This week’s episode begins with Nick in bed with his flame from the previous episode who I could only remember as “Janis from Mean Girls.” Turns out her name is Julia, and things are getting serious — she’s been regularly spending the night, so often that Jess feels comfortable enough around her to ask her for legal advice in dealing with a traffic ticket (for stopping in the middle of an intersection to help a bird, of course). Julia, for reasons unknown, is less than enthusiastic.
Perhaps it’s because she’s dealing with her own troubles with Nick — the two refuse to put a label on their relationship which is helped in no part by Jess who confides in Nick that Julia had asked her (in confidence) if Nick was seeing other people. When Julia confesses that that she has, indeed, been dating around, the two then compete in a hilarious back-and-forth of one-upmanship regarding who’s dating more people than the other.
It is Jess’s accidental revelation that leads to a confrontation in the bathroom between her and Julia. The latter reveals that she does not respect Jess, that her baking, colorful skirts and general “adorkability” put her off. She doesn’t want to be friends, and implies that Jess’s whole persona is a carefully crafted act. This, of course, shocks emotionally frail Jess to tears, who is forced to cry in the hallway—Julia is already monopolizing all of the crying space in the bathroom. This is perhaps the show’s first attempt at addressing its own criticism through the show itself. While Deschanel is an undeniably talented actor, her character is socially stunted, often childish and whimsical to the point of ridiculousness. While her persona is often poked fun at, Julia is the first person to point this out in such harsh terms.
This leads to an inevitably awkward morning after, as Jess and Julia are forced to sit side-by-side in anticipation of Jess’s court hearing. Turns out, Jess doesn’t utilize Julia as well as she could, immediately shouting out “GUILTY!” when asked to step up to the bench. After paying her fine, Jess confronts Julia about the way she views her. And it’s strange.
I’m not sure what message New Girl is trying to send here. On the one hand, they’ve made an attempt to address criticisms of Deschanel’s character — mainly, that she’s the embodiment of the loved and loathed Manic Pixie Dream Girl television trope, and that her behavior is not “adorkable” but instead is socially awkward and unrealistically loopy. However, Jess’s declaration to Julia that she “wishes her pantsuits had ribbons on them” so that they would be cuter or that she doesn’t care that her checks have pictures of baby animals on them comes off as almost preachy. Are we supposed to believe that Jess’s free spirit is better than Julia’s ambitious, pantsuit-wearing style? The statement Jess makes that she is indeed tough, smart and strong despite her quirky exterior goes against almost everything we’ve seen of her on the show thus far. She is constantly in need of assistance, advice, etc. and always leans on the help of others to accomplish seemingly everyday tasks. It makes for entertaining television, but if New Girl is trying to send the message that one can be Jess-esque but still function as a normal human being, I haven’t seen it yet.
Later, in typical sitcom fashion, the two make up over a round of gossip and crocheting, and Julia confesses to Nick that she wants to be exclusive. So it seems that Julia and Nick are officially together and she and Jess have reached a sort of tentative peace — for now.
In two lesser plots, Winston attempts to get back into the game by wooing a former bootycall, only to discover that she is now a restaurant manager and way out of his league. However by the end of the episode, he successfully convinces her to go on a date with him. Hopefully this new relationship will add more dimension to the character of Winston, one of the most consistently underused characters on the show.
In other roommate news, Schmidt spends the majority of the episode obsessing over the fact that his towel is consistently damp, attributing it to the increased presence of girls in the apartment. When Jess points out that 80 percent of the bathroom products are his, he responds with the episode’s funniest line: “Blah, blah, blah. I use body chutney.” The concept of body chutney, coupled with his pronunciation of the word (“chut-en-NAY”) was enough to keep me content with his storyline throughout the entire episode. In a bizarre twist, it’s discovered at the end of the episode that the reason his towel is always damp is because he and Nick have been accidentally sharing a towel for the past few months…oops!
With both Schmidt and Winston’s characters marginalized in this episode, “Jess and Julia” served mainly as a way to move the plot along. With Nick’s new love interest creating tension in the apartment, it remains to be seen if Jess will be able to maintain her carefree, happy-go-lucky attitude for much longer.
Best Lines:
"What are you laughing at?" "How much I'm not going home with you."
"Schmidt's like Ellis Island in the 1800s...he accepts everyone."
"I did think you were weird at first... when I met you, you were wearing a hat made out of ribbons."
"I'm having sex with a girl right now, under this bar, and she's on top. So FIGURE THAT OUT."
"My checks have baby farm animals on them, bitch!"