New Girl Ends Its Third Season By Taking Yet Another Page From The Friends Playbook

It's possible that what I think of as classic Friends plotlines are really just classic sitcom plotlines and that I see everything through the Friends lens (heh) because I love it so much. And, admittedly, back when I wrote about Nick and Jess's breakup, I had to allow that I was wrong about what would precipitate it, even though I was right that it happened at the same time in the series run as with Ross and Rachel on Friends: get together two-thirds of the way through Season 2; break up two-thirds of the way through Season 3. And now, New Girl has ended its third season with a variation of how Friends ended its third season: the whole gang taking advantage of a great vacation deal that turns out not to be as hot as it seems, while the just-broken-up couple labours mightily not to make things awkward for everyone else, even as the romantic setting makes them consider a reunion. Friends ended the episode with a cliffhanger, as Ross pondered picking things back up with Rachel or sticking with Bonnie, the new girlfriend Phoebe set him up with. New Girl is more definitive about keeping Jess and Nick apart, at least for now, and if producers stick with it, that's probably best for the show.

The pity of all the focus on this coupling and uncoupling is that the show has a bunch of other pretty great characters, none of which has been getting much to do. Why bring Coach back just to moon after Cece? That's what we have a Schmidt for! I realize they moved Schmidt out of the loft to make room for Coach, but then why do so little with Schmidt's new pad? Why give Coach a job at school and only show him there, like, twice? It's like they hooked up Jess and Nick and then turned the other three guys into a bunch of Winstons.

Speaking of Winston: POOR WINSTON. I sounded the alarm for his character after watching the Season 3 premiere, and things didn't really get much better from there. Even though they let him both find a girlfriend and figure out that he wants to be a police officer, both of which stuck for more than one episode, still didn't really amount to anything. The only progress is that some of the old Winston plotlines now seem to be going to Coach. ("Secretly afraid of boats," which Coach revealed himself to be in the finale, is classic Winston.)

...I just realized I got this far without mentioning Cece except as the object of another character's desire, which is also a problem. But like, remember how she spent the latter part of last season trying to line up a husband so she could have a baby? I'm not saying it was a good idea, but a season later she's dating a teenager, tending bar (badly), and trying to get her GED? Maybe she's devolving even worse than Winston is.

All that said: I do feel like the show got a lot right about Jess and Nick. I get what they saw/see in each other -- that she would be amused by his weird-old-manliness, interrupted as it occasionally is by bursts of extreme (if implausible) thoughtfulness; that he would be entertained by her flustered goofiness and unstoppable optimism. The arc involving her sister Abby was interesting not just because it's always fun in a sitcom to introduce a character who might do LITERALLY ANYTHING, but because it gave us a new perspective on Jess's character -- that she might be the way she is because she was the second child after a handful like Abby, and that she'd want to keep that from him even though he's at least as big a mess as Abby if not bigger.

What's great about New Girl is that even when it doesn't make much sense -- like, from episode to episode -- it's still funny. And maybe now that Jess and Nick are finished as a couple, at least for now, everyone will get a chance to be as weird as everyone else and I won't have to notice or care when characters' interests or attributes come and go from week to week.

I'm intrigued about those bunk beds, though. That's a piece of furniture with a lot of comedic potential when occupied by any two dudes in their thirties -- and these two in particular are not going to be great roommates again unless Nick, for instance, actually learned the lesson about why one launders towels.