New Girl Wants You To Know That Women's Parts Make Them Monsters

When Modern Family did an episode, this spring, in which all the Dunphy women sync up their cycles and, consequently, lose all semblance of emotional stability, careening wildly from inconsolable sadness to irrational rage, I wasn't surprised: though it postures like a progressive show (one of the families is led by a pair of committed gay men!), it trucks with all the typically sitcom clichés -- dumb husbands, castrating wives, the usual. Modern Family's "monstruation" storyline, therefore, was just a logical progression of the show's fundamentally sexist ethos, so I couldn't be that disappointed by it. Not so with last night's New Girl, of which I would have expected better.

Here's the opportunity that New Girl let pass: a recent study has found that PMS is probably a myth. So in light of this scientific fact, Jess (Zooey Deschanel) could have mentioned in passing that her period is imminent; her male roommates could have (realistically, even in 2012) reacted childishly and then started attributing a break in her usual sunny attitude to her menses; and she could have responded by revelling in her legitimate anger and depression -- more likely (if she were a real person) to be a byproduct of her having pretty recently been laid off from her job -- the way Nick (Jake Johnson) does every day of his life, as she notes in the episode.

But the show's producers defaulted to one of the laziest sitcom conventions: her mysterious girl parts are making her crazy! In a way, this is consistent with what we know about Jess's character, in that she embraces and is defined by her femininity; this was already explicitly addressed last season in the episodes when Nick was dating Julia (Lizzy Caplan), who was somewhat dubious about how much of Jess's persona was a put-on. Already, the character of Jess has a hard job, balancing all the show's dude-iness; though she's the titular New Girl, the series is almost more about the guys at this point (not that I'm complaining about that -- they're great characters!). So it really is a bummer that the show gave Jess the chance to display negative emotions for once -- to be a fully rounded person and not just an Etsy rag doll -- it had to give her a pseudo-biological excuse for what could have been portrayed as authentic human feelings.

I'll give New Girl's producers credit for one fresh twist on the PMS storyline: it also gave PMS to Winston (Lamorne Morris). The way Winston gives himself over to his fake PMS is kind of relatable: you know how sometimes, when you get just a little sick, like with a cold or a mild flu, it's kind of nice? You can bag on your responsibilities for a couple of days and just sack out on the couch, napping and being pitiful and eating whatever you think will make you feel better, and no one can really say anything about it? Imagine if you had a societally-reinforced excuse to do that every month! It's not bad.

But other than that, New Girl just hit all the typical sitcom PMS beats: comfort food cravings, wild mood swings, very oblique mentions of stuff coming out of things. So now, can we take it as read? Can we retire this trope? Some women get cranky sometimes. It may or may not have anything to do with the state of their uterine linings. Let's all grow up.