Let me begin this post by
saying that as a hardcore Jess/Nick shipper, this is the episode that I’ve been
dying to see pretty much since New Girl began. I’ve said this before, and I’ll
say it again; I’ve always loved the way the writers have handled the will they
or won’t they get together element of Jess and Nick’s relationship. Personally,
I’ve always found Jess and Nick’s relationship rather refreshing and original
when you compare the writing for their relationship to couples on other TV
shows, such as Ross and Rachel on Friends.
If you ask me, it was very
risky on the writers’ part to have Jess and Nick kiss each other fairly early
on in the show’s run, but after seeing how the whole episode played out I think
it really paid off to have them kiss in this episode. I thought it was handled
very well. As I mentioned in this post (Why Jess and Nick's [SPOILER] almost didn't happen), the creator of the show, Elizabeth
Meriwether, had originally planned to have Jess and Schmidt be the ones who
went into the other room to make out, and not Jess and Nick when they were
playing a new version of the game True American. I’m not sure how that would have
impacted the Jess and Nick material in this episode if the writers had gone
that route, but I’m glad that they changed it to Jess and Nick being the ones
who ended up being sent into the other room to make out. The idea of Jess and
Schmidt kissing each other in any situation just seems beyond weird to me, and
I’m not sure that I’d want to see that.
Nick absolutely cracked me
up in every scene that he was in, especially when it came to him wearing the
women’s trench coat that he found and the way he and everybody else was talking
about it. Nick thought that he looked really cool wearing the trench coat and
kept saying that it made him feel very confident, but everybody else just kept
reminding him that it was a women’s trench coat. The way that he was acting
about the trench coat in this episode was classic Nick, and it once again
reminded me why I think Jake Johnson is the true breakout star of New Girl.
The whole bit with Nick and
the trench coat wasn’t the only thing that I found rather amusing when it came
to Nick in this episode though. Nick and Schmidt met a girl named Holly at a
bar who was basically aroused by sadness, which just sounds beyond weird to me,
but I suppose there are probably people in the world who are really like that.
Personally, I thought that Brooklyn Decker did a great job of playing the role
of Holly and I really liked how she played Holly’s fetish for sad men in such a
comedic way. Anyway, Nick and Schmidt spent most of the episode trying to
one-up each other when it came to convincing her that they had the saddest
life, which I thought was hilarious. It actually kind of reminded me of the
first episode of the TV show Go On and the whole “March Sadness” competition
that Ryan came up with for the other people in the support group to play in
order to decide which person in the group had the best sob story.
If you ask me, in some ways
this episode serves as a nice companion piece to the episode “Fluffer” from
earlier this season. At the beginning of the episode, Schmidt wanted to go out
with Nick and Winston, because he was determined to find a girl to have sex
with. It was classic Schmidt when he was telling Jess, Nick and Winston about
his failed attempt at jerking off and equated it to try to pull taffy on a hot
summer day. Jess’ reaction to that was priceless. Jess wanted to go with them,
saying that she could be their wingman since Sam was working a late shift at
the hospital and Cece was ongoing on a date, but they adamantly objected to the
idea of her going with them because they think she’s a “cooler” and that she
kills the mood whenever she talks to a girl that they are trying to flirt with.
They even showed a flashback of Jess doing a palm reading of a girl that Nick
was with where she encouraged the girl to get back together with one of her
ex-boyfriends in order to illustrate the idea of her being a “cooler”, which I
really liked.
Winston’s storyline once
again didn’t really stand out to me all that much, which seems to be the case
with his storylines in most episodes. Throughout the episode Winston kept
saying that he didn’t know how to talk to women, which I honestly can’t really
buy as a viewer. The reason why Winston’s storyline in this episode didn’t
stand out to me all that much is that it came across to me as a poor attempt at
imitating the running gag on The Big Bang Theory that Raj is unable to talk to
women without drinking alcohol due to the fact that he suffers from some kind
of social anxiety disorder. The thing that made this storyline fall flat with
me is that the writers have shown in the past that Winston can talk to women
without too many problems, so it seemed rather random to me. Although, they did
do a storyline in the episode “Fluffer” where Winston was unsure of how to talk
to his ex-girlfriend, Shelby, about the fact that he had been fantasizing about
other women since they hadn’t been having sex in a while, but his inability to initiate
that conversation seemed to be due to the fact that it was definitely a
sensitive subject.
While the guys were hanging
out at the bar, Winston met a girl named Daisy who ended up giving him advice
on how to talk to women after she told him that she was engaged. In the end,
Daisy admitted that she was single and that she only wears the diamond ring she
was wearing when she goes to bars and doesn’t want to have guys hitting on her.
