New Girl: ‘Basketsball’

After last week’s flash-back, character development heavy episode, I’m glad that New Girl came back with a very sitcom-y half hour filled with a bunch of silly premises and one liners that make this show so much fun to watch.

The main story revolved around Jess trying to get Coach(*) to start viewing her as his friend as opposed to his “buddies girlfriend.” The interactions with Jess and Coach were fun for a while but, like most New Girl plots, Nick came out of this one with the most to do. As a Bulls fan I’m sure I got an above average amount of glee from hearing him describe Coach’s Piston fandom compared to the Bulls: “His teams the Pistons. I mean they were great in the 80’s, but then we got Jordan. Then they started getting good, then we Thibodeau, whatcha’ you going do now?”

 (*) As far as I’m aware of, Damon Wayans Jr. has still only signed on as a guest star for the rest of season, but I’m not sure why the show would go to trouble of making it seem like Coach was in this for the long haul if he is just going to be gone in a few episodes anyway.

Eventually the story becomes primarily about how Jess and Nick become locked in a battle for who will turn the “sex tap” back on first which would have been a fine story on its own and I’m not sure exactly why it became shoehorned into this one. But all’s well that ends well as Coach and Jess become best buds and hopefully this leads to more Coach-centric stories going forward.

Over on the Schmidt side of things, he’s tasked with having two people shadow him for a day on the job, one being Winston and the other is Ed, an elderly gentleman the company hired to avoid an ageism lawsuit. I liked seeing Schmidt, Winston, and Nick (albeit unknowingly) teaming up to best Ed, but I’ve yet to see a story involving Schmidt’s office that I’ve liked so far. The biggest revelation here is that Cece convinces Winston he should be a cop, making it two straight weeks where she has settled someone’s career path.

Other moments of note:

• Does Schmidt still live in the other apartment? I think he does and I feel like the show is missing out on an opportunity to do some kind of “apartment wars” bit. Although, it’s possible he may have moved into Jess’ room since her and Nick are an item now.
• Chalk up another great Jake Johnson facial expression, this time it was the look of disgust on his face from seeing Jess in a Pistons t-shirt.
• “Michael Jordan is the first person who taught me I can love another man.” - Nick
• “There is too much going on in whatever metaphor you’re trying.” – Cece trying to decipher Schmidt’s ramblings.
• “Once your screen breaks, your information is all out there in the Twitterverse.” – Nick
•  “I’ve never seen a baby pigeon before.” Me neither Coach, me neither.

New Girl: ‘Clavado En Un Bar’

In its first episode back from the midseason break, New Girl delivered in a flash-back heavy episode which hit a perfect balance of laughs and sweetness. The premise is a simple one that almost every person deals with at some point in their life, at least several times: what do I want to be?

The specific dilemma put forth in front of Jess is to either remain a teacher, her dream job, for a vastly underfunded school, or to take a job at the Children’s Museum which would not only pay more but bring less stress to her life. Luckily for Jess Day, and us, she has several people in her life willing to chime in with their own suggestions and give her some insight into when they dealt with a similar scenario.

With a mere nineteen minutes before her friend calls to ask for a decision, Winston is first to explain the decision making process, or what turns out to be a lack-there-of in his case. After being gifted a basketball from birth, Winston’s whole life was centered on developing his basketball career. Clearly this was never the right path for him as he is the ninth man off the bench for the eighth best team in Latvia before getting traded to the outdoor, inclined league. This definitely gives us some insight as to why Winston is crazy person since he’s never actually made a real decision of his own.

Schmidt takes a stab at some advice next, and we find out his rise to douchiness started when he was a simple volunteer candy striper. The story is very Barney Stinson-esque since he sees a successful guy in a suit get the girl, thrusting him into the cutthroat world of marketing. His first stop is to the Christmas tree farm (cue ‘Gangsta Paradise’) where he meets his mentor Old Man McQue. McQue, unfortunately wasn’t in Schmidt’s life for long: “in the words of the late, great Sir Billy Joel: only the good die young.” But before he goes he does impart the wisdom of that “the reward is in the destination, not in the journey.” So Schmidt’s advice to Jess is to follow the money.

Coach is able to chime in with a quick tip of his own, to follow your passion. We find out how he first got his nickname of “Coach” and that his real name is Ernie.

The Nick story was a little more personal and did a great job of building the Nick/Jess relationship. Nick reveals how much he disliked law school until he found a great place to study, the very bar they find him tending today. Eventually he shows Jess that he actually ended passing the bar but he could tell that he would enjoy his life a lot more if he followed his true calling. On top of that, Cece recaps to Jess to Jess the first time they met and how Jess was able to “teach” her how to read even without her glasses. It was a great showcase for the girls who haven’t had much screen time together this season and it’s enough of persuasion to push Jess into making the decision to remain a teacher.

Not only a great premiere but also sets up some storied for the rest of the season. This gives Cece an opportunity to interact with Nick which has really yet to happen, assuming she ends up sticking around as a fellow bartender. Also, Winston decides to quit his job and to finally start making some decisions of his own, maybe we‘ll start getting some real Winston plotlines for once.

Other moments of note:

• Brian Posehn guest staring as the science teacher who has to share his classroom with Jess was hilarious. I could listen to awkwardly list anything, especially all the different types of people who are “anti-future”.
• “Sick people wanted me, dying people wanted to be me.” – Schmidt describing his time as a Candy Striper.
• “We had an ethnic, gay bully.” – Jess
• “We’re not the only ones looking for him. So is the FBI.” – Schmidt reading the information of Jess’ first student.
• “Lady she’s still got one minute!” – Coach accidentally yelling at a butt-dial from Jess’ Mom. Probably my favorite Coach line so far.
•  “I call it tea water.” – Nick on his concoction of putting a tea bag in water.

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. 

New Girl: ‘Virgins’

“Listen Nicky, you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do. I just want to make sure you don’t miss out on the things in life that are happening when you’re not thinking. Because believe you me, those are the best things in life.” – Walt Miller.

An easy indicator to judge whether a comedy is hitting, or not, is its ability to create quotable lines that have staying power combined with funny situations that don’t even need dialogue to be funny. What New Girl is able to do far more often than not is have a hilarious one-liner that you think will be the highlight of the episode until something happens a moment later that just topped it. It has been a good while since I laughed as frequently and consistently throughout an episode as I did with 'Virgins'.

It’s fairly easy to write normal moments, as well as completely absurd moments, the challenge lies for shows like New Girl in balancing them enough so that we don’t have to suspend disbelief(*) enough to laugh at the humor. So when fat, college Schmidt gets the impression that he needs a tub of lube for his “first time” we have enough previous knowledge about the character, and it isn’t an so unbelievable that it takes out of an inherently hilarious moment. As ridiculously bad as that fat suit looks on Max Greenfield it will be hard for any show to beat the physical comedy of a stoned Nick trying to help out a lubed-up Schmidt.

(*) The last 3 to 4 seasons of How I Met Your Mother are a prime example of a show that relies on ridiculous, elaborate situations to generate laughs which is why the show has become a complete shell of what it once was.

And while I won’t harp on it too much, there was just the right amount of heart contained within the overload of silly ‘Virgins’ contained. Flashbacks, when used well, are extremely effective for moments such as first meetings or to give us more of a character that no longer exists in present day, in this case Nick’s Dad. Nick obviously remembers the conversation he had with him while reminiscing about Winston’s first time and he was able to take the advice his Dad gave him and applied it to finally taking the plunge with Jess. It was a moment that didn’t seem forced and for that I am thankful. That being said, I can’t wait to see the aftereffects of opening this can of worms.

Since I mentioned earlier how quotable this show is, here’s a bunch of them and some other moments of note:

• “Sometimes I just sit in the stall and listen to you guys.” – Nick popping in on the bathroom conversation.
• “A Tuxedo is different than a suit”… “It is?!” – Schmidt informing Nick to his disappointment and surprise.
• Schmidt’s reaction to finding out Cece lost her virginity to Mick Jagger was perfect. Also, can something kind of sucky happen to Cece that is funny and not sad? (Babies, heartbreak).
• “I told you a million times, my arm was a magnet and the wall was magnetic.” – Nick justifying why he had to stay in the room when Schmidt brought his girlfriend back.
• Winston and Nick’s bizarre teenager voices were so funny. Did they use some sort of voice modifiers or were the actors actually able to sound so weird?
• “We work in the finance markets.” – Winston showing off to the hookers. Soon after he goes to explain what kind of virgin he is: “Aren’t you a virgin too? …. Just my penis baby. Just my penis.”
• “Do you sell cookies?...Not a cookie bar?” –Fat Schmidt.
• “Ugh. I’m sick of firemen always winning.” –Schmidt. I’d love to see the world through his eyes for a couple of minutes.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: ‘A Father’s Love’

‘A Father’s Love’ turned out to be a fairly fun episode, but one that fell short of bringing it all together the way we’ve started to get accustomed to from New Girl. The one-liners were flying at a high volume, so the laughs were consistently there.

But I just feel like we’ve all seen the storyline way too often where one of the characters Dad’s is a bit of a degenerate that stops by in their lives whenever it’s convenient for them. Denis Farina was cast perfectly for that role however, and I’m glad we got to see the interactions between him and Nick as it explains a good deal as to why Nick has turned out the way he has.

