New Girl Rewatch 2020 Part Two: Nick and Jess (spoilers)

I have more complicated feelings about Nick and Jess's relationship than I do about Schmidt and Cece's.  In fact, by the end of writing this, you will see that I actually have quite a few problems with their relationship dynamic.  The show acknowledges those problems and has them work through them, but I'm just not sure if it's enough.

When they first meet, Jess (Zooey Deschanel) has just gotten out of a long-term relationship with a guy named Spencer (Ian Wolterstorff); their break-up and her need to quickly find a new place to live, in fact, is what prompts her move into the loft with the guys and sets up the whole series.  Nick has just gotten out of a long-term relationship with a woman named Caroline (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), who he will get back together with briefly at the end of the first season.  Neither Nick nor Jess is really looking to date, and dating your roommate isn't ideal, anyway, so they become friends.  It's clear fairly early on that they care a lot about each other-- they both consistently go out of their way to help each other and do nice things for each other-- and that they have a lot of chemistry which, early on, channels itself into heated arguments.  Eventually, however, they dip their toes into dating other people.  Jess dates a music teacher named Paul (Justin Long) and an older, wealthy divorced man named Russell (Dermot Mulroney).  Nick dates a lawyer named Julia (Lizzy Caplan) and a stripper named Angie (Olivia Munn).  None of these relationships last.

The reason that Jess's relationship with Russell doesn't last hints that she would be better off with Nick, but also made me question what she values in a relationship.  Jess becomes friendly with Russell's ex-wife, Ouli (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and the three of them have dinner together one night.  Russell and Ouli get into a heated argument about nothing, really-- the point is just that the two of them really push each other's buttons.  As the two of them argue, Jess looks jealous, almost, and she later laments that she and Russell don't have the same passion for each other.  "Yeah.  They got divorced, though," I think to myself.  Passion and chemistry are important, of course, but being constantly at each other's throats isn't a great thing or sustainable in the long-term, and passion and chemistry all on their own aren't enough to sustain a relationship.  She breaks up with Russell because she feels that there is something missing, and her feelings for Nick are eventually the main cause of her break-up with her next boyfriend, Sam (David Walton).

Even though it's obvious from pretty much the beginning that Nick and Jess are "end game," all of this is a little frustrating to watch as a viewer at least partly because, with a couple of noteworthy exceptions, Jess tends to date really great guys throughout the show, many of whom she could ostensibly be happy with.  I guess that's fairly true to life; yeah, sometimes relationships end because one person cheats or does something really awful, but in my experience, it's more common for them to end (or just not get off the ground in the first place) because one person's heart isn't in it, or one person wants things to move more quickly than the other person is comfortable with, or lack of compatibility, or lack of chemistry, or unresolved feelings for someone else.  That's why relationships are hard; it's not that everything has to be perfect, but a whole lot of things have to be right, and both people have to be okay with the things that aren't right.

That's also why Nick and Jess, when they do inevitably get together, are less fun to watch than Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Cece (Hannah Simone).  Schmidt is the type of guy who Goes Big, carrying out an elaborate plan to sabotage Cece's wedding to Shivrang (Satya Bhabha); nearly getting kicked out of a first-class airport lounge defending her honor when a wealthy older man suggests an Indecent Proposal scenario; and dropping to one knee and proposing on the spot when she finally admits she loves him at the end of Season Four.  Nick is less comfortable with his emotions, and he never seems to know what he wants.

Further, through much of the series, he doesn't have his life together in ways that would probably have more severe consequences if he didn't have good people in his life looking out for him.  Nick and Jess kiss for the first time in Season Two and date through most of Season Three.  Their inevitable break-up is foreshadowed in a couple of key Season Three episodes, "The Box" and "Thanksgiving III."  In "The Box," Nick, who never has any money, inherits eight thousand dollars from his late father and seems determined to blow through it as quickly as possible.  Jess is concerned about this, and even moreso when she discovers that he has a box full of unpaid bills and traffic tickets in his closet.  He won't hear of using the money to pay those bills, so Jess secretly starts using his money to pay them on his behalf.  When he finds out, he is furious, and it turns into a "Stop trying to change me! You're not perfect, either!" thing where he literally starts throwing her purses out the window.  The whole episode is infuriating; I mean, yeah, you can't really take someone's money secretly even if it's to pay that person's bills for them, but other than that, Nick is OBJECTIVELY in the wrong here.  And even though Nick eventually lets Jess help him set up a checking account, she, sort of throwing him a bone or whatever, goes on a rant in the bank all, "Why do we have to keep our money in banks? Banks are a conspiracy to keep tabs on our money!," which I think we're supposed to think is sweet and a sign that she's willing to compromise in their relationship, but comes across as patronizing, and as enabling genuinely crazypants behavior.

