Season's Feelings: New Girl - Season 1

Well this was just straight up the most surprising show of the season. If you had told me when the season started that my favorite, most intensely anticipated show of 2011 was going to be Zooey Deschanel in a wacky roommate sitcom, I would've slapped you across the face and demand you leave my lavish castle that instant. But when you slap together a solid writing staff, a stellar cast (headed by Ms. Deschanel herself), and even incredible production values (to this layman anyway), you get hands down one of the best new shows on television.

That's not to say it wasn't rough there for awhile. Everything up until The 23rd was pretty damn hit or miss. With a lot of miss. A LOT of miss. But once the show found it's footing and figured out the voices of its characters (especially Jess), it was pretty damn hard to mess up.

How I Met Your Mother - 7x24 - The Magician's Code, Part Two

Okay first of all, why was the last episode called "The Magician's Code Part One", when it had barely anything to do with this episode. If anything, the last episode should have been called "Good Crazy, Part 2!" I have issues with inappropriate episode title naming.

Now that that's off my chest. So much is happening!

How I Met Your Mother - 7x23 - The Magician's Code, Part One

Lily's in labor.

Marshall's half a state away and three sheets to the wind, Barney's riding motorcycles inside casinos, and Ted is sending out horrible video announcements inviting everyone to share in lily's widening cervix.

Robin is slightly more useful, showing off her heretofore unseen talents in Canadian animal husbandry. Which, in her defense, turns out to be a mostly transferable skill set. At least until she puts down the tarp and slides on the elbow-length plastic gloves. Actually, that probably still works.

How I Met Your Mother - 7x22 - Good Crazy

If you love someone, change them. At least that's what everyone is trying to do this week. Ted keeps turning his dates into Robin (who steals the episode as a hallucination. Again.) Barney tries to get Quinn to quit stripping. Marshall tries to turn Lily into the annoying hyperactive parent he's training himself to be, and Lily tries to get Marshall to chill the fuck out. Meanwhile, I try to force this show to god damn do something, by sheer force of will, and all of a sudden, I succeed!

How I Met Your Mother - 7x21 - Now We're Even

Ted is enjoying the new found freedom that comes from finally living alone for the first time in his adult life. And because it's Ted, "new found freedom" means sad, depressing, and occasionally flat out dangerous things he can do without anybody pointing out how stupid they are.

How I Met Your Mother - 7x20 - Trilogy Time

Speaking of padding...

Every three years Marshall and Ted (and eventually Barney) get together to watch all three original Star Wars movies back to back, reflect on how shitty their lives are, and imagine how much better they'll be in the next three years.

So that means we spend the entire episode swide-swooping through real and imagined versions of the guys lives between 2003 and today, accomplishing little and learning nothing we didn't already know. Well except for one bonus flash forward to 2015...

How I Met Your Mother - 7x19 - The Broath

Let's get the first disappointment of the night out of the way: Ted did not, in fact, go all Bill Bixby after leaving the apartment last week. We are not getting an episode of him hitchhiking through the village, helping widowed mothers keep the ranch, and fighting off road bandits. Instead he manages to do something stupider.

Also, now that things are getting serious with Quinn, Barney makes Ted swear that he won't tell everyone she's a stripper. So he immediately tells everyone she's a stripper.

How I Met Your Mother - 7x18 - Karma

The episode starts with Ted summarizing the last few episodes in like six thousand less words than I did. Which just makes me wonder, why the hell am I doing this again?

Fine, let's try this in bullet points:

Robin's moved out and is crashing at Marshall and Lily's. Ted's trying to cope with his heartbreak by filling the now-empty room with anything other than a constant reminder of who's no longer there. Barney gets taken pretty hilariously, though unbelievably, by a stripper named Karma, who's probably going to end up being the woman he ends up maybe-marrying in that flash-forward-back that's framing the season. Marshall and Lily reveal they've been existing in a living death of old people and shuffleboard out in the suburbs, and try to rope/shanghai Robin into joining them.

How I Met Your Mother - 7x17 - No Pressure

Alright, so it's less of a sprint and more of a light jog. But hey, at least they're going somewhere right? Right? Seriously though, are we going somewhere?

We pick up more or less where we left off last time. Robin, fresh of dumping/being dumped by her fiance of three hours, on the roof. Ted, master of perfect timing, in front of her, telling her, again, he loves her and to take him back. This can only end well.

New Girl - 1x24 - See Ya

It's moving day for Nick, and while Winston and Schmidt are content to crow passive aggressively about how much money they're going to save (and then spend on licensed plumbers), Jess is resorting to direct insults, sabotage, haranguing, and eventually just straight up pleading to get Nick to stay.

And then she goes back to sabotage again.

