While I’m beyond excited
that the third season of New Girl has finally started, I’m sad to say that I
found the season premiere rather disappointing. Honestly, I feel like the best
part of the episode was the Jess and Nick storyline, while I found Schmidt
rather annoying. When it comes to Winston, I thought that he was really funny
and Lamorne Morris did a great job in the episode. Unfortunately, I also found
the writing for Winston in this episode rather sloppy and random, but not
random in a good way. I’ll get into that some more later.
The episode basically picked
up right where the season two finale ended with Jess and Nick driving off
together very spontaneously without any kind of plan for where they were
headed. They both seemed to be pretty giddy at the beginning of the episode, saying
that they wanted to be together and that they were “All In”, hence the title of
the episode. Initially, they went back to the loft, but after Schmidt
repeatedly texted both Nick and Jess, while Winston said that he wanted to
start working on putting a puzzle, they once again ran off together.
Somehow they managed to end
up in Mexico, and honestly I’m not sure how they managed to drive there so
quickly. I’m also a little confused as to how Jess managed to get past border
control without Nick’s passport, and possibly hers, when they went to Mexico
given the fact that later in the episode Jess had to rush back to the loft to
get Nick’s passport after he ended up in “resort jail”, but I digress. Anyway,
Nick took an instant liking to Mexico, calling himself “Paradise Nick”, but he
ended up getting arrested after he was caught by some security guards at the
resort without a bracelet that people staying at the resort apparently needed
to wear. I have to say that I found the whole part with Nick running from the
security guards and into the ocean; saying that they couldn’t arrest him,
because he was international waters rather funny. That was definitely a classic
Nick moment, if you ask me.
Meanwhile, back at the loft
Schmidt was dealing with the fact that he had run off in the season two finale
when Elizabeth and Cece told him that he had to decide which one of them he
wants to be with. Initially Schmidt wanted to turn to Nick for advice about
this, but with Jess and Nick off in Mexico, he decided to declare Winston his
best friend. Despite the fact that
Schmidt was venting to him about his current predicament, Winston was wrapped
up in his own little world and decided that it was the perfect time to start
working on putting a puzzle together. Apparently, Winston has a tendency to act
really weird and intense when he’s working on puzzle. It was also established
that Winston isn’t very good at doing puzzles, the reason for this being that
Winston is apparently color blind, which Jess, Nick and Schmidt figured out
towards the end of the episode. Yeah…I didn’t see that coming at all.
While I thought that Winston
was very funny in this episode, and I also think that Lamorne Morris did a
fantastic job in this episode, the whole subplot with Winston working on a puzzle
and the revelation that he’s color blind is definitely one of the weaker
aspects of the episode. I’m having a really hard time buying the whole thing
about Winston being color blind at the moment. I probably wouldn’t have that
big of a problem with it if they had done this subplot and established that
about Winston no later than the end of season one. Given the fact that this is
the season three premiere, the whole thing just comes across as being something
the writers simply pulled out of their asses, because they couldn’t think of
anything else to do with Winston in this episode. Although, I did like role
that the revelation about Winston being color blind played in the ending of the
episode after Nick accidently shredded his passport, because he was worried
that things won’t work out between him and Jess if they left Mexico and went
home to the loft. Other than that, this whole subplot mostly came across as the
writers being lazy when it comes to the writing for Winston in this episode.
Maybe some people will
disagree with my thinking on this, but a big part of me wants to blame Cece for
the predicament that Schmidt is currently in. After all, she essentially spent
all of season two dating other men and looking for a husband after she found
out in the episode “Eggs” that she apparently has a very limited window of time
where she’ll be fertile and able to have children. While all of that was going
on, she was constantly rejecting Schmidt until the season finale where she left
Shivrang at the alter, saying that she was in love with someone else, which
would be Schmidt. Schmidt’s with Elizabeth now, but Cece seems to want Schmidt
to dump Elizabeth and get back together with her. I just can’t help but view
Cece being incredibly self-centered at the moment.
