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 - 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.

New Girl - 1x14 - Bully

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!


Julia's gone! Lizzie's left! Where is the justice in the world? I give up on TV! Forever.


Okay I don't. But that's only because I'm weak.

New Girl - 1x13 - Valentine's Day

Lizzie's Back!

That's all that really matters. Review over. Get out of here, we need some time alone.

I guess some other stuff happened too. Jess enlists Schmidt and Cece to help her get her groove on (not in that way...mostly), and despite some questionable plot contrivances, it's actually pretty hilarious. (It doesn't exactly hurt that Cece and Schmidt bring their A-game to the plot.) Winston suffers through a girl's night in to reconnect with Shelby. And Nick and Julia's plan for an awesomely cliche Valentine's Day are waylaid by work.

New Girl - 1x12 - The Landlord

...what just happened?

Up All Night - 1x13 - Rivals

Betrayal! Infidelity! Morbidly Obese People! A not-completely-annoying Megan Mullaly! Join me as I try in vain to find something to say about a perfectly enjoyable episode of a very sweet show that I otherwise have nothing to say about. Also, I may have discovered a new fetish.

Up All Night - 1x12 - New Years Eve

So yeah, it's not really a secret I'm behind. It gets a little harder to hide when the episode in question is "New Years Eve" and we've just rung in April. Ninety-nine percent of the problem is pure laziness, admittedly. But the remaining one percent is that it's hard to figure out what to write about shows I actually like. Shows with very few problems have no hooks, no obvious places to start going off on a rant. It's hard to get excited about writing.

Anyway, New Years Eve is a perfectly cute episode. It's full of exactly what we love about these characters, while all the stuff we hate is rightfully called out. We get some more Kevin and Ava, which I'm always a big fan of. And we even learn more about Missy! We learn she's batshit insane, but is that really a surprise? I love that girl.

2 Broke Girls - 1x16 - And the Broken Hearts

So, once again, I'm choosing to only focus on the good points of this show because it's really, truly depressing to just keep writing "the jokes suck" for 1,500 words. But luckily, if you ignore the first 15 minutes in the diner, there's a lot to enjoy here.

Earl has a heart attack. Max basically freaks out and goes into hyper-protective mama-bear mode. Or daughter-bear mode? Or Morgan-Freeman's-Step-Granddaughter-Bear mode, considering all the super icky fake flirting that's happened in the past. Ew, she also claimed he was Morgan Freeman in order to get him preferential treatment at the hospital. I don't want to follow this analogy anymore, it makes me feel dirty in my inside.

2 Broke Girls - 1x15 - And the Blind Spot

I've decided that if I'm going to stick with this show, I'm going to choose to just focus on the good parts and not obsess on the many, many, many faults. Even I've run out of long winded ways to say "these jokes SUCK". So, grading on such a steep, steep curve this episode wasn't actually that bad.

It wisely chooses to lean on what this show actually does really well (and probably the only reason I'm still sticking with it); the genuinely touching thread of watching Max and Caroline learn to trust and rely on each other implicitly. (I swear with just a hint of any kind sexual tension between the leads, and a gallon of guts, this show could be a really touching lesbian rom-com.) Of course it does this by continuing the new year's perplexing arc of showing Caroline act like the spoiled bitch she spent the first 10 episodes proving she's not, but at least it's somewhat entertaining.

How I Met Your Mother - 7x16 - The Drunk Train

...wait, what? What the hell is going on here? No, really. I can't tell anymore. Are we bravely forging forward to daring new story lines, or cynically sliding backwards into tired tropes? After the Rebound Girl/Symphony backsies, I can't really work up the effort to try and figure it out. So, I guess I'm just along for the ride from now on. No longer getting my hopes up, but still utterly, helplessly confused. I knew if I did this long enough, my sex life and my TV viewing would start to intermingle...

That doesn't mean I can't appreciate the intermittent courage that seeps through. If anything it's obvious that, for some reason, TPTB are have decided this is the year to throw crazy shit at the wall and see what sticks. Perhaps not coincidentally, it seems this is also The Season of Robin, for better and worse (that is to say, better for us, worse for her). Almost every major emotional high and low point (mostly low) is her, and this ep is no exception.