TV Retrospective: New Girl - Season 2

Left to right: Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson

When New Girl premiered, I wasn't necessarily ecstatic about it. However, I was willing to give it a shot, as it seemed like a strong enough scripted series to overcome the kinks. In reality, the series never really had that many kinks outside of a few character traits. What it did have was the goal of striving for low rung plots and adding their own twist. Give or take, the episodes produced suffered from the conventional nature and either you were on board or you weren't. As season two ramped up, my affection for the show wasn't gone, but waning. In a sense, it never quite became more than a conventional show.

The thing that is appealing about most shows is the core group. This show manages to survive on that alone. As the season progresses, we see characters fall in love, help others, and meet random people. Most of it is quaint and while many would argue that Winston's (Lamorne Morris) role is still underwritten, I feel like the choice to branch out and give all of these characters more of a personality only made them seem less interesting.

Maybe it is the choice for the show to deal with broad situations that is the most unappealing aspect. Maybe it is that these characters can be polarizing at times, if just from inactivity. An episode that best sums up both of these aspects is "Virginity" in which each character tells their awkward sex stories. It is a simple episode with plenty of silly moments, but most of them don't land because them come from a very broad place. Nick (Jake Johnson) doesn't have sex with a hooker, Jess (Zooey Deschanel) ends up naked in a park, and Schmidt (Max Greenfield) ends up using too much lubricant. If the humor derives from any place, it is the sense that these are relate able  That makes more sense, especially as the rest of the season becomes broader and less interesting.

One of the overriding themes of the season was that Jess and Nick would get together. It started off awkward and kept building until midway through when they actually kissed. This was supposed to be the big shocker of the series. Somehow, it just felt conventional in the way almost every other show has that "will they/won't they" plot. No real interesting twist. In fact, the season starts in an interesting place, as Jess is forced to move on after being fired from being a teacher. However, her lack of work probably contributes to her feeling like a housewife character and doesn't do much in the way of interesting besides point out how geeky her childhood was.

Deschanel

It is wrong to accuse the show of painting broad stereotypes, but the awkward nerd culture youth just feels forced. It may be the prime reason that I couldn't back learning about these people's past. Most of all, I loathed anytime that the younger, fatter Schmidt had a prominent role in the episode. While rarely played for physicality, the idea of this guy being fat and awkward and then turning into as the show initially established as a douche feels somewhat offensive. It may give him a heart, but it also builds this sense that being skinnier isn't better. It also hurts that most of the obesity factor is played for awkward laughs. Going back to "Virginity." There is a scene in which Fat Schmidt falls on Nick. It is painful to watch because it is essentially a fat man falling down gag.

I suppose the redeeming feature of the character was that he ended up with a slightly chubby girl at the end of the season. Not as obese as his former self, but compared to the skinny women he dated before, she was fat. This wasn't played for laughs, but instead she was allowed to be a real character. While this contradicts the very existence of Fat Schmidt, it feels like the show apologizing for such a terrible character. In fact, it may have affected the way that I look at modern Schmidt, who is played for even more zany laughs. Is it relate able? Sure. He still is kind of annoying.

In that regards, Jess is played almost too sympathetic. Her big stories this season seemed to revolve around dressing up as iconic figures for laughs and then helping everyone else realize that their lives are okay. Maybe this was to allow the supporting cast to not feel so secondary, but it was still like sacrificing a character who had so much in the first season. Now she was just trying to help people by dressing up as Elvis and leading a church in song. Sure, it was funny, but I feel like we lost sense of the character.

Besides the obvious Nick and Jess relationship, the other aspect, which worked more effectively, was the parents, played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner. Two fine actors and interesting choices for parental figures. Reiner had a lengthier role, appearing in several of the final episodes. He comes across as the caring father that you'd think he would play by trying to keep Jess away from Nick. It is adorable, but essentially harmless. I am sure that he'll be back around later on in the series, though simply meeting him in "Parents" was a nice start.

Left to right: Max Greenfield, Deschanel, and Johnson

Of course, for all of the character development that the show does, it also seems to be over packed with half-baked episode ideas. For me, the simple idea that New Girl thrives on taking textbook concepts and playing them for laughs almost feels lazy and uninspired. The clever moments don't work because of that. True, you have these people who can be interesting, but thrown into these situations that are forgettable and harmless to the overall plot structure, the result is to say "who cares?"

The most forgettable of all was "Parking Spot" in which the episode revolves around getting a specific parking spot. At 24 episodes, it almost feels like Fox needs to take a few notes from NBC and cut the series down. I feel like there is good in the show, but at an exhaustive length, it is hard to accept the bad moments, which come more often this season. Still, as far as situation comedy comes, it wasn't all that interesting and sadly amounted to little in entertainment. In fact, episodes like this impacted the way that the characters were perceived. If they worried about the mundane stuff, why should we care when things really matter? Also, with Schmidt tending to overact and panic over dumb stuff, the show was riding off of desperation for quite some time.

The odd thing is that in all of this, we have some shining lights. The finale "Elaine's Big Day" is not a good episode of TV, but is simply redeeming because it reveals almost every character's motives. It humanizes them and adds the endearing touch that made the show enjoyable in the first place. Too bad it was laced with a sabotage mission at a wedding that involved awkward crawling around in air vents. Also, the lazy Taylor Swift cameo at the end really showed what was wrong with the show. It would set things up only to have the results play off almost at breakneck speed, expecting the audience to laugh at the joke.

As a whole, this wasn't a terrible season, but not a very interesting one either. It is hard for me to really get behind a show that stretches out pointless plots and not do it in an interesting way. In a sense, I feel like it was damaging to my overall enjoyment of the series as a whole. Of course, it is bizarre that despite having 24 episodes, the show suffered from MLB coverage, which cut it off for weeks at a time. Still, it feels like overkill to give it a recommendation. As I look back on it, there is little that I took away as great comedy television. It is what it is, and it is happy doing that. I just wish it did it better.

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5