The Worst Situations Bring Out The Best In Nick Miller

In the past, I have used this space to give Jake Johnson his proper due for the impressively expressive mobility of his face in his performance as New Girl's Nick Miller, and I stand by that. This is not a man who's ever going to excel on the professional poker circuit; that face isn't even suited for Crazy 8s. So when this week's episode presents him with pretty much his life's worst nightmare...well, Christmas has come early for at least one viewer named me.

The situation is that Winston is coming to the end of his training to become a police officer, and a Sgt. Dorado is coming over to conduct a background check. Jess is kind of squirrelly about it, but waits until Winston has left the room to tell her other roommates why: she has a bag of meth in her closet. AND NOT A SMALL BAG, EITHER.

What ensues is pretty much a bottle episode that lets each character spin out in his or her own special and specific way. Jess starts it all by having the kind of terrible luck that often attends the trusting: the bag was in a garage-saled ottoman she bought. But she's pretty sure that given Cece's checkered past, Cece will know how to dispose of what looks to be at least a few pounds of meth. An oblivious Winston just tries to stay as calm and sweet as someone who'd come up with the idea of a honey roast would do; when everyone else is strategizing and need to get him out of the room, they shriek at him that he needs to change his outfit, and he cheerfully agrees: "You guys are like rubbing alcohol -- sting me in the now, but you save me in the later." When Sgt. Dorado shows up, Schmidt turns on the full force of his charm, while Coach comes up with a good notion -- that Winston is involved with the Big Brother program -- and pushes it too far, excusing himself to go get Winston's supposed little brother from the bus station. Spoiler alert: the supposed Duquan could have been slightly more convincing.

But the one loft resident who isn't trying to cover in any way is the one who can't cover in any way: my favourite, Nick Miller. As soon as he's been apprised of the situation, he declares his unfitness to participate in any kind of cover-up: "LYING MAKES ME SWEAT. I CAN'T LIE." Guess what, everyone? It's extremely true!

Winston's known Nick long enough to be able to tell that something terrible is going on, or else Nick probably wouldn't announce to Sgt. Dorado that Jess's room is a place where he's "had intercourse." When she leaves and Winston asks Nick directly what is happening, Nick can't risk his face betraying him.

But when everyone else is scrambling to help each other in their various cover-ups, they make an extremely grave error: they leave Nick alone. Sgt. Dorado, who is good at her job, figures out that this extremely moist man in an afternoon kimono may be hiding something, and when she isolates him, he does, indeed, start spilling a lot of secrets.

"WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD I FED CEREAL FLAKES TO A FROG AND IT DIED. THEN I WENT ON A PERIOD OF TIME WHEN I FED CEREAL FLAKES TO ALL LITTLE ANIMALS. Squirrels can live through it, chipmunks can live through it -- anything that lives half in and out of water dies, and I don't understand why."

"WHEN I WAS TEN, I once walked by my mother sleeping, and I snuck in the room and I put a lemon in her mouth."

"WHEN I WAS ELEVEN, I ONCE TRIED ON MY GIRL COUSIN'S WOOL TIGHTS, and I DIDN'T HATE THE WAY IT FELT!"

"MY SIXTEENTH YEAR, I NEVER GOT AN ERECTION. I THOUGHT THEY WERE DONE. I thought my penis was dead."

"I ONCE CHANGED A SIGN THAT SAID 'HAPPY JEWISH NEW YEAR' TO 'HAPPY NEWISH JEW YEAR,' IS THAT A HATE CRIME???"

And as if Nick's compulsive disclosures weren't enough to put this into the upper echelon of New Girl episodes for Nick lovers (hi!), there's also the fact that Jess is the bigger screw-up overall, allowing Nick, The Reactionist, to react to her freaking out, confessing about the meth, and assuming the position for Sgt. Dorado to cuff her and "take [her] downtown, to the all-lady fur factory."

And when it turns out that the "meth" is just aquarium rocks, and Sgt. Dorado has informed the lofters that no one is going to prison, we get one last Nick disclosure, via her: "What kind of person would urinate on an electrical socket?"

Of course he did. Because Nick is a marvelous moron, and that's why I love him.