New Girl and the Art of Romcom Writing

Part 1: The Get-Together

So, last year I embarked on a long overdue journey in watching the Fox Network sitcom New Girl, which ran for seven seasons from 2011-2018. My best friend, who’s a huge fan of the show, got me into after playing me a few out of context clips (namely a certain kiss scene we’ll get back to later) that made me think ‘okay this is something I’d like’ over the course of his own intended rewatch. This led to me getting very into the show, very quickly. And there’s a lot to talk about with it, but I want to focus on what I think the show does best, which is being a long form romcom that manages to pay off all its romantic subplots beautifully.

But first, a quick primer: New Girl was created by writer Elizabeth Merriweather, and stars Zooey Deschanel as Jessica Day, an oddball adorkable girl and an unbridled bundle of joy and femininity. After a nasty breakup with a cheating boyfriend, Jess moves into a new apartment with three male roommates: metrosexual manwhore marketing toady Schmidