Netflix update/New Girl

As some of you know, my first series upon returning to Netflix was House of Cards, which I liked a lot.  I checked out Orange is the New Black next, but I shut it off partway through the third episode; my exact thought was, "I'm not sure if I can handle this at all, and I definitely can't handle too much of it at once." Also crossing my mind: "I am NEVER doing ANYTHING illegal, because I would not last a DAY in prison." There's this whole hierarchy you have to figure out, and, as illustrated in the second episode, if you mess up, there might even be organized attempts to starve you, and there won't be a thing you can do about it, and-- yeah.  I've heard good things about this show, but I just don't even want to think or know about what might go on in prison. 

I then switched to the second-to-last season of Weeds, which I liked better for a couple of fairly shallow reasons: the episodes were short, and funny sometimes.  However, the problems the characters were dealing with were along the lines of, "my prison girlfriend just got out of prison, and she's being all clingy, so I'm going to burn down my new boyfriend's house and make it look like she did it so that she'll get out of town and leave me alone" and, "I accidentally took over another drug dealer's turf and now I'm in a war." Even though I've watched this show in the past and like and care about some of the characters, I just don't feel like I want to know about any of this.

Enter New Girl, in which Zooey Deschanel plays Jess, a middle school teacher who moves in with three random dudes she finds on craigslist following the demise of a six-year relationship.  The dudes are as follows:

First is Nick (Jake Johnson), a cranky bartender and law school dropout who spends most of the first season getting over the demise of his relationship with a woman named Caroline.  He dates a lawyer at one point.  At another point, he meets up with an old friend who is working on his Ph.D. and starts hooking up with a bunch of college girls as a result.  He eventually "backslides" back into a relationship with Caroline.  He and Jess will almost certainly get together at some point.  Since there have been two seasons of this show and I've only seen one, they probably already have.  I hope they already have.  I get impatient with "will they or won't they" nonsense both in real life and on television.

There is also Winston (Lamorne Morris), who played basketball in Latvia for a couple of years and replaced Coach (Damon Wayons Jr.) as their roommate after the first episode, at which time I assume Damon Wayons Jr. joined the cast of Happy Endings (R.I.P.).  During the first season, he works as a temp, then a nanny, then eventually becomes the assistant to some big-time sportscaster on a radio show.  He eventually gets into a serious relationship with a woman who apparently did not make a big impression on me, because I thought her name was Stephanie and IMDB tells me her name is Shelby.

Finally, there is Schmidt (Max Greenfield), who I saved for last because he is 1) my favorite, 2) ridiculous, and 3) the most difficult to explain.  His personality is such that his roommates keep around a Douchebag Jar that they make him put money in when he says or does something particularly douchey.  He is an obsessive clean freak and loves to cook.  He used to be overweight.  He spent most of the first season hooking up with Jess's model friend Cece (Hannah Simone); the two of them clearly like each other a lot, but keep getting in their own way.  This description really doesn't do him justice, though, so here is a compilation of his best first season moments. Thanks, Youtube!

The plots of my two favorite episodes of the first season are as follows:

1) Schmidt gets fed up with Nick trying to fix things around the house and calls a plumber.  Nick is offended by this, and a war ensues in which Nick "unfixes" everything he's fixed.  At one point, they wind up shouting at each other because Schmidt once spilled a pitcher of Midori sours on a blanket Nick's nana made for him. The conversation goes something like this:

"I gave you a check for $30!"

"My nana is dead, Schmidt! I'm not trying to make money off of her!"

"Yeah, well, she gave you that blanket for free, so as far as I'm concerned, you're up $30!"

"Who drinks Midori sours anyway?"

"Everyone does!"

"Would I ever drink a Midori sour?"

"It's a melon liquer with ancient influences!"

"Would Winston ever drink a Midori sour?"

 

Meanwhile, Jess tries to teach some of her students to play hand bells.  Winston gets involved and gets way too intense about it.

2) Jess realizes that she and her new boyfriend (Russell, a rich older dude played by Dermot Mulroney) only ever stay at his place, so she invites him to spend the weekend at the apartment.  Nick falls kind of in love with Russell.  Schmidt is oddly competitive with him.  To break the tension, Jess suggests they play a ridiculously complicated drinking game called True American.  Also, Nick and Schmidt try to pitch Russell a product called Real Apps, which appears to be basically the stuff you would find on a Swiss Army knife attached to a phone case.  Schmidt actually only came up with the name, but as he says, "people wouldn't line up around the corner for the iPhone if they called it the Smelly Germ Brick."  Russell is eventually accidentally stabbed with the product.  He and Jess have their first fight.

See? Episodes that basically start with a normal roommate/single person problem and then escalate into hilarity.  I was a big fan of the show Happy Endings, and the things I praised about it was that "80% of the storylines are completely ridiculous" and "I like that it's not trying to be about some big thing"; at the time, I was getting frustrated with the time it was taking to meet the mother on How I Met Your Mother (another show I like a lot, though less now than I did during the first few seasons) and was happy to watch a show without some big goal.  The thing that I think makes New Girl a little bit better than Happy Endings, though, is that though it doesn't have "some big goal," you get the sense that it is going somewhere.  The characters' lives progress in realistic ways.  Jess's first relationship following the demise of her six-year relationship is with a guy who is very nice, but basically exactly like her; I think we all eventually figure out that we're better off with someone who challenges us a little bit.  Her next relationship, with Russell, lacks passion; as of the end of the first season, she hadn't yet realized that she has that with Nick.  Similarly, Schmidt comes across as a womanizer, but it only takes about halfway through the season before he's only sleeping with one woman consistently; they may or may not make it work, but he actually shows that he is growing and maturing as a person.

Also? The season ends with all of the characters rocking out alone in their rooms to "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC.  Enough said.

I really like it, everyone.  It came along at just the right time for me-- both when I was looking for some lighter summer viewing and shortly following the cancellation of Happy Endings-- and I definitely want to stick with it.  I hope that the second season is released on Netflix before the third season starts this fall.