Don’t get me wrong, Schmidt’s
not entirely innocent in this situation either given the fact that he ran off
at the end of the season two finale and is currently stringing both Cece and
Elizabeth along, making them each think that they are the one he wants to be
with. Plus, I hate that he basically told Winston that he expects his friends
to drop whatever they are doing at a moment’s notice whenever he needs their
help. It also pissed me off that he forced Winston to throw himself under the
bus and lie to Cece after he had lied to Winston, which is something that
Winston had specifically told him not to do if they were going to be best
friends. Winston definitely humiliated himself pretty thoroughly and made
himself come across as a complete and total creep when he was lying to Cece and
was awkwardly trying to cover for Schmidt. All in all, I’m definitely not a
huge fan of Schmidt at the moment. Hopefully he’ll be able to redeem himself as
the season continues.
After Nick was arrested,
Jess rushed back to the loft to get Nick’s passport and some money. Once she
did that she went back to Mexico with Winston and Schmidt in tow, so they could
bail Nick out of jail. Jess was worried about what would happen to Nick if he were
in jail for too long. She was hoping that somebody would take him under their
wing and look after him like a mentor, which is just…weird. This led to Jess,
Winston and Schmidt discussing the possibility of Nick becoming somebody’s
bitch. Personally, I thought that whole conversation was pretty funny.
Fortunately for Nick, he
didn’t end up being sent to an actual jail, but rather “resort jail”. Apparently,
people who are in “resort jail” just sit in a room and can watch episodes of
Ugly Betty or other TV shows if they want. Honestly, that doesn’t sound too bad
to me, because I love Ugly Betty. At first Nick wasn’t happy that Jess had
Winston and Schmidt come back to Mexico with her, saying that he’s afraid that
if they go back to the loft that things won’t work out between them. Jess told
him that she knew things might be difficult and complicated between them now
that they are a couple, but she wanted to go back to the loft, saying that she
didn’t just get a new place when she moved in with them, she also got a family.
Usually I’m not someone who
likes to be extremely nitpicky about the logistics of a TV show, but when it
comes to this episode, I just couldn’t seem to stop myself from questioning
quite a few aspects of this episode. First off, I have no idea how Jess managed
to drive all the way to Mexico during the night at the beginning of the
episode, drive back to the loft after Nick got arrested, and then drive back to
Mexico with Winston and Schmidt in tow, which she appeared to do very quickly.
Maybe they are living in some kind of time warp where they are able to drive in
and out of the United States several times in just a few hours.
The other thing that seemed
really weird to me was the fact that Winston was still wearing the makeshift bandage
that he had put on his arm after the badger bit him in the season two finale,
and yet after the opening scenes of the episode they showed him wearing a short
sleeve shirt and his arm looked perfectly fine. It’s like the writers simply
decided to ignore the fact that his arm had been badly injured very quickly,
which just seemed incredibly lazy on the writers’ part.
All things considered, the
season three premiere was just slightly above average in my opinion. The whole
Jess and Nick storyline was definitely the biggest highlight of the episode for
me personally. Honestly, I couldn’t stand Schmidt in this episode at all. He
just came across as being incredibly self-centered and acted like a complete
and total dick throughout this entire episode, which really prevented me from
finding anything that he did or said in this episode all that amusing. I’m not
crazy about Cece right now either though.
While I found Winston
incredibly funny and I thought that Lamorne Morris did a great job in this
episode, I’m just not all that crazy about the fact that the writers decided to
reveal that Winston is color blind at this point in the series. Maybe my
opinion regarding the whole thing will change in the future if they reference
Winston’s color blindness in future episodes. If they don’t, then I’ll most
likely look back on Winston’s storyline in this episode and think of it as the
writers being lazy and pulling something random out of their asses in order to
give Lamorne Morris something to do in this episode. One of the things that
I’ve found myself thinking about the most when it comes to this episode is that
I feel like the writers were being rather lazy when it came to putting some
thought and effort into the script for this episode as a whole.
That being said, my final
score for this episode is 6 out of 10.
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