And That's Why You Put The Toy Together As Soon As You Get It

After the last new episode, "Fired Up," I was pretty sure I could see a Jess/Nick breakup on the horizon. As I wrote in the forum thread about it, Jess was starting to experience serious, meaningful professional advancement, as she got a surprise promotion to Vice-Principal (even though the way it happened on the show is kind of not at all how it ever happens in real life, but whatever), just in time for Nick to volunteer to "help" Schmidt with legal issues surrounding a personal-injury claim by impersonating the lawyer he almost was. As the episode draws to a close, Nick finds an overwhelmed Jess passed out asleep, covered in paperwork. Can a relationship established when Jess was having a tough time in her career -- the better to put her on more equal footing with the underemployed Nick -- survive her upward trajectory if he stays in pretty much the same place, probably forever? (After all, when Rachel got a job with actual responsibilities on Friends, Ross couldn't handle it...and okay, Ross was also jealous of all the time Rachel was spending with Mark, but that was innocent and work-related and Ross's insecurity about it was due to the fact that he had no context for what Rachel would be like in their relationship once she had a job that put demands on her.) I certainly never would have expected Jess and Nick to break up over a toy.

Granted, it's a toy that's almost as much work as a job. And yes, of course, it's not the toy, it's what it represents. Which is a lot.

On its most basic level, the toy is a token of Jess's love for a friend's baby, whose first birthday party she and Nick are supposed to attend. Jess has maybe sort of forgotten about the party, based on the fact that she's just spent the night before playing True American (read: getting extremely drunk) and needs a wake-up call from Sadie, the friend in question, to rouse her from her stupor. The episode's whole True American cold open is an important reminder that Jess can very happily engage in activities that are dopey and potentially dangerous enough to be of interest to four basically idiotic guys.

But one might reasonably ask, would Jess have gotten on board with a round of True American if she'd thought that she'd have to get up the next day and scramble to assemble this toy? She doesn't, though, because she gave the package to Nick two weeks earlier and asked him to put it together. Part of being an adult is either doing or delegating life's many shitty jobs so that you can grant yourself guiltless leisure time to do whatever basically indefensible thing you want to do with it (in my case: spending most Saturdays napping in front of WeTV's Will & Grace Binge-a-Thon). So whenever Nick gave Jess to believe that he would actually assemble it, the toy also came to represent one of Nick's great character failings: his need to placate Jess without ever actually intending to follow through on his promises.

One might also go on to note, though, that though it's certainly reasonable for Jess to ask Nick to put the toy together, is it reasonable for her to believe that he'll actually do it? That she does, on any level, means the toy also represents Jess's magical thinking with regard to Nick and their romantic relationship. Does Jess really think Nick has the wherewithal to do anything with two weeks' notice? Clearly, Nick will never accomplish any task if he doesn't fear immediate negative consequences and requires time pressure to force him to do it. Furthermore, based on his solutions to the various home maintenance problems in the loft, Nick is plainly incapable of assembling any toy and would be regardless of how much time he'd been given to do it. So while it makes sense for Jess, who has a responsible job, to hand the work of assembling the gift to her boyfriend, who has more discretionary time in which to do it, that seems like a task better delegated to the boyfriend she wishes Nick could be.

It was easy enough for the viewer to believe, along with Jess, that things might work out for her and Nick, because he's a shiftless goon and she seems, superficially, like the girl version of that, with her dresses that would look fine on a kindergartener and her bunny ear iPhone case. But if the visit from Jess's sister Abby reminded us of anything, it's that despite her cutesy affectations, Jess isn't a flake, and actually has her shit pretty well together. She may have talked herself into thinking that Nick's idiosyncrasies are lovable, but as soon as she says, in this week's episode, that if she didn't let some things go they would never stop fighting, it sure feels true.

So even though this episode finds Nick and Jess fighting over the toy and, in a lull, scoffing at the idea that they might be breaking up over it, it does kind of lead directly to the end of their relationship. The toy has dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of pieces, inscrutable instructions, a lot of expectations riding on it, and even though Jess and Nick apply all their ingenuity to get it together, it defeats them both.

I guess the real lesson in all of this, other than that there's more to compatibility than loving each other a lot, is that no good can come of attending any child's birthday party. Let's all try to remember that.