New Girl - 1x19 - Secrets

So right off the bat, that whole Cece/Schmidt conspiracy/secret lasts all of two minutes. Winston, unable to live with unholy knowledge, is compelled to exorcise it from his very soul, by expelling its dark cloud from his lungs and forcing it to infect the nearest living soul, Nick.


What? That's totally what I got out of the bizarre grapple that preceeded the secret.

Also, I've watched entirely too much Stargate.

Now, in turn, Nick apparently gets a weird sweaty back/nervous tick thing when he keeps a secret (which, really? seems like this would have come up before), and thus can only hold out for about thirty seconds when Jess starts making mean faces at him.

That whole bit was really good interplay between Jess and Nick. Their whole dynamic usually revolves around Nick yelling at her for something until one of them apologizes. Here, she's giving him shit, exploiting his weaknesses and breaking him without effort. Maybe I just subscribe to the Conan the Barbarian school of relationships, but it finally feels like these are full time friends instead of plot archetypes.

Also, later, when Nick tries to lamely score points for telling her the truth, Jess rebuffs with a merciless "Because you're weak, Nick. WEAK", which is my newest ringtone. Now I just have to meet someone named Nick.

So, real question: how close do you think they came to saying "wetback"?

Anyway.

The good news is that they're not dragging that shit out, Friends style. On the other, what the hell was the point of it all? Maybe someone in the writer's room just got tired of it? Maybe the whole point was the plethora of legitimately great scenes of Cece hiding her shame, and dropping said shame off eight blocks away from his house?

I asked some European friends if "Jew in the Couch!" was an
actual game on The Continent, and now they won't talk to me anymore.

You can activate Berzerker Mode on your Manic Pixie
Dream Girl by booting into Safe Mode.

The bad news is that Jess is sooper pissed at Cece, for "keeping secrets", and that's where the rest of the episode lives. Much like everyone else's shock, this never really made sense to me. Is it really THAT big of a deal? I mean on paper, yes, Cece, the sober rock of the group going for the King Douche himself is unexpected (especially since, presumably, no one else has been privy to the sweetnesses we've seen), but does it really warrant the melodrama? Or, worse, are we supposed to be seeing some weird left over jealousy from when Jess almost hooked up with Schmidt? I hope not, but was still a little disappointed we didn't get any reaction from Jess when they told her when they started. Seemed like a Chekov's gun there.

So Jess, tired of all these motherfucking secrets in her motherfuckin house, throws down a hard "no more secrets" rule. So pretty much everyone admits to wanking off to Jess. Did not see that coming.

Shut up! That wasn't a pun!

Believable, yes. Understandable, sure. But admitting to it? Really? That's just bad form is what it is. Jess is SO obviously squigged out by the very idea. I can't imagine anybody seeing her reaction and still moving forward. Deny, deny, deny. Everyone will know you're lying, and you know everyone will know you're lying, and they know you know. But, dammit, we live in a society people, and sometimes that means we all have to agree to not traumatize someone by crediting them as a featured guest star in this week's episode of Happy Endings. It's the bare minimum we do in order to co-exist without dressing like Eastern European highway hijackers.

This PSA brought to you by Holy Shit She's Finally Gonna Kill Them All 

Also, a bonus "ew!" to Jess for repeated use of the phrase "self completing"? Just, ew.

Jess relents when she realizes that Cece actually really likes Schmidt. The only ones shocked by this are Jess and Cece. Mostly Cece, which makes me wonder where she's been the past few weeks. But then she gets sad because Schmidt keeps insisting to Jess that they're not "like that", which makes me really wary. Don't try to tell me that the barrier to them becoming a real couple is Schmidt not wanting to commit, because I wouldn't buy that if it came with a free iPhone.

Wasn't that the phone Fancyman gave you, Nick?
Fuck you, Nick.

Oh, and while all this is going on Nick is having trouble giving the brush off to the 21 year olds he's been recently bedding. A) Maybe this should've been the Part 2 to Fancyman Part 2, especially since we actually have several connected storylines here and B) At least it's confirmed that he's bedding 21 year olds and not 17 year olds. At the very least it means he's not furnishing alcohol to minors to get them into bed. Also they look older than the girls last week. Also, also, one of them was Cerie.

Seriously, fuck you, Nick.

He seeks out Schmidt to teach him in his ways because, as he puts it he's "been having consensual sex with Cece...he's better than us at this... I might respect you." Hah!

I do wish we could've gotten something from Nick on WHY he wants to Barney all these women. I mean it's not unbelievable or anything. He probably doesn't have anything in common with them, but none of them seemed horrible or annoying, and were all really sweet, so a throwaway line or something would've put a nice ribbon on that subplot. Still, we get some great lines out of Nick's horrible lying. Everything from that great fist pump up there, to "Jesus took your scarf." Honestly, this is probably the biggest thing I love about this show, the eminently quotable asides and effortless non-sequiturs that are just all over every conversation. Just in that one scene we get Winston's panicked "pull back on that yoke", Schmidt's whole "lesser paramours ... weathered stone steps...Hindu temple" douche-spiel, and then after THAT, Chubby Schmidt's dead-serious "this is the real stuff." I'd pay good money to see how that writer's room works.

Despite Crazy Angry Jess, Douchey Nick, and Smarmy Schmidt all making appearences, MVP of the episode clearly goes Winston by a mile. His rending Theodore K. Mullins on the Down Low speech shut down two girl fights, Jess' new terrorist chic fashion, and made Nick feel horrible about himself, all in one fell swoop. Applause, good sir, applause.

I would like to thank for this honor...don't you dare think about playing me off...