In "Thanksgiving III," Nick decides that the whole gang should go camping for Thanksgiving.  No one really likes the idea, but Jess talks them into it.  Nick is supposed to take charge of the food, but when they get there, they discover that he has packed only beer and intends for them to "live off the land." Again: this is genuinely insane.  Not only does Nick have no idea how to hunt or fish, but I can tell you right now that people who DO know how to hunt and fish take other food with them when they camp.  Also, there is a Bob's Burgers episode with a similar plot, meaning that Nick officially enters cartoon dad territory in this episode, only on Bob's Burgers, Linda and the kids react like normal human beings, tell Bob he's being ridiculous, and hit up some fellow campers for some supplies.  Jess, on the other hand, enables this genuinely insane behavior by insisting everyone else go along with it.  When she discovers that Winston (Lamorne Morris) and Cece plan to go to town to buy food (as any rational people would in this scenario), she goes with them and insists that they only buy things that they ostensibly could have found in the forest.  AND NICK BELIEVES THEM UNTIL HE SEES A STICKER ON AN APPLE, as if forests are just full of all types of fresh fruits and vegetables.  And Jess actually FEELS BAD about lying to him, eats a fish that he reveals that he actually just found, didn't catch fresh or anything, and literally winds up in the hospital.  At this point, we realize that their dynamic has become Jess going along with Nick's ridiculous bullshit in the name of seeming supportive, all the while going behind his back to try to mitigate the damage.  It's not a good dynamic.  At all.

(Side note: this is one of many times throughout the series that I worry that there is something genuinely wrong with Nick.  This is a character who supposedly got into and attended law school, yet sometimes he says and does things that are so stupid or childish or crackpot that I'm convinced that the only reason that he is even still alive is that he's had Schmidt taking care of him for basically their entire adult lives. And this is who we're supposed to want the main character to end up with.)

Because this is, for the most part, a well-written and smart show, eventually Nick and Jess realize that they don't have a healthy dynamic.  He constantly feels like she is trying to change him.  She constantly feels like she is having to nag him just to get him to behave rationally and responsibly.  So they break up, because when you're just friends, it's really not your problem if one of your friends doesn't want to pay his bills, and you can just say no if they invite you on an insane camping trip with no food (although, honestly, the whole gang puts up with more of Nick's dumb crap than they really should).  Nick does some growing up over the next few seasons, eventually (with Schmidt's help) buying a share of the bar he works at and then, later, writing a book that winds up being unexpectedly popular with pre-teen girls, which leads to the creation of a successful young adult series.  When he and Jess eventually do get back together, you at least aren't worried about her...though, to be honest, Nick still seems like a lot of work to be with, and I still found myself wondering if she wouldn't have been better off with basically any one of the perfectly nice guys that she dates over the course of the show.  She gets back together with Sam for awhile.  She has the chance to get back together with Russell.  She always chooses Nick.  I guess the heart wants what it wants.  But, as they say on another very good show, You're the Worst, sometimes the heart is a dumb-dumb.

New Girl Rewatch 2020 Part One: Schmidt and Cece (spoilers)

It's pretty rare for me to watch a show all the way through to it's end, especially if it lasts more than, say, five seasons.  Something usually happens to make the show worse.  Sometimes original characters leave the show, such as on The Office (though I did eventually go back and watch the episodes after Steve Carell left, and some pretty important stuff happens to the other characters and some new characters are introduced that are actually pretty funny).   Sometimes the plot becomes contrived in order to keep the premise intact; I'm thinking of Glee and how the kids continually went back to being outcasts no matter how successful the glee club was, and how Sue Sylvester would continually go back to being an over-the-top villain even after it seemed she had forged a bond with the kids or with Mr. Schuester.  Other times, the plot moves too far from the original premise and basically becomes a completely different show (didn't the last season of Scrubs involve a couple of the main characters teaching in a medical school or something?  I don't know; as I said, I don't usually stick around for stuff like that).  Still OTHER times, shows that occasionally employed slapstick humor start relying on that too much for lack of other ideas (Perfect Strangers, Full House, etc.), or a popular minor character who was funny in small doses becomes the focal point (Urkel on Family Matters).  I've realized that all of the shows that I've mentioned are comedies; perhaps comedic premises are hard to sustain over time, or what's funny for awhile isn't funny forever.