The ‘B’ story seemed very throw away though as Schmidt and Robby both attempt to spy on Cece as part of each of their respective attempts to win her back. Is anyone else buying how persistent Cece is being about finding an Indian suitor of her parents choosing? Has no one told her to at least try online dating or something to have some more options? Something tells me she’d have some takers. There were some fun Schmidt/Robby dialogue moments that made some of it salvageable but all in all it was too silly to really be memorable.

Other favorite moments:

• Feely Cup. Love the random, crazy games this group comes up with. Not so sure I’d be interested in playing this one though.
• Nick “angry fixing” the sink.
• “He looks like Hilary Swank mixed with a sad, wet dog.” – Jess describing Nick.
• “This is pretty much your basic broken hearted spy thing.” – Robby running into Schmidt.
• “No my name is not Jemile!” – Nick showing how gullible Jess is.
• “The Best Erotic Maribone Hotel.” – Schmidt describing Cece’s “orgy.”
• “I haven’t done laundry in 5 months.” – Nick.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: “Cabin”

You’ve got to love the charm. New Girl is so locked into a groove right now of being able to balance ridiculous situations and silly behavior while also making us care about the relationships that Jess, Nick, Schmidt, and Winston try and form not just with their love interests but, maybe more importantly, with each other.

By establishing the bonds so well that these people truly care for one another then, at the end of the day, it’s really fun to just watch Winston mess with Schmidt for his “white guilt.” And even when a resolution is more somber, like Nick getting dumped by a girl he really liked, Jess is there to let him know it was the right thing for him and we all know things will eventually be okay.

The writing was on the wall from the beginning that this wasn’t going to end well for Nick, but unlike how in some shows it doesn’t make any sense for a person to be with someone clearly wrong for them, you can totally understand why Nick would be accepting of someone like Angie at this point in his life. If you ever describe your relationship as “pure anarchy in like a sexy, cool way” or it gets described to you as: “she’s cool, it’s kind of like riding a poorly maintained carnival ride,” then it’s probably not going to work out. But the ride was fun while it lasted and Olivia Munn did a great job playing an eccentric.

Schmidt trying to make Winston feel “more at home” with his black roots was spectacularly fun to watch. It’s great that we’ve just come to expect that Schmidt will go 100% behind any idea he has and follow it through no matter what the stakes. Even if that means helping Winston get his fix of crack cocaine. Nick and Cece got a brief second for this story and Jake Johnsons facial expressions win again as disgust is written so well over his face when he’s forced to listen to Schmidt talk about Winston being black. Great stand-alone story and it’s nice to see the show keeping continuity of Winston struggling with either going to little or going too far with a prank.

Other favorite moments:

• “You were so light and charming. You were like Pixar Winston.” - Schmidt in response to seeing Winston with other black people.
• “Schmidt I could really go for some crack.” - a deadpan Winston.
• “Word games. Word games, word games, word games.” - Jess on absinthe.
• “Dr. Sam, if you were a hat you’d be a top hat.” - Nick on absinthe.
• New Girl has established a very high track record for drunk adventures now with this absinthe incident and True American from its past.
• Only Schmidt could tick someone off by ordering a vanilla-chocolate swirl.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: ‘Menzies’

There was so much going on in this episode that I’m not exactly sure where to start. While I thought this episode was good, it was far from the best work we’ve seen from New Girl and I think that’s because they tried to cram 8 stories into an episode that called for 3 or 4 at the most. Again, I didn’t think any of them were bad but there was no room for any of them to breathe.

Our starting point stems from Jess’ inability to pay the gas bill and triggers Schmidt to turn it off until Jess finds a job and is able to pay for it. So despite having her monthly visitor Jess sets out to interview for being a night school teacher but loses complete control of her emotions the first time around and fails miserably. Later on she gets a pep talk from Nick and goes back in, nails it, and sets up lots of funny potential story lines going forward. However, Jess isn’t the only one who gets a visit as Winston has come down with “male sympathy PMS” and plenty of jokes pop-up because of it. It turned out to be Winston’s way of dealing with his recent breakup but I thought that deserved more than the 4 minutes of screen time it got. Oh well.

Schmidt has his own thing going on at work as his new boss is sex-crazy and definitely feeling the vibe that Schmidt is emitting. He’s forced to sign a contract with her in order to pursue their relationship further and it’s full of insane clauses like “guaranteed mercury poisoning” that Schmidt can expect. Schmidt also gets intertwined into Cece’s fear that Robbie thinks she’s a nice girl, pushing her into the two of them almost hooking up. And thank God Cece didn’t actually cheat on Robbie because I would have felt awful about both hers and Schmidt’s characters going forward for a long time.

Nick’s little adventure with his elderly Asian friend Tram was absolutely amazing though. Tram basically sits there as a sounding board for Nick to come to his own realizations about why he has anger problems and it quickly becomes hilarious to watch Jake Johnson struggle to accept how Tram is so knowledgeable and Zen-like. I really liked this story and I think they had the right amount of it, but overall there was little too much going on everywhere else. But I suppose you’d rather have too many good things than too few so I’m guessing this is just a minor blip in season two for New Girl.