New Girl - 1x23 - Backslide

Distraught about Russell (and maybe partly about Nick?), Jess backslides into Paul, and no one makes a crude pun, a fact that makes me both proud and disappointed in this show. Schmidt commits to Cece in the sweetest and most painfully disgusting way he can, because he's Schmidt. And Nick has a meaningful conversation with his past self that we will all cherish forever.

Forever.

New Girl - 1x22 - Tomatoes

Nick (maybe as a consequence of his soul searching last week?) decides to seize control of his crapper of a life and he starts by...planting some tomatoes. Or is it one tomato? He plants one plant is what I'm saying. Who knows how many tomatoes are supposed to come from there. Do I look like a goddamned philosopher?

New Girl - 1x21 - Kids

Everyone's babysitting tonight!

Jess starts freaking out when Russell asks her to watch his daughter for an afternoon. Not so much about being responsible for, or bonding with, the kid, but because, well, everyone else in the apartment has a tendency to alienate and frighten outsiders. Hell, last time Russell was there, he straight-up got stabbed. Honestly, it shows a surprising level of trust for him to send his only child into such a den of bloodshed. Maybe he doesn't like her very much. Kids can be annoying, you know?

New Girl - 1x20 - Normal

Ironically THIS feels like the real Part 2 to Fancyman Part 1, much like last week felt like the Part 2 to Fancyman Part 2. If it wasn't for the fact that FM2 explicitly showed Jess and Russel's first date, I'd recommend shuffling the viewing order a little.

Jess spent an entire week at Russell's GIANT MANSION, and it all went splendidly. But Jess gets scared by how good it's going. And who could blame her? I'm 98% certain her line about living in a romantic comedy montage where she tries on floppy hats is from an actual Zooey Deschanel movie. So, she tries to get the relationship on a more even keel by asking Russell to spend the weekend at her place. Not surprisingly, a middle aged man spending a weekend in a loft with drunken twenty-somethings ends in nothing but tears and blood.

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.

New Girl - 1x18 - Fancyman Part 2

Hey, we get out first two part episode! That's what "Part 2" means, right? Cause apart from a shared guest star, these two eps have like nothing in common. I mean, yeah, they're both about "growing up", but half of all episodes (everywhere!) are about growing up.

Don't get me wrong, it's a good ep. And what we do get is classic New Girl: relatable Jess, adorable Cece/Schmidt, screamy-drunk Nick, Winston doing ... good work...out there by himself. Unfortunately most of those arcs are largely suffer, perhaps unfairly, from the fact they don't build on almost any of their counterparts from last week. Especially Nick's. That dude had an earth shattering revelation about himself, on top of finally letting go of the woman he loves (likes? kinda crushes on?) and there's absolutely no follow-up. Considering the abrupt way Part 1 ended, it's especially maddening.

Alright, enough bad stuff though. Let's focus on the good.

New Girl - 1x17 - Fancyman Part 1

It's an episode full of surprises. Jess is thrown into a tizzy when she's unexpectedly wooed by a more sophisticated, older man. Meanwhile, Nick comes to a shocking revelation about himself when confronted with the reality of Jess' new suitor. And Winston and Shelby get closer with a little help from Schmidt, which is, unfortunately  oddly enough, not as dirty as it sounds.

All put together, it's one of the more fun episodes in a run of a great ones. It doles out the deep character insights that we've come to expect from a lot of episodes in the second half of this season, but without the bittersweet overtones that have typically pervaded them.

New Girl - 1x16 - Control

Last week we spent an evening helping Nick sort out his existential crises (again), so it's only fair this week we get an overdue trip into Schmidt's Dark Night of the Soul.

Despite a silly premise that's kind of ludicrous on its face, this episode delivers some solid laughs and a much deeper insight into Schmidt than one would've thought. Certainly deeper than what we got in The Story of the 50, though it compliments it nicely. It's also the rare episode of New Girl that could do with more explicit emotional denouements, what with certain folks motivations remaining a mystery all the way through the very end. 

New Girl - 1x15 - Injured

Nick grapples with mortality in his trademark rabid pitbull-esque way while gang try their best to be there for him in their typical manner: baffling outbursts of emotion, inappropriate nudity, and the sweet dulcet tones of freestyle rapping.

Injured showcases everything that this show does great while deftly hiding all it's usual flaws. We get a Jess that's quirky but not annoying, and even sympathetic. We get to run through the whole emotional gamut of Nick-freakouts. We have Schmidt being hilariously douchey and vulnerable. Winston gets a decent subplot and even takes part in the main story line. Cece pulls some awesome out of nowhere, as usual. Foremost though, the story rings emotionally true, skillfully weaving conversational humor and sight gags with familiar quarter-life crises, along with a great guest star or two. This is what New Girl does best.

Rory Williams Cries...

...LIKE A BOSS