New Girl - 1x09 - The 23rd

Now this was a much better episode. I liked this a lot. Jess is quirky, but believeable, with a legitimate problem that she handles maturely though not perfectly. The guys continue to be the high point of this show, and even Winston gets something awesome to do. And most importantly, cause I'm a huge damn wussy dork, we get more of the awesome Cece/Schmidt. Overall, pretty damn cool.

I'm beginning to think of all Schmidt's office plots are lifted
out of unused porno scripts.
[Ed: additional research conducted]

The majority of this ep happens at Schmidt's Office christmas party. It's kind of weird how all of a sudden we're focusing on Schmidt's office life, but we do get some pretty sweet stories out of it. Since he's the only guy in an all-woman office, he has to play Santa every year. Sexy Santa. There is some seriously weird form of sexual harassment going on in this office, as apparently it's his boss making him do this. Not the pregnant one from last week, or the rival making sexy faces at him last week, but a whole other woman who seems to hate him for no real reason. After some light encouragement/flirting from Cece, he gets the jingle bells to stand up for himself, and have a weirdly harassy sexually charged encounter with his boss.

Cece, meanwhile, has aquired another douchey boyfriend (we know he's douchey because he likes to publically tongue the hell out of her, and hates her wacky fake moustache), even as Schmidt is being an adorable doof, trying to make time with her. He makes her a custom perfume that smells like dirty dish towels as a Christmas present, but the gesture was just enough to make her soften towards him just a little bit. I love this pairing.

"Now listen, if you keep quiet, and let your mommy give
me lots of money, you don't have to find out what happened
to the rest of Santa's elves, get my meaning?"

Winston, meanwhile, gets a sweet story line, as he bonds with Pregnant Boss' shy kid during the party. They're both hiding out from socially awkward situations they don't really like or understand that much. When he's the only one who can find the kid after Schmidt's Sexy Santa scares the crap out of him, Pregnant Boss offers him a baby sitting job with a shitload of money. "Whatever amount of money you're thinking of? Add more money to that." See, I like seeing a side of Winston where he's genuinely enjoying himself.

Meanwhile the main thrust of the episode lies with Jess, Paul, and Nick. Christmas is coming and Jess is freaking out because she can't figure out what to get Paul. They've only been going out a month (really? only a month? Well this is Christmas, and they started on Thanksgiving, so I guess...yeah...), so she doesn't want to go overboard, but she also wants to show him he's great. Her first attempt is a hand made gift certificate for "Awkward Nerdy Sex", which Nick steals in another subtle Nick/Jess ship moment of horseplay.

PrintScreen + Paste + Print, ladies...

After that, she goes with a plush recreation of a middle-aged smoker's heart that coughs "badum badum" when you squeeze. Surprisingly Paul agrees with me that it's pretty fucking awesome. Unfortunately, it kind of pales to his gift: plane tickets to Vienna and passes to the Salzberg Music Festival, with a bonus "I Love You" on top.

Jess is not pleased. And is now wondering what would've happened if she'd gotten him the same roller skates she bought the guys.

Nick is back to acting as Jess' confidant/confessor/make-feel-betterer after a few eps away from that role, and tries to counsel Jess about the fact she doesn't love Paul back. He tells her that she should just tell him the truth, but she doesn't want to break his heart during the holidays. Unfortunately, it's all kind of moot, since Nick stupidly tries to make Paul feel better about Jess not loving him back, before she's actually had a chance to break it to him. That's definately a party faux-pas.

Absolutely horrified, Nick tries to take it all back in the most hilarious backpeddling scene I've ever seen. It's this weird mix of manic babble-talking, excuse making, and soothing, flat tones. It's awesome. As soon as I can figure out a way to upload video clips without getting a SWAT team from the MPAA showing up, I will. It seems to go on forever, at least until Jess finds them, and starts flipping out. Nick tries to get out of there to let Jess and Paul get on with their super awkward breakup in private, but the door's jammed and he's trapped in an awkard hell of his own making with no way out. And this seems to last forever too, but not in a bad way. Somehow they made stretching out this joke actually work for them, complete with bad seat positioning and interupting phone calls.

After all is said and done, and Winston lets them all off the balcony, Nick makes his customary end-of-episode grand gesture, and misses his plane home for the holidays (for fourth year in a row) in order to take Jess and the gang to Candycane Lane, a street with awesome holiday decorations that she loves. When they realize they got there too late, Nick starts obnoxiously knocking on doors (and getting everyone else to do it) until the houses light up with Christmas cheer. Awww...I think...That was actually pretty hooligany...those folks were sleeping. Anyway, I think the official verdict is Aw.

It's actually surprising how much screen time gets devoted to the Jess/Nick relationship this ep, without ever actually coming out and saying it outright. I counted like three times this episode where Nick's the one who comes over to Jess without any prompting asking what's wrong, is she all right, etc. His whole playful comment about using the Nerdy Sex Gift Certificate himself definately rang out of place considering the strictly platonic stance the other guys take in regards to her. The fact that he was all up in her Paul business (again!) was also weird, from a plotting point of view. And of course, there's his now-almost-mandatory end-of-episode grand gesture. Plus there was that weird slip at the end where he's mad that "our Christmas" is ruined because the lights aren't on. Obviously they're setting him up to be the romantic lead, but like I said in Cece Crashes I really like how it's not being played too obvious. It's just kind of developing.

Less episodes like last week's, more episode like this!