New Girl: ‘The Captain’

Schmidt acting as a human dental dam.

For an episode that leans much more towards sweet than it does hilarity, ‘The Captain’ accomplished a lot in terms of leveling things back out after a roller coaster first three episodes. This won’t go down as one of the funniest episodes of New Girl (although there were plenty of funny one-liners as usual), but there was a lot of great character work here that will shape the rest of the season to come.

For one, Nick Miller has feelings ladies and gentlemen, lots of feelings. Fantastic job here by Jake Johnson as we watched our lovable curmudgeon fight through countless years-worth of hate of and bitterness that have piled upon his life; emerging as a new man who loves where he finds himself and won’t let even the most diabolical of plans ruin this for him. Everything about the Jess/Nick relationship worked here and when you see such great onscreen chemistry between actors it’s a joy to watch. Nick is still going to be weird and disgruntled but maybe now he’ll start taking a more proactive approach to his life as we saw with him here standing up to Schmidt.

As for Schmidt, I’m really glad the show isn’t taking an easy route here and sweeping what he did under the rug. Sure it made for a funny plot watching him try to break-up Nick and Jess for revenge, but thankfully Jess calls him out for it at the end when he’s sitting there in his estrogen-induced stupor and wisely tells him that he has to deal with the fact that what he did was wrong. This could actually turn into a really compelling arc as we watch Schmidt try to recover from a personal low point. It’s tough to make a sitcom character do something morally reprehensible because a comedy functions on the audience rooting for and laughing along with a character which is tough to do when you hate them for their previous actions. But since they’re making us aware that Schmidt knows he was wrong and that the other characters are in no way condoning him I think New Girl can pull this off.

And this week in "What crazy thing is Winston up to?", we see him try to find a lover for his cat which apparently is here to stay as a fifth roommate in the loft. At least we did get a guest appearance from the very talented Riki Lindhome(*) but that wasn’t enough to save it. Ugh, they could have at least made Winston realize that the girl was into him and then he could have messed up the date in some other manor but nope, he’s just a lunatic with a cat now that has no feel for society. I’d say the writing staff is doing a disservice to this character but honestly I don’t have a suggestion for what they could do better here, he’s so far removed from every main storyline the show has ever done that you can’t even locate the rope to pull him back him.

(*) Who would have been a great add to the ensemble for 4 or 5 episodes as Winston’s new girlfriend but alas. If you’ve never listened to some her two woman band Garfunkel and Oates you’re missing out. Here’s their Youtube channel should it strike your fancy: http://www.youtube.com/user/rikilind?feature=watch

Other moments of note:

• Jake Johnsons’ deliver of “eat a banana” had me laughing for longer than I’m willing to admit.
• “I have to go move my car!” – Nick’s quick escape phrase.
• “How comfortable are you with racial slurs?” – Schmidt describing “the captain” to Jess.
• “That’s degrading to not only women but for all of mankind.” – Jess after performing “the captain.”
• “If we had to talk about feelings, they would be called talkings.” – Nick with a very fine point. 

How I Met Your Mother: ‘The Broken Code’

We’re 51 hours away from the wedding, and more importantly 51 hours away from putting this old dog of a show out of its misery. At this point we’re not doing good ol’ HIMYM any favors but letting it linger around, we’re selfishly keeping it by our side because we grew so fond of what it was in its prime and, despite better judgment, we’re hoping against hope that we can see one last trick, one last sparkle in its eye before it passes on. But the waiting is getting very, very painful.

The glaring problem is obviously the lack of Jason Segel. I’m assuming pat of his agreement to return for this final ninth season entailed an agreement that would allow for him to shoot movies, reminisce about Freaks and Geeks, or just try and detach his name as much as possible from this sinking ship of a show. But in the latter years here he’s often been the only source of laughter and it’s made the show that much worse to relegate to this awful road trip plot that absolutely no one asked for or wants to see. It would almost be better at this point if they didn’t give him any screen time until he can “arrive” at the wedding and just give us some more of ‘The Mother’ interacting with Ted in flash forwards.

What was especially annoying about ‘The Broken Code’ in particular is how rehashed both stories seemed. In the plot of Ted/Barney/Robin love triangle it’s literally been repeated time and time again and I’m not even sure if we’ve seen the last of it since it was alluded to early on that Ted went to visit Stella in Los Angeles to retrieve the missing locket. I just don’t understand what the writers think they can milk out of this. How many times can Ted come to the realization that Robin isn’t the right woman from him? And especially now that we have an actual visual image of ‘The Mother’ how do they expect to feel any real tension here? The whole thing comes off as total filler and a waste of time.

The other story involving Robin and her lack of female friends other than Lily was simply uninspired. We’ve seen lots of other sitcom characters and groups of friends talk about how very few friends they have outside of the main characters (which has more to do with actual practicality of keeping the cast small) so there was nothing new or groundbreaking here. The humor in Lily essentially being a crazy person which makes up for the Robin’s quantity of acquaintances was lost on me so we’ll just move on and chalk this up to a wasted episode as we head down the Mom stretch.

Other moments of note:

• Is Lily really one to critique Robin on her lack of other female friends? She’s not exactly a social butterfly either.
• Are they seriously going run this “thank you Linus” joke that far beneath the ground? Considering these episodes are taking place over several hours she has to be close to blacking out.
• Billy Zabka and Tim Gunn had fairly fun cameos at the poker table but I’m skeptical of the dubious ending which implies we haven’t seen the end of Zabka. Also, since when has the gang become so casual about running into celebrities like Tim Gunn? Ted doesn’t even bat an eye about him being there.
• I’m glad they kept the continuity of Marshall always winning at games, even in pillow form.