Rewatching New Girl, I would argue that it actually got better as it went along.  In the first few episodes, it seemed like the characters were reduced to their broadest personality traits or character types.  Jess was pretty yet goofy, awkward, and quirky.  Cece was her hot model friend.  Nick was a lazy, angry underachiever.  Winston didn't come in until the second episode, and Schmidt was always kind of his own thing.  Over the show's seven seasons, though, their characters develop beyond broad types; they mature and actually get the things they have been working towards the whole time, both personally and professionally.  It's a delight to watch it happen.  

I was planning to write just ONE blog entry about my thoughts on the rewatch as a whole, but I realized it was going to get really long and take literally hours to write, so I'm going to do this in stages.  Today, I'd like to talk about Schmidt and Cece.

In the first few seasons, Schmidt and Cece's relationship is actually pretty frustrating.  At first, they're hooking up; Schmidt wants more, but Cece acts ashamed of him and you almost feel bad for him.  Then they get together for real, but his insecurities get in the way.  Then he's a jerk and tries to sabotage her other relationships, including her arranged marriage to Shivrang.  Then he finds himself in the awkward position of having the opportunity to date EITHER Cece or his college girlfriend, Elizabeth, and he...doesn't choose.  He dates both and just doesn't tell the other.  It's awful.  But then something really nice and unexpected happens, which is that they develop a real friendship, realize that they are basically each other's favorite people, and they get together for good.  Once they realize they're both all-in, they don't waste time.  They get engaged at the end of Season Four and married at the end of Season Five; she discovers (or rather, everyone accidentally finds out before she does) that she is pregnant at the end of Season Six, and Season Seven flashes forward to the two of them with an adorable three-year-old daughter named Ruth.  

This is maybe the best I've ever seen a show handle the addition of a kid.  Granted, she was only around for a season, but I feel like on a lot of shows either you just don't really see the kid that much, or the kid totally takes over.  In this case, Ruth is worked into the story in a way that makes sense, but doesn't overpower the show.  First of all, Schmidt becomes a stay-at-home dad, which might seem odd given how career-focused his character always was, but actually makes A LOT of sense when you think about it.  He was always the caretaker of the group-- the one whose name was on the lease of the loft; the one who covered the bills if any of the rest of them were short on cash; the one who cleaned and/or made the rest of them clean.  The other roommates call him the "group mom" at one point, and they really do kind of have that dynamic-- they don't always appreciate or even really notice all that he does for them, but things fall apart when he stops.  It TOTALLY makes sense that he would put a ton of effort into throwing a special third birthday party for Ruth, that he would learn to do "special braids" for her, and that he would keep a rigorous schedule for her while still being fun and loving.  Hats off for making this happen on a sitcom without making either Schmidt or Cece the butt of a joke for it; this is just what works for them, and fits with what we know of both of them as characters.

Along those lines, I feel like the show dealt with Cece and Schmidt's transition to married life and parenthood a lot more smoothly than a lot of shows do, and I feel like the way that they did this was by having certain tensions that this causes between them and their friends be present in a realistic way, but not that big of a deal or handled in a heavy-handed way.  There is an episode, for example, where Cece and Schmidt move into their first house; their friends keep busting in on them at inappropriate moments, either for advice or just stumbling in drunkenly.  Both Cece and Schmidt are exasperated by this, but it's framed more as an "oh my God, it's way too easy to break into our house" issue rather than a "we need to sit down and have a Serious Conversation About Boundaries" issue.  Sometimes your circumstances change and your friends don't catch on right away.  It's something to deal with, but doesn't have to be a whole big thing.  I think that's pretty realistic.

