I’m not one bit afraid to
admit that I’m essentially addicted to TV, and I watch way too many TV shows to
pick just one show as my favorite TV show, so I usually have to break my
favorite shows into lists based on their genre. One thing I do know is that New
Girl currently ranks very high on the list of my favorite comedies. My favorite
comedy that’s currently on the air is definitely It’s Always Sunny in
Philadelphia with Happy Endings being such a close second favorite that it’s
almost a tie, and New Girl follows Happy Endings on the list. That being said,
I thought that this was a fantastic episode with a lot of very funny moments.
Jess, Nick, Winston and Schmidt
all had Christmas parties that they had been invited to, and they went to each
of them together along with Cece and Nick’s girlfriend, Angie. One of the
Christmas parties that they went to was a party thrown by Jess’ friend, Sadie,
and her girlfriend. While they were there Jess saw that Sam was also there and
promptly tried to run from the party in a panic and a great deal of slapstick
humor ensued along the way. I have to say that this episode featured a great
deal of slapstick humor in general, but I’ll talk about that some more later.
Sam was eventually able to
find where Jess had run off to, and he told her that he wanted her back, which
prompted Jess to fixate on trying to decide if she should believe Sam when he
says he really likes her and give him another chance. I have to say that I
found that extremely random and confusing, so after I watched this episode the
first time I went back and watched episode 2x06 “Halloween” again to try and
make sense of how Sam could suddenly decide that he wants to get back together
with Jess. Unfortunately, that didn’t really help clarify things for me.
One thing about this episode
that I thought was a bit on the stupid side was the whole thing with Winston
getting a cranberry stuck in his ear while Jess, Nick, Schmidt and Winston were
all playfully throwing cranberries at each other. Winston spent half of the
episode talking really loud, and it turns out that Winston was the one who was
responsible for Sam knowing what party Jess was at, because he told him about
the party in exchange for him agreeing to take the cranberry out of his ear. I
have to say that the only truly funny moment stemming from Winston’s storyline
in this episode was when Jess was telling Sam that she was dating Winston and
he couldn’t understand anything that she was saying. Other than that, the whole
thing with Winston getting a cranberry stuck in his ear got old really quickly
and wasn’t very funny at all.
I know that a lot of people
consider Max Greenfield to be the breakout star of the show, and while I do
think that Max is a great actor and that Schmidt is a funny character, Jake
Johnson is the true breakout star of New Girl, in my opinion. I also love Nick
a lot more than Schmidt as a character. Personally, I think Nick has a lot more
funny moments on the show than Schmidt does, and sometimes I think that Schmidt
can come across as too over the top and annoying with his womanizing tendencies.
Schmidt has definitely been annoying me a fair amount lately, especially when
it comes to how he’s been treating Cece and reacting to her dating Robbie.
Personally, I found his constant pouting throughout the episode about Cece
rejecting him rather annoying, and his crabby attitude in this episode about it
being Christmas time when he’s Jewish was equally annoying. I know that he
apologized to Cece at the end of the episode, but that still didn’t make his
behavior any less annoying to me.
What I love about the
character Nick is that he serves as a great literary foil to Jess who is a very
cheerful, upbeat and optimistic person, whereas Nick is often a very cranky and
pessimistic person. Plus, I’ve always loved the running joke about Nick’s
zombie novel. Another one of my favorite things about Nick as a character is
definitely the facial expressions that Jake Johnson makes in scenes. Sometimes
the look on Jake’s face in a scene alone is enough to make me laugh
hysterically, even if he’s simply making a face in response to something
another character has said.
Maybe the facial expressions
that Jake Johnson makes in scenes isn’t something that other viewers have paid
attention to and thought about as much as I have, but I always really enjoy
watching his facial expressions. Jake Johnson’s facial expressions on the show
reminds me a lot of how John Krasinski makes funny faces at the camera on The
Office. I just hope Jake Johnson and the show in general doesn’t over do it
with Jake’s facial expressions like John Krasinski has, because John Krasinski
making funny faces at the camera isn’t funny anymore. If anything, it’s rather
annoying now. After a while I started to feel like Jim was being an attention
whore and desperately trying to get the documentary film crew’s attention by
making funny faces at the camera all the time. I have to say that I’m not
extremely worried about that happening on New Girl though, because The Office
is supposed to be a documentary about the employees at Dunder Miflin, so the
characters are aware that they are being filmed and have at times acknowledged
the presence of the camera even though the writers never had the documentary film
crew say anything to the characters on camera until this season. With New Girl,
Jake Johnson/Nick isn’t supposed to be staring at the camera, the camera is
simply focusing on him as he’s talking to another actor in the scene, but I
digress.
I found Nick’s storyline in
this episode was especially enjoyable. Throughout the episode Nick repeatedly
insisted that he loved having a girlfriend who’s a stripper, but he acted
extremely awkward about it pretty much the entire episode until he upset Angie
when he told her that he was under the impression that she wasn’t planning on
being a stripper on a long-term basis. One of my favorite moments from the
episode was when Nick and Angie started to have sex in a sleigh only to have
everyone at the party realize what they were doing promptly leading Nick to try
and run away and hide with his pants down by his ankles, which caused him to
trip and get trapped under the white sheet that was supposed be snow. That
whole sequence was hilarious, and I thought that Jake’s performance in that
scene was flawless.
