Tag Archives: new girl

A Galentine’s Day Celebration

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Happy Galentine’s Day, my beautiful tropical fish! In honor of my favorite fictional holiday (which really should be a national holiday), I want to take some time to celebrate the women of TV in a way that would make Leslie Knope proud. It’s going to be all about the love for the next few days here at NGN, and today I want to shine a spotlight on the love that can only exist between best friends.

I wanted to make this list longer than a Top 3, but sadly I don’t watch a lot of shows with healthy examples of female friendship right now. Let me know in the comments which shows I should pick up someday to rectify that situation.

Without further ado, I present NGN’s Top 3 Female Friendships on TV Right Now.

3. Snow White and Red Riding Hood (Once Upon a Time)

once-upon-a-time-season2-episode7-child-of-the-moon-red-and-snow

“I didn’t lose my family today – I protected it… My mother wanted me to choose between being a wolf and being a human. Granny did, too. You are the only person who ever thought it was okay for me to be both.”

Theirs is a fairytale friendship unlike anything else on television, built on a message of supporting the people you love and accepting them for who they really are—both the light and the dark. Snow and Red are two incredibly strong women whose friendship only makes both of them stronger. They bonded through a shared sense of being outcasts, and they formed their own little family that both would do anything to protect. Love is the driving force behind Once Upon a Time, and it’s the love between these two friends that gives both of these characters more depth than your average fairytale women. It’s no coincidence that Snow’s happy ending after the curse was broken involved finding her husband and then running into the arms of her best friend. This show tells us time and again that there’s more than one kind of true love, and Snow and Red’s friendship is one of the truest loves on Once Upon a Time.

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The Best Thing I Saw on TV This Week (2/3 – 2/10)

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In the spirit of starting new things around here, I was inspired by Heather’s fantastic “Episode of the Week” posts over at TVexamined to write a little something each week about my favorite thing I saw on television. Sometimes it’ll be serious; sometimes it’ll be silly. Sometimes it’ll be a huge moment; sometimes it’ll be a little detail. Television has the power to make us really happy, and I want to take a minute each week to single out something that brought me joy.

This week, New Girl introduced us to the “panic moonwalk,” and we’ll never escape awkward situations the same way again:

 

 

So tell me, what was the best thing you saw on TV this week?

TV Time: New Girl 2.16

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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: 

dancing new girl nick

“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. 

Something Like That (aka The One with All My New Girl Feelings)

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So this happened last night.

And it was amazing.

I don’t talk about New Girl enough around these parts. It’s charming, relatable, and more laugh-out-loud hilarious than almost any other show on TV right now.

And it just had its finest hour last night.

What I love most about New Girl is that it’s about imperfect young people messing up, making mistakes, and having fun despite—and sometimes even because of—it. It’s a show that feels honest, genuine, and real. It’s a show about people whose hearts are in the right place even if things get messy along the way. And it’s a show that succeeds because of two very important and rare things in the world of TV: chemistry and perfect timing.

“Cooler” was a shining example of all of those things. From beginning to end, it was brimming with the quirky comedy and unexpected soul that makes New Girl a must-see for me every Tuesday night.

If I were grading this episode, it would be an A+, and not just because of the kiss. “Cooler” was New Girl‘s best episode for many other reasons, too:

  • Nick wearing a woman’s trench coat and loving every second of it
  • Winston finally getting a good side plot (featuring London Tipton!)
  • Schmidt using the word “discotheque”
  • A subtle but heartfelt hint that Schmidt and Cece are far from over
  • THE RETURN OF TRUE AMERICAN (“Clinton Rules: Pick your intern!”)
  • The fantastic editing that cut from Sam entering the loft to him cheering “Kiss! Kiss!” to Nick and Jess
  • Nick being perfectly awkward when trying to kiss Jess behind the “Iron Curtain” (his counting down and “Joker” smile were my particular favorites)
  • Have I mentioned the return of True American? (Now with Abu Nazir references!)
  • “Not like this.” (Aka the three little words that actually took my breath away)
  • Schmidt fainting when Nick climbed out the window
  • I’m not sure I said this yet…TRUE AMERICAN WAS BACK. (Cue your best Howard Dean scream!)
  • Jake Johnson’s heartbreaking face as he watched Jess and Sam go off to bed
  • Jake Johnson’s face in general (especially when looking at Zooey Deschanel)

And of course there was the kiss. As with any big moment in real life, timing is everything, and this kiss had perfect timing. It fit perfectly into the plot while still coming as a total shock. It was the right moment for these characters and their story, but it wasn’t overly telegraphed. Nick was right, their first kiss shouldn’t have been part of a game, forced under the thumb of drunken peer pressure. No, it needed to be something like that…a genuine moment of passion, of Nick summoning up the last of his “Trenchcoat Nick Guts” to show Jess everything he feels for her—the heat, the desperation, the tenderness, and the sadness, too. It needed to be real—and that’s exactly how it felt to anyone watching it.

I’m not sure if this post has a point or a purpose, if only to say that I just saw one of the best TV kisses I’ve ever witnessed last night, and I needed a place to talk about it. This is one of those rare TV-induced feelings that I want to live in for as long as possible, so indulge me.

Grading the Season Finales: New Girl

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Title See Ya (1.24)

Major Characters Jess (Zooey Deschanel), Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), Winston (Lamorne Morris), Cece (Hannah Simone)

What Happens? Nick wants to leave the apartment he shares with Jess, Schmidt, and Winston to move back in with his on-again, off-again girlfriend Caroline, also known as the woman who turned Nick into “an agoraphobic, turtle-faced borderline alcoholic,” according to Jess. Despite his roommates’ protests, Nick seems determined to move out, leaving the rest of them to interview for a new roommate. They settle on Neil, a self-proclaimed troubadour with his own interesting set of quirks, including a box featuring an unknown animal (“…something growled in that box,” Cece tells Jess).

As the male roommates drive with Nick to his new apartment, they get more than they bargained for when Nick gets cold feet and takes them on an unplanned trip into the desert. In a fit of catastrophic spontaneity, Nick throws his keys into the wilderness, which prompts Schmidt and Winston to call Jess and Cece to take them home (which proves futile after Jess also appears to throw her keys away). The five friends are then forced to spend the night in the desert, listening to mixtapes Nick made in the 1990s. While there, Schmidt and Cece decide to end their relationship because she thinks he doesn’t trust her and he thinks she’s too good to be with him. Nick and Jess also have a moment of their own, with Jess finally giving Nick her blessing to move in with Caroline because she cares about him and wants him to be happy.

In the end, we learn that Jess never really did throw away her keys, and after a night of desert bonding, the friends take Nick to his new apartment. It’s clear, though, that Nick belongs with his former roommates rather than with Caroline, and the episode ends with him returning home to the sounds of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

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