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.

thoughts on Safety Not Guaranteed (spoilers)

Aubrey Plaza stars as Darius, a magazine intern who is assigned, along with staff writer Jeff (Jake Johnson) and fellow intern Arnau (Karan Soni) to research a story about a man who has placed an ad for a time traveling companion.  Jeff is the one who suggests the story, and it seems the only reason he did so is because the story will lead them to a coastal town where he hopes to reconnect with an old summer romance.  Once there, Jeff and Darius take turns approaching the man who placed the ad (Kenneth, played by Mark Duplass) pretending to want to be his time traveling companion.  Kenneth is immediately put off by Jeff, who gives him the standard lines about wanting to go back in time because he thinks it'd be cool to see dinosaurs and gladiators and all that; Kenneth and Darius, however, get along well, and she begins preparing for the time travel adventure with him.  She at first assumes he's crazy, and at one point thinks he's just flat-out lying about some of the things he's told her, but she grows to like him and begins to think maybe he's not so crazy.  Because I feel like I can't talk about my reaction to the movie without talking about the ending, I'm just going to go ahead and give it away: the movie ends with Jeff, Darius, and Arnau discovering that Kenneth really has made a time machine, and then with Darius boarding the time machine with him and the two of them disappearing.  Seriously.  That's how it ends.

Here's why this blows my mind: I never for one second thought that Kenneth had made a time machine, or at least not a working one.  I didn't think he was lying, exactly; I thought, based on stories that he told Darius, that he dearly wished he could go back in time to stop a particular event from happening, so he'd convinced himself that it was possible.  Darius has an event that she'd like to stop, too, so I thought part of her also wanted to believe him.  Because their story is intercut with scenes of Jeff reconnecting with his old summer love (Liz, played by Jenica Bergere) only to discover that she is still viewing him as a summer fling, and therefore a temporary part of her life, I thought this was a story about wishing that you could go back and be with the people you loved at the last time your life was really good, only to realize that that's not possible.  The fact that it seems that Darius and Kenneth really do travel back in time, however, suggests that maybe it is.  We don't really know, because we don't know if Darius and Kenneth are successful on their journey.  So...I'm not really sure if I get what this movie was about.  Also-- and this is perhaps a nitpicky point-- I don't really understand what kind of a magazine would pursue this story in the first place, and I don't believe that it would pay three employees to stay in a hotel and investigate this for more than a couple of days.  I don't know.  The performances were good and I had an okay time watching this; I just don't think I get the takeaway, or even know if there is a takeaway.

thoughts on New Girl Season Two

This show, you guys.

As many of you know, I liked the first season a lot.  The second season is much better.  The first season introduced us to likeable, interesting, flawed characters and put those characters into funny situations.  It was very well-written.  However, in the second season, we got to know those characters, and their stories started to move forward.  For example...

...Nick and Jess.  In the first season, it was clear that something would happen between them eventually.  In the second season, something did happen, and it was, at different times, hot, touching, messy, and frustrating.  Always believable.

The two have their first kiss in episode fifteen, "Cooler." The plot of the episode is as follows: Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris), and Nick (Jake Johnson) plan to go out with the intention of getting laid.  Jess (Zooey Deschanel) wants to go, too, as her hot doctor boyfriend, Sam (David Walton), is working late; however, Nick tells her that she can't because she's his "cooler": he never gets laid when she's around.  At the same time, a neighbor's trench coat has been delivered to their apartment by accident, and Nick loves it and begins wearing it everywhere even though it is a woman's trench coat.

The guys go out, and Jess is initially just bored at home alone, but then she begins hearing scratching noises at the door and gets scared.  She tries calling Sam, who initially doesn't answer because he's busy at work; her best friend Cece (Hannah Simone), who is out on a date with Shivrang (Satya Bhabha), a man she is in the courtship stage of an arranged marriage with; and finally Nick.  Nick answers, of course, because he loves her.  Anyway, the guys wind up leaving the bar with a couple of girls and coming back to the apartment; they are eventually joined by Cece, Shivrang, and Sam.  They play a "sexy" version of the drinking game True American, and at one point the "rules," such as they are, require Nick and Jess to go behind a door and kiss.  Nick drags his feet about kissing her, to the point where Jess begins to feel a little insulted and wonders why he doesn't want to kiss her.  "I just don't want to kiss you like this," he blurts out.  She is flabbergasted-- what does he mean, like this?