Some of my other favorite moments:

• “I will push if I want to push! I hate doors!” – Nick
• “There’s something real creepy about you pal. You want to get weird, let’s get weird.” – Nick when he is first approached by Tram.
• “I feel like I want to murder someone and also I want soft pretzels.” 

New Girl: ‘Models’

After being put on hold last week due to an MLB postseason rain delay, New Girl returned with another solid effort. While the Jess/Cece story fell flat at times, I loved everything about the story of Nick and Schmidt’s friendship and all the weird little details that circled around it.

First, on the Jess side of things, we saw her do her best to be a part of Cece’s birthday celebration by hanging out with the rest of Cece’s model friends. The best portion of this was that we got to see Cece’s crazy Russian roommate Nadia again and got to hear her plan for the birthday: “We go party tonight. Let dogs out. Catch gypsy.” Also, we got a nice call back to Nadia’s love of Wilmer Valderrama, first introduced when she listed off all the things she liked about America on her date with Schmidt last season. Besides a couple of okay gags mixed in, I could have done without so much time devoted to this plot; however, I’m glad that if the show was required to have blatant product placement for financial reasons that they didn’t try to force into a great overall episode where it didn’t belong.

But over on the guys’ side things? That was really funny and delightful. I loved that the whole questioning of Nick and Schmidt’s friendship was completely sparked by the fact that Schmidt simply brought Nick back a cookie because he was thinking of him. Pure and simple genius. Max Greenfield and Jake Johnson have become so good at expressing every emotion that their characters are going through that they don’t have to be on a big adventure or life changing dramatic moment for us to enjoy their screen time. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where the smaller the scope the better. The evolution of their friendship and the intricacies of their give-and-take relationship were fantastic to watch and moments like that make New Girl a must watch comedy.

Some of my other favorite moments:

• “Oh that’s make-up? I would take that off. You look crazy.” –Nick’s confusion on the shoe polish eye-liner she put on to go out.
• “The only time a man is allowed to think about another man is when that other man is Jay Cutler.” – Nick. Two Chicago Bears quarter back references in one night as Max tried to live out one if fantasies with Jim McMahon over on Happy Endings.
• “It’s official. We’ve got to turtle-proof this loft.” – Nick after he decided he was going after a turtle for a pet.
• “That wasn’t a cookie, damnit. That was a piece of his heart.” – Winston on what the cookie represented for Schmidt.
• “What’s going on? Did you guys watch porn together again?” – Jess on seeing the guys awkwardly sitting around together.
• “You’re the only turtle I want.” – Nick doing his best to describe his love of Schmidt.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: Double the Deschanel, Double the Fun

New Girl returned tonight with two new episodes, which is very exciting because it was far and away my favorite new comedy from last season, especially after it really tapped into all of their characters comedic strengths around episode of 8 or 9 of last season.

Episode 1: Re-launch

And tonight’s premiere kept the momentum going and then some. I really love that the gang is back together and, like the title of the episode suggests, they are re-launching themselves. Schmidt has returned to full health and Jess is going to have to find some new ways to keep busy/ make a living, a great idea for storylines going forward. Nick is his same old crazy self, spouting out weird phrases and crazy ideas like it’s his job. This episode was pretty Winston light, but he made the most of his screen time while drinking his delicious fruity drink.

Really happy with the guest stars in the episode too. I think I could listen to Parker Posey tell people that they’re a bunch of stupid jerks on a loop for a solid 17 straight minutes. And Nelson Franklin being the blandest good guy in the world was hilarious, hope we get more of him in the future.

Some of my favorite parts:

• Nick explaining to Jess that their apartment isn’t a fancy hotel which is why she can’t run the sink while someone is taking a shower
• Schmidt blaming Obama for Jess getting laid off
• “When did gum get so fancy?” – Jess mocking Nick being a grumpy old man

Episode 2: Katie

I don’t think I ever lost a grin during the duration of this episode. Everything about Nick freaking out about the possibility of time travel was amazing. The Schmidt/Winston story was a little weaker but it had it’s moments. Also, the spectacular guest starrage continued into the second episode. David Walton as the CupidMatch guy was fantastic, “I’m going to grab a couple of brunches.” And then Josh Gad as Bearclaw was the perfect amount of weird and pathetic.

Some of my favorite parts:

• The Schmidt “douche-bag” jar is still taking donations.
• “I know you didn’t shower today” – Old Nick “Well good guess it’s a Wednesday” – Nick
• “Don’t say all that weird stuff and leave!”
• Z is for Zombie
• “Why are nothing but your breasts covered? Are you a doctor?”

Great start to the season thus far for New Girl, looks like we could be in store for an absolutely wonderful season.

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.