Jess and Nick ended up
having a nice moment together when they talked about their romantic problems at
the Christmas party for Winston’s job, and Jess helped Nick to see that being
with Angie could possibly be good for him because she’s fearless and he tends
to be a bit of chicken. Jess’ words motivated Nick to tell Angie that he’s not
brave and fearless like she is and he’s very lucky to be dating her in front of
everybody at the party. He followed up his apology to Angie with an extremely
awkward, yet extremely funny lap dance for her. The whole thing with Nick giving
Angie a lap dance got even funnier when Schmidt cut in and started giving Angie
a lap dance. That was probably the only time I liked Schmidt in this episode.
If there’s one thing that I
think the writers for New Girl have always done a good job of is the will they
or won’t they element of Jess and Nick’s relationship in terms of whether or
not they will get together at some point in the future. I think it’s pretty
safe to say that it’s inevitable that they will get together at some point.
Maybe other people will disagree with my take on the way the writers have
handled Jess and Nick’s relationship, but I love how the writers have
constantly been putting Jess and Nick in situations where they act like a couple
such as when they went to a wedding together in episode 1x03 “Wedding” in order
to help Nick avoid doing anything embarrassing in front of Caroline. One of my
favorite Jess and Nick moments from the series as a whole was when they had dinner
together in episode 2x03 “Fluffer”, in order to help Jess feel more comfortable
sleeping with Sam along with the fight that they had about Nick not wanting to
be Jess’ “fluffer”.
I love how the writers have
had Jess and Nick admit to each other on several occasions that they’ve found
the other sexually attractive at times and have thought about what it would be
like to have them become a couple without that promptly leading to them getting
together, and based on this spoiler along with several other spoilers
that I’ve read, it sounds like they will continue to do that later this season.
That’s something you don’t really see shows do all that often with will they or
won’t they storylines about two people, so I have to say that I applaud the
writers for the way they’ve handled Jess and Nick’s relationship in a fairly
original way for a TV show.
That being said, for the
time being I’m really enjoying the Jess and Sam pairing for a lot of reasons.
First off, I think Jess being in a no strings attached relationship has led to
a lot of great comedic material as she tries to navigate that kind of
relationship when she’s been established as a character who gets very
emotionally attached to the men that she’s dated. It’s also led to some great
moments between Jess and Nick, especially in episode 2x03 “Fluffer”, which is
definitely one of my top favorite episodes of New Girl. However, it will be
interesting to see where they things go with Jess and Sam now that they are
going to be in a committed relationship instead of having a casual relationship
like they had been before they broke up.
Aside from Sam suddenly
deciding that he wants Jess back in this episode, I think he’s a very well
written character and I think his personality is a nice contrast to Jess’ in
terms of his tendency to act like an aloof douche bag at times. Plus, I think
that the writers having Sam be a pediatrician and very good with kids when he’s
frequently acted like a bit of a jerk towards Jess makes him a fairly complex
and layered character. The fact that they had Sam rather randomly come back in
this episode saying that he wants Jess back makes me wonder if that’s something
the writers had always planned and they simply executed Jess and Sam getting
back together rather poorly. I’m not sure how popular the character Sam and
David Walton with New Girl’s audience is as a whole, but maybe the writers
hadn’t originally planned on having Jess and Sam get back together only to
switch gears and bring him back, saying that he wanted to get back together
with her. Since I really like Sam and the relationship between Jess and Sam,
I’m just going to try to not obsess over how poorly the writers handled them
getting back together and just enjoy that they are together again.
One last thing that I’d like
to mention about this episode is that I liked the role that the debate between
Jess, Nick, Winston and Schmidt about whether or not Santa actually exists
played in Jess deciding to give Sam another chance and the episode as whole.
Jess continued to debate whether or not to give Sam another chance as they were
driving home towards the end of the episode only to have a cop pull Jess over
because she was swerving the car towards one lane and than the other side of
the road. Jess broke down in tears and told the cop that she would never drink
and drive, and he told her that he believed her because sometimes people tell
the truth. Jess decided that she believed that Sam was telling the truth when
he says he wants to give their relationship another chance, and Jess, Nick,
Winston, Cece and Angie also decided that the cop was an African American
Santa, which I thought was hilarious.
All in all, aside from the
whole thing with Winston getting a cranberry stuck in his ear and shouting for
half of the episode, which was beyond stupid in my opinion, as well as Schmidt
acting like an insufferable jerk, I loved this episode for the post part. It
had a lot of really funny moments, especially for Jess and Nick. While I found
Sam’s sudden change of heart about wanting to have a romantic relationship
poorly handled by the writers, I loved the whole scene at the hospital and I’m
really looking forward to seeing where things go between Jess and Sam.
That being said, I give this
episode a rating of a B+.
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