Fox’s New Girl ended
its fifth season recently where the fictional drinking game True American,
played by the main characters of the show, reared its beautiful head. No one
quite knows what the rules of the game are (although The Internet claims itknows how to play), but the rules are unimportant. The game is an excuse for
the characters to shout random, funny things, and the few True American scenes
we’ve seen throughout the series’ run have always been guaranteed laughs. The
second half of New Girl’s series run has
essentially become a version of its fictional game- random, unstructured,
nonsensical, and really funny.
Back in 2014, my Cord Cutters Podcast host and I werediscussing the series finale of How I MetYour Mother, which led to a discussion of our favorite sitcoms of all time.
I mentioned that New Girl had a
chance to make my Top 5. While it was coming off of a horrendous first half to
its third season, the show had an
excellent second season to follow up a very good rookie year. I though at the
time that if New Girl could right the
ship and return to the level it was at for its sophomore season, then it had
the potential to be transcendent.
Early on, the show realized the incredible chemistry that
its lead Zooey Deschanel had with her co-star Jake Johnson (who plays Nick
Miller) and spent its first two seasons setting the table for the two to come
together in Season 3. The first two seasons were excellent. It successfully
left us with our new version of Jim and Pam (Nick and Jess) and it created a
star out of Max Greenfield (Schmidt). Most sitcoms struggle out of the gate,
but New Girl gave us an above average
pilot and built upon that success (even though it had to replace one of its
main characters by Episode 2) and by the end of the second season the show was
clicking on all cylinders. It realized that its success hinged on Schmidt’s
good-at-heart douchebaggery, Jake Johnson’s ability to spout random one-liners,
and the flirtation Johnson had with Deschanel. The show still had problems, mainly that it
never was able to successfully integrate Lamorne Morris’s Winston after having
him replace Damon Wayans Jr.’s Coach due to Wayans contractual obligations to Happy Endings, but with A and B subplots
involving Schmidt, Nick, and Jess every week, Winston’s C plot / whatever he
was doing with the other three was easily overlooked.
Then came the horrendous third season. Many people would
blame Nick and Jess coming together as the reason of the downfall (making
Schmidt an insufferable asshole was personally my biggest complaint), but
that’s a pretty generic complaint. The issue was not that Nick and Jess
inherently starting dating, it’s that the writers didn’t know how to make that
relationship as funny as it used to be. Just ask Elizabeth Meriwether, theshow’s creator. As the great TV writer Mindy Kaling once said, “If a couplegets together and its boring, the characters are bad”. While that certainly was not 100% true in New Girl’s case, the sentiment behind
the statement was factual. By failing to maintain the success of Nick and Jess
together the same way the show had when they were beforehand, the entire show
suffered.
Luckily, the show was able to learn from their mistakes. New Girl blew everything up and
basically started from scratch. It was weird approach for the show (or really
any show) to take. New Girl very
easily could have gone back to the semi-serialized version of what it was in
its first two seasons, but they instead hit the reset button and created a
whole new series. Same characters, different structure.
This approached bothered me at first, mainly because it was
so jarring. It was frustrating seeing an incredible episode like “Eggs” (one ofthe show’s funniest episodes where we also learn that CeCe needs to get
pregnant ASAP if she ever wants to have kids) and then not treat the content of
the episode seriously. Three years later we finally see the culmination of
Schmidt’s and CeCe’s relationship in the poignant Season 5 finally that was
their wedding, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that the show told the audience
that CeCe is essentially barren and then ignore this piece of information like
it was nothing. This lack of discipline the show seemed to have caused me to
give up on it towards the end of the fourth season.
Fortunately, my wife was a fan of the show and started
simultaneously re-watching the old episodes that had previously irritated me
while also watching this new season. Doing so gave me a new appreciation for
what the show has done after it hit the reset button. It wasn’t the same show
that I had previously said had the chance to make my list for top 5 All-Time
favorite sitcoms, but it was damn funny. The show realized what I comic gem it
had Lamorne Morris and he became the loveable, yet insane goofball wild card.
Schmidt and Nick were elevated to co-leads and each week was an excuse to have
them do what they do best. Jess was slightly relegated to third fiddle which
was fine because she works best when playing off of Nick and Schmidt. The show
also soon got rid of Coach, who had briefly returned after Happy Endings was officially cancelled, as he was yet another mouth
to feed for a show that didn’t know how to feed him. The show was still
frustrating, but it did the very exact thing every sitcom should do- it made me
laugh.
New Girl has now
turned into a show that still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as a final
product, yet is a comically charming excuse for funny actors to be funny. These
characters will get into a situation that normal humans (or even these
exaggerated people that exist in the world of sitcoms) would never get
themselves into, yet it works for New
Girl as the writers know what these characters have to do in order to
generate laughs. The show is completely unstructured, but it works. Just like a
game of True American.
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