a glimpse of Orthodoxy without spectacle, a taste of tradition that wasn’t sugar-coated.