Also along those lines, there is a kind of cute tension between Nick and Ruth.  In one episode, Nick gets frustrated because he's trying to get Schmidt's help with a career problem, only Schmidt is exhausted because Ruth isn't sleeping.  Nick says something like, "You always loved helping me fix my life before SHE came along!" Ruth just grins at him and gives him two thumbs up.  Later, Nick tells Ruth something like, "You know, I was your dad's special little girl before you came along."  She just looks at him like, "Okay, you weirdo."  I feel like on a worse show, this would have been the focus of an entire episode that would have ended with the two of them having a big, heartfelt conversation.  Instead, it's just something that's kind of there-- Nick is a little put-out that his friend doesn't have as much time for him anymore now that he has a kid, but it just is what it is.  Part of life, but not that big of a deal.

Basically, even though Cece and Schmidt are ostensibly secondary characters to Nick and Jess, they wind up being the two that you really root for, and once they are on the same page, they're a really great couple.  Their relationship was probably my favorite part of the show.

Let's Talk About Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction

I can clearly remember the first piece of tween fiction I ever read, and it was Teacher's Pet, the second book in the Sweet Valley Twins series featuring Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield as sixth-graders.

I remember going to the local public library and asking if they had any Baby-Sitters Club, which I had not read yet, but that I knew that my older cousin read.  They didn't.  My brother pointed out Teacher's Pet to me because the girls were dressed like ballet dancers on the cover. I did not then, nor did I ever, take a ballet class; we lived in the country outside of a town of about 300 people, and there were no dance classes.  However, I knew people who went out of town to take them, and a couple of my cousins took them, so I was interested in the idea of dance classes.  Anyway, so I checked out the book, loved it, and read roughly a zillion more of them in the coming years (most of them had nothing to do with ballet, by the way).  I must have only been ten years old at the time; I remember my mom saying I was only allowed to read Sweet Valley Twins and not Sweet Valley High because she thought Sweet Valley High would be too mature, but eventually (I don't remember how old I was), we were at a bookstore that only had Sweet Valley High and not Sweet Valley Twins, so my mom was like, "Oh, fine, you can have one," and I'm pretty sure in the first one I read, an older guy takes Jessica to a bar and orders her a "boilermaker," which I guess is a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser, so yeah, my mom wasn't wrong about the "too mature" thing.

Regardless, I read both series for years and years, along with The Baby-Sitters Club and some lesser-known middle school series such as The Fabulous Five, Girl Talk, Sleepover Friends, Pen Pals, and eventually, young adult series with slightly older protagonists such as Sunset Island, which featured au pairs working for rich people during the summer between high school and college, and Boyfriends/Girlfriends, later renamed Making Out, my all-time favorite, which featured a group of Maine teens living with the aftermath of a car accident that had left one person dead, one person with amnesia, and one person confessing to a crime he didn't commit.  These books were fun, quick reads with often soap operatic plots, often featuring characters with lives I either related or aspired to.  I still love to read, but I don't know if I've ever had as much fun reading as I did back then, back when there were multiple series I followed with new books that came out literally every month.  There are still boxes of these books in my parents' basement.  My mom always says someday I'm going to have to do something with them.  It would be fun if I had enough bookshelf space to display them all.

It is these books-- both the more popular ones like Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club, along with an impressive number of the more obscure ones, even some that I hadn't read-- that Gabrielle Moss chronicles in Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction.  Organized by the themes that were persistent in these books such as love, friends, family, etc., Moss explains the phenomenon of teen series fiction of the 80s and 90s, arguing that while some aspects of these books are problematic by today's standards-- they are mostly about middle- or upper-middle-class white girls, for example, alienating a large portion of their potential audience-- they were important in that they were both about and for young women, meaning that publishers acknowledged that girls' day to day lives were worth writing about and that, as an audience, pre-teen and teen girls were worth catering to.

The book even looks like some of the teen fiction from the 80s and 90s, or like a teen magazine from that era, with glossy pages featuring lots of pictures and bright colors.  It is a quick, nostalgic read, providing history and analysis of the books while also revealing some background facts, such as how the Baby-Sitters Club covers were created (fun fact: as a toddler, Kirsten Dunst modeled for Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls). 

Though I caught a couple of weird errors that should have been caught in the editing process, as a whole, the book is a great read for anyone who grew up reading these books.  Two thumbs up!