That seemed a little weird to me, but I guess I can understand that there might
be times when she doesn’t want men bother her in bars and would want make
people think that she’s unavailable. That being said, Winston storyline definitely
felt like filler to me. Although, I just read on the Wikipedia page for New
Girl that the role of Daisy is a recurring guest-star role, so if that’s true
it looks like we’ll be seeing Daisy/Brenda Song again. Even if this episode was
meant to serve as the setup for Winston and Daisy becoming a couple, Winston’s
storyline in this episode still came across as filler to me instead of feeling
like it was setting up a new storyline for the character.
Cece continued her search
for a husband in this episode, and she was on a date with a guy named Shivrang
at the movies when Jess called her repeatedly due to the fact that she thought
somebody might be trying to break into her apartment. Cece’s date thought that
she was making up the whole thing about Jess texting her as a way to bail on
their date, but she insisted that wasn’t the case. I have to say that I’m still
not really sure what I think about this storyline with Cece wanting her parents
to set her up with guys so she can get married and have kids while she still
can. To me, the whole thing just seems like a very bizarre plot device that the
writers have come up with to keep Cece and Schmidt apart. I get that the
writers have made it clear that Cece’s motivation for wanting her parents to
fix her up is because she found out in the episode “Eggs” that she apparently
doesn’t have a very big window of time to have kids if she wants to, but this
whole storyline still seems bizarre to me regardless of Cece’s motivation for being
open to the idea of having an arranged marriage.
That being said, I loved
Shivrang and his reactions to the whole scenario, especially once they went to
Jess’ apartment. The actor who played Cece’s date, Satya Bhabha, reminded me a
lot of Adhir Kalyan who plays Timmy on the TV show Rules of Engagement. Satya Bhabha
played the part very well, if you ask me. The casting directors definitely did
a great job of casting all the guest-star roles in this episode, not just the
role of Shivrang, in my humble opinion.
With the guys hanging out at
a bar, Jess was all by herself in the apartment and spent the evening playing
several weird games such as walking around only wearing a cardboard box while
she pretended to me a robot and making a weird looking doll version of Nick
that was dressed in one of his hoodies. I loved that part due to Nick and Sam’s
reactions to the doll later in the episode. She also dressed up in a weird
workout outfit and pretended to be running in a race, among other things.
However, she ended up hearing strange noises outside the apartment, prompting
her to freak out and call Cece, Sam and Schmidt. Schmidt used the opportunity
to interrupt Nick and Holly’s conversation so he could try and flirt with her.
One thing led to another,
and Nick, Schmidt, Winston, Cece, Holly, Daisy and Shivrang all ended up at the
apartment. Nick quickly once again accused Jess of being a “cooler”. Jess was
determined to remedy the situation by having them play the game True American,
only this time they added a twist to the game and played a “Clinton style”
version of the game. Honestly, I’ve never been able to figure out how the game
True American works, but like I mentioned earlier one thing led to another and
Jess and Nick found themselves in a situation where the rules of the game
stipulated that they had to go into the other room and make out for a little
while, which caused Nick to start freaking out.
Jess thought that they
should just kiss, but Nick was still mad at her for interfering with his
attempts to hook up with Holly. Nick also told her that if he were to kiss her,
he didn’t want to kiss her in a situation like the one they were in. She
admitted that she can be a cooler, but she told Nick that he needed to
acknowledge that he’s his own cooler 70% of the time. Things took an
interesting turn when Jess told Nick that with some basic grooming he could be
smoking hot. They just were about to kiss when Sam showed up at the apartment,
saying that he just got Jess’ message. The others quickly filled Sam in on the
situation, and he quickly joined them in egging Jess and Nick on to kiss each
other.
I have to admit that I was a
little thrown to see Sam instantly join in on encouraging Jess and Nick to kiss
when everyone else was chanting for them to kiss after he showed up, since he
is Jess’ boyfriend. When he came back in the episode “Santa” and told Jess hat
he wanted to get back together with her, I thought that meant he wanted them to
be exclusive. Plus, the fact that Sam rejected Angie’s flirtatious advances in
the episode “Cabin” also reinforced my belief that Jess and Sam were being
exclusive, and yet he wasn’t fazed by the idea of Jess and Nick kissing each
other in this episode at all.
Maybe he thought that their
kiss would just be all in good fun since they were playing True American at the
time. Regardless, that aspect of the episode definitely threw me a little bit
and left me wondering about the status of Jess and Sam’s relationship. It
definitely would have been nice to have a clearer understanding of why Sam was
so okay with the idea of Jess kissing Nick, if you ask me. However, in the
episode “Santa” Sam told Winston that he (Winston) was the only one he had ever
really felt threatened by when it came to the idea of Jess getting together with
one of the guys, so maybe that’s why the idea of Jess kissing Nick didn’t freak
Sam out. Honestly, Sam’s reaction to that situation was one of the very few
things that really bugged me about this episode.
