“New Girl” Review

Photo courtesy of IMDB

It started off as my typical Wednesday night — after finishing up some art homework I pulled up Netflix to re-watch “Friends” episode “The One with Unagi.”  But as soon as Netflix loads, I see what I’ve been waiting a year for: “New Episodes” in bright red across my all-time favorite show “New Girl.”

After almost punching my friend from pure excitement I immediately click the first episode.

And I was immediately disappointed. For those who don’t know, “New Girl” is a simple, funny and sweet show about a teacher named Jess played by Zooey Deschanel, her model best friend, and four male roommates. Nick is the slob, Schmidt the neat freak, Winston the cat man and Coach the sports dude — the perfect combo for my favorite show.

Set three years in the future from the last episode, where most characters are getting married, pregnant or have kids and have moved out of their shared loft, the entire season seems to be one misfortune after another.

I’ve tried shows like “Vampire Diaries” but had to stop watching it when entire seasons were centered around one drawn-out problem — someone was bit by a vampire and OMG someone doesn’t know. The season finale of “New Girl” was a little too reminiscent of that with the wole will-they-won’t they thing, with Jess and three-year long boyfriend, Nick. I don’t need them to draw out one moment that can fit in 10 minutes into three agonizing episodes.

Every time they would be close to a decision about their future together something would go wrong, like the whole gang of friends coming over at the wrong time, and it would be dragged out for another episode. Which in all honesty might have been worth the seven seasons in the making if the humor I had once loved in this show hadn’t spiraled from quirky and wholesome to forced and uncomfortable — a.k.a the main character Jess got an awful nose ring, luckily it was gone by the second episode.

All the things that made me fall in love with these characters were taken to the extreme in this last season. Cece, Jess’s best friend, has always been the harda** in the show but the creators of “New Girl” took this a little too far when they showed her as a pregnant lady being verbally abusive and racist (she made a few “Jewish jokes”) — kinda took away from the “light-hearted” show I was used to.

In the same scene, they showed her husband Schmidt, coddling her to a throw-up-inducing amount, again taking something simple and funny and just catapulting it to the extreme.

And please don’t get me started on the fast forward worthy section of a characters’ (no spoilers) wife going into labor and pretending it wasn’t happening by refusing to go to the hospital — this show went allllll over the place.

And all of that mess could be forgiven, I mean it’s ”New-Girl”, if there was an ending that made it all worth it. But even the love story we’ve been waiting on for years now turned out to be unfulfilling. While Nick and Jess have always had a rather quirky relationship (neither of them even new if their first date was a first date), “New Girl” had the chance to give them that same happy quirky ending. Instead, they give them a happy… uncomfortable ending. All of the typical things in life that can be cute such as anniversaries or weddings go wrong.

They go so wrong that at one point Nick and Jess are celebrating one of the biggest days of their lives in a hospital and I was forced to cringe at the random and unrealistic situation. And sure, the fact that they are a little weird and can make things works is who they are, but they took quirky a little too far until it lost the potential cuteness.

The adorable storyline, cute characters and hilarious anecdotes were barely recognizable in the final season. All the moments I couldn’t wait for, drawn out and expected to be cute, were such a let down I didn’t even bother watching the last two minutes of the last episode. The whole thing had me missing the old girl.