New Girl: Oh, my god! I can’t believe that Jess and Nick actually… (My thoughts on episode 2x23 “Virgins”)

Once again the writers have managed to reinforce my belief that New Girl is one show that was fortunate enough to avoid the dreaded sophomore slump, which is a very rare thing in my opinion. Personally, I absolutely loved New Girl’s first season, but I’ve actually enjoyed this season even more. A big part of that is due to the direction that the writers have taken the Jess and Nick relationship in this season. Most shows typically drag things out forever before anything even remotely significant happens between two characters that the viewers know will ultimately get together and become a couple, and one couple that constantly comes to mind when I think about how the writing for Jess and Nick’s relationship is different from most shows would be Ross and Rachel from Friends, and honestly the writing for Ross and Rachel’s relationship often annoyed me at times. That’s also why I applaud Elizabeth Meriwether for being fearless enough to deviate from the typical format of will they or won’t they couples on TV shows.

The writers definitely had Jess and Nick take a major leap forward in their relationship, but I’ll talk more about that later since I’m getting ahead of myself. The episode began with Nick, Winston and Schmidt walking in on Jess shaving Cece’s armpits, but she soon got a text message from a guy named Teddy, who Jess quickly revealed was the guy that she lost her virginity to. Anyway, Teddy was back in town and apparently wanted to get together with her for a drink, which prompted Nick to quickly become fixated on wanting to know about Teddy. The whole thing with Nick fixating on Teddy throughout the episode was very funny in my opinion. Jess telling Nick, Winston and Schmidt that she lost her virginity to Teddy quickly led to them each telling the story of how they lost their virginity, and they made it a contest to see who had the worst story.

Jess started off her story by telling them about her prom night. She went to the prom with a guy that she had started a gender equality society with, which led to some very awkward moments between her and her date. Jess ended up storming off, only to run into Teddy in the hallway and they ended up singing together as Teddy played the guitar, which is apparently how they met. However, they didn’t sleep to together that night, which quickly prompted the guys to ask Cece to tell the story of how she lost her virginity.

Cece’s story was pretty short, but it was pretty funny. Cece apparently lost her virginity to Mick Jagger, which is just…bizarre in my opinion. The flashback started with Cece telling a bartender that she just wanted to lose her virginity in a very spontaneous way and not plan it out. A moment later Mick Jagger came up to Cece and told her that he wanted to sleep with her. Mick Jagger didn’t actually appear in this episode, and according to Elizabeth Meriwether, they never approached him about actually appearing in the episode, and honestly I think it was fine that they used a body double to be Mick Jagger since the flashback was so quick. My favorite thing about Cece’s story was the way Hannah Simone was very matter of fact in her delivery when Cece told the others that it wasn’t an embarrassing story for her, she simply likes telling people that story.

New Girl: Get ready to laugh, because it’s time to meet Nick’s dad (My thoughts on episode 2x13 “A Father’s Love”)

Once again I found New Girl thoroughly enjoyable this week. The highlight of this episode for me was definitely Nick’s storyline where he was dealing with the fact that his con artist dad, Walt, had unexpectedly come to town for a visit and was teaming up with Jess to buy a horse, while Jess was determined to play peacemaker between them.

I know I’ve said this before, but one thing that I feel the writers have always done a really great job of is writing the relationship between Jess and Nick. While this episode didn’t really address the whole will they or won’t they dynamic of their relationship, I feel like it did a really good job demonstrating how much they really care about each other even though they are just friends at this point. Nick was furious that his dad had come town since his father’s con artist ways have been causing him problems his entire life, and he got even more upset when his dad persuaded Jess to buy a horse with him, which they named A Father’s Love, after Walt told her a made up story about Nick wanting a horse his entire life. In terms of the writers showing how Jess cares about Nick, the same could definitely be said Jess’ behavior in this episode since she was determined to play peacemaker between Nick and Walt.

I have to say that I like that Nick pointed out to both Jess and his father that Jess has the tendency to be very naive and that she believes almost anything that people tell her sometimes. He proved this by telling her that his name was actually Jamil, which she immediately believed, prompting him to quickly tell her that his name wasn’t Jamil and that she was being too trusting of his father. The whole thing with the writers really emphasizing the idea that Jess is too quick to believe almost anything people tell her at times in this episode felt very true to the way the writers have always written the character Jess, in my personal opinion.

Apparently the reason why Walt wanted to buy the horse was because he wanted to sell horse semen to people Dubai, because it’s apparently very valuable and worth a lot of money there. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but either way that’s just…gross. For a part of the episode the characters were saying the word semen so many times that it seemed like the writers were trying to create a drinking game for the viewers watching the episode where they would take a shot every time someone said the word semen when they wrote this episode.

This episode once again reminded me of why I view Jake Johnson as the true breakout star of show, which I discussed in my review of last week’s episode (My thoughts on episode 2x12 “Cabin”). I feel like Jake stole every scene that he was in, especially the scene where Nick and Walt were trying to sell the horse to several guys and Nick pretended to have a diabetic reaction to some gum after the men insisted that he take his pants and shirt off because they thought he might be wearing a wire under his clothes in order to record their conversation. The writers did a really good job of setting up Nick’s behavior in that scene by mentioning that Nick starts sweating a lot when he’s lying and how his father used to have him pretend that he was having diabetic reaction as a way to get out of a business deal that wasn’t going very well when he was a kid.