Nick still didn’t want to
kiss Jess, saying that it wasn’t the kind of situation where he would want to
kiss her, which soon led to him having another one of his classic meltdowns
where he ended up climbing out of the window. Jake Johnson has definitely
secured a spot at the top of my list of actors and actresses that I would love
to see win an Emmy, right alongside Glenn Howerton for his portrayal of Dennis
Reynolds on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but I digress.
One thing I noticed about
this episode is that the writers seemed to jump from one moment to the next,
which was a little confusing for me at times. For example, it seemed rather
abrupt to me when Sam showed up at the apartment to check on Jess, and then
they quickly cut to Sam and the others egging Jess and Nick on to kiss. Also,
Nick climbed out the window and onto the ledge when he was freaking out about
kissing Jess as the show went to a commercial break, but when the episode
returned from the commercial break Jess and Sam were talking to Nick who had
somehow managed to make it back into the apartment safely. Sam told Nick that
he can’t believe that he jumped out of a window in order to avoid making out
with Jess, which once again made me very curious about why he was so
comfortable with the idea of Jess and Nick making out with each other.
At the very end of the
episode, Jess heard noises coming from the hallway outside their apartment. It
turned out to be the woman who was supposed to get the trench coat that Nick
had found in the mail. She quickly got mad when she saw Nick wearing her coat
and found out that he had been sleeping in it. He gave the trench coat to her,
and told Jess that he was going to miss “Trench coat Nick”. Personally, I
really liked their neighbor’s reaction to Nick wearing her trench coat and I
would like to see her again in future episodes.
Anyway, after their
conversation with their neighbor Jess started walking back to her bedroom when
Nick grabbed her arm and pulled her into a kiss, saying that if he were to kiss
her he would want the kiss to be like that. Their kiss was beyond hot in my
opinion, and I’m not surprised that it left Jess speechless when Sam walked out
of her bedroom and asked if he could put the Nick doll out in the main area
since it was creeping him out. She didn’t give him much of a reply, so he left
it out in the main area as Jess went back to her bedroom with Sam as the
episode came to an end.
It will definitely be very
interesting to see where things with Jess and Nick go from here since it
doesn’t sound like they will necessarily become a couple any time soon,
especially considering the news that I mentioned in this post (Steve Howey Cast as a Love Interest For Jess) about
Steve Howey being cast as a love interest for Jess. That also has me wondering
what’s going to happen between Jess and Sam. My guess is that they will be
breaking up soon, which is a shame because I really like David Walton as an
actor, and I love the character Sam. Regardless of what happens between Jess
and Sam, as well as Steve Howey’s character when he shows up, it looks like
Nick is only going to wind up getting hurt in this situation for a while since
he’s the one who initiated the kiss.
As I mentioned in this
post:Odette Annable Cast as Nick’s New Girlfriend, it was announced earlier today that Odette Annable has been cast as
a love interest for Nick and the role is potentially a recurring guest-star
role, so it looks like there’s definitely going to be some major drama between
Jess and Nick as they deal with the aftermath of their kiss. It’s definitely
going to be interesting to see what happens between Jess and Nick next, and I’m
really anxious to see how Steve Howey and Odette Annable’s characters will fit
into the future of Jess and Nick’s relationship.
All things considered, this
truly was the episode I’ve been waiting a really long time for as a Jess and
Nick shipper. This episode definitely had some great moments between them that
really helped outweigh the things that bothered me about this episode, such Sam
not appearing to have any problem with the idea of Jess and Nick kissing even
though he’s dating Jess. As weird of a plot device as Cece’s whole arranged
marriage storyline has been to keep Cece and Schmidt apart, I loved her date in
this episode and I thought the character Shivrang was very entertaining and
well cast. The character Holly was beyond weird in my opinion, but at the same
time I found the whole thing with her being aroused by sadness rather
hilarious. Brooklyn Decker definitely played the part very well. Winston
storyline in this episode definitely felt like random filler that reminded me a
lot of The Big Bang Theory, but not in a good way. However, it sounds like
Brenda Song/Daisy will be back, so I wish the writers hadn’t made that
storyline come across as filler, especially since it’s supposed to be the start
of new relationship for Winston. As I mentioned earlier, some of the editing in
this episode made things rather confusing to me at times, but all of the great
Jess and Nick material in this episode really does make me feel very willing to
overlook the few things that bugged me about this episode.
That being said, I give this
episode a rating of an A.
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