Because I’m apparently looking for more to do, I’m now adding New Girl to my weekly reviewing/recapping rotation. This will take a little different format from my usual TV posts, but I love the show so much that I can’t keep my feelings to myself anymore.
Title: Table 34
Two-Sentence Summary: Nick and Jess deal with the fallout from their kiss by trying to pretend it didn’t matter to either of them, but it matters to Sam enough for him to dump Jess. Meanwhile, Schmidt attempts to win Cece back at an Indian matchmaking convention.
Favorite Line: “You look like the fortune teller in Big.” (Winston, about Schmidt’s outfit for the matchmaking convention)
Episode M.V.P.: Schmidt. He was hilarious (“I will Calcutta bitch!”) but also genuinely sweet, which is my favorite way to see Schmidt. Max Greenfield is at his best when he’s able to show the soft heart underneath Schmidt’s false bravado, and he got to do that to great effect with his beautiful (but also perfectly awkward) speech about Cece. It didn’t surprise me at all that she left the Indian dating convention with the Jew in the turban. I would have done the same thing.
Favorite Moment: Though I will never get tired of Nick panic moonwalking, awkwardly dancing to Taylor Swift, or looking hotter than ever before going in to almost kiss hug Jess, my favorite moment had to be when Nick and Jess put together their indestructible table. That scene allowed Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson to play off each other so wonderfully, their banter crackling with sparks we’ve never seen this intensely before. And if you didn’t laugh while watching Nick attempt to break the table, then your sense of humor is broken. But the thing I enjoyed most about this scene was the surprisingly symbolic nature of it. Jess said to Cece that the reason she’d choose Sam over Nick is because Nick breaks things. But then we get to see him build something with Jess that even he can’t destroy. Nick often tries to break things he built—he sabotages his own happiness— but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break what he built with Jess. As I said so eloquently (or not so eloquently) today on Tumblr: “New Girl just got deep y’all.”
A New Girl GIF* for my New Girl Feelings:
“Table 34” was the perfect followup to last week’s stellar “Cooler.” It was realistically awkward, it was hilarious, it was heartfelt, and it was fun. In short, this episode made me want to do my own happy dance (hopefully one that looks better than this).
*I have no talent for GIF-making. Thankfully, I am highly skilled at searching Tumblr for the best GIFs. I take no credit for this beauty.
Nerdy Girl Notes 
This is why I love your recaps so much – because you catch things I miss! When watching the episode last night I totally blanked on the symbolism behind the table, but that is extremely cool. Kudos to the New Girl team for doing something funny and symbolic at the same time!
I also love when Schmidt gets to be sweet. I love seeing that softer, caring side of him, instead of the obnoxious (and hilarious, of course) and false bravado side.
Sam came out of this looking like a jackass in my opinion. If a guy is willing to dump Jess after one kiss with someone else that she is honest with him about, without even giving more of an explanation than that the kiss “meant something to him,” then I guess he wasn’t very attached to her in the first place. I mean, if he had said that they were already falling apart anyways, and that he could see that clearly there were feelings there that Nick and Jess were repressing, then I would have understood better. But since he didn’t even see the kiss, and both of them were honest with him about it and apologized, I was a tad confused at why he dumped her so quickly. Maybe it just has more to do with how I imagine I would deal with this in a relationship and maybe there’s something I’m missing about Sam that makes his decision different, I don’t know. I just know it made me a little mad at him lol
All in all, a great episode! I love this show despite my second-hand embarrassment tolerance being fairly low, and this episode was a good example of why I do.
I’m so torn with what I feel about Sam in this episode. On one hand, I think I understand what the writers were trying to do—showing Sam begin to recognize the sparks between Jess and Nick in this episode and feeling hurt at the fact that she waited so long to tell him (which I’m sure he saw as being a sign that the kiss meant more to her than she was letting on). But it wasn’t handled very well. I thought punching Nick was a little too over-the-top, especially since Sam was cheering for them to kiss during True American. I know they needed a breakup scene in order to move the Nick/Jess story along, but I wish it would have come from a more organic place.
But I’m not sad they broke up. I think I’m one of the few who never liked Dr. Sam. It’s a personal thing for me, I think. I didn’t like that he hurt her so callously in the Halloween episode and was taken back so easily. He wasn’t as charming to me as most people (including Jess) found him.
” Nick often tries to break things he built—he sabotages his own happiness— but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t break what he built with Jess. ” perfect thoughts for a great episode (loved the comparison as she was telling CeCe this of him breaking that scarf. Yarn doesn’t break like that! which made it extra funny.) HOWEVER the breaking things talk reminded me of a few episodes ago when he said “I will hurt you Jess” or something along those lines (and its what happens in these kinds of will they/wont they scenarios), so it will definitely be a bumpy ride ahead, but one I’m sure we’re all looking forward to.
I definitely have that “I’m going to hurt you” scene in my head almost all the time when thinking about these two. Some people are speculating that breaking up Jess and Sam is what he needed to apologize for, but I actually think it’s going to be worse. Even the best relationships have their issues, and both Nick and Jess have to do a lot of growing before they can really be together for the long haul. And with growing comes making mistakes, which is one of the big lessons of New Girl. People make mistakes as they grow up, but that doesn’t automatically make them bad people. It’ll be interesting to see what exactly happens to these two as this season progresses. I have a lot of faith that show will handle it well.
Really great point about the table… never thought if that! As you can see I am going through and reading all your posts on NG… ‘You look like the fortune teller in Big,” made me laugh a lot as well as ‘Hey! M. Night, Shyamalan!’. Keep up the posts!
Thanks for the comment! I loved the M. Night Shyamalan line, too!