Later that night, the game is over.  Jess and Sam go to bed in her room.  Nick goes to bed in his.  However, eventually the scratching starts up again, and Nick and Jess both go to investigate.  It turns out to be a large dog being chased by a woman.  The woman is apologetic until she realizes that not only has Nick not returned the trench coat that has been delivered to him by mistake, but he has apparently been sleeping in it ("It gives me confidence," he tries to explain).  She leaves, and Nick and Jess start to head back to their rooms.  But then Nick takes her hand and pulls her to him, and they share what I daresay is one of the best TV kisses I have ever seen.  Jess agrees; in the next episode she will tell Cece, "He just...took me!  He was firm, yet gentle!  He was a man, and I was a woman, and for just a minute, I saw through time and space!" 

Regardless, the two don't instantly become a couple.  She's still dating Sam.  Then she and Sam break up, but by then, Nick is dating his new boss at the bar.  Then Nick's dad dies; it brings Nick and Jess closer, but when they try to go out on an actual date, it's kind of a mess.  Finally, Nick remembers something his dad told him: the best things in life are the things you don't think about.  Jess is about to leave to meet up with the guy she lost her virginity to years ago, who is in town and has contacted her.  She gets on the elevator, but just before the door is about to close, Nick holds the door and gets in with her.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Not thinking," he says.  They go back to the apartment and make love.

Here's what I love about all of this: the two are a great couple in a lot of ways.  They have great chemistry.  They're always there for each other.  However, the show doesn't try to ignore the characters' flaws or the actual problems they would realistically have.  It's been established that Nick is kind of a mess; he dropped out of law school and now works as a bartender, which isn't horrible, or anything, but he doesn't really have any idea what he wants to do next, drinks too much, and has kind of a Grumpy Old Man personality.  He has a lot of good qualities, too, and it seems like he will try harder at life for Jess, but it's not like he just automatically becomes the perfect guy or like the show tries to sweep his issues under the rug.  I also like that while, sure, it's pretty normal for TV to delay the couple getting together, all of the things that get in Nick and Jess's way are pretty believable.  Finally, I like that through all this, the show still stays its wacky self.  Games of True American.  Silly storylines like the whole trench coat thing.  Schmidt and Winston eventually trying to sabotage Cece's wedding.  It stays the show we knew and loved in the first season, but explores the characters with more depth.

This brings me to Schmidt.  He was my favorite part of the first season.  I liked him in the second season, too, but I feel like as we got to know the other characters more, they all started to be more of a balanced ensemble, with no one standout.  I consider this a good thing.  Also, he stopped being just the womanizing, clean freak, formerly overweight funny guy with commitment issues to a fully rounded character.  Near the end of the second season, we meet Elizabeth (Merritt Wever), who he dated for years when he was overweight.  She still is overweight (though she is not now, nor was she ever, as heavy as Schmidt once was).  They initially fell in love because she didn't care what anyone thought, which he appreciated and loved about her when he was heavy; however, as he began to lose weight, *he* started to care more about appearances, and, as she puts it, "got mean."  They start to date again at the end of the second season, though it's not like he still doesn't care about appearances or isn't generally his funny but slightly douchey self, and it's not like he's not still hung up on Cece, who he dated off and on through much of the first season.  Again, the show doesn't skate over any of this or try to pretend he's suddenly this perfect, stand-up guy.  I liked this a lot.

Oh.  And the second season also manages to work in the song "22" by Taylor Swift and to give Swift a cameo in the season finale.  That's also pretty awesome.

Bottom line, I fell in love with this show even more during the second season.  I can't wait to catch up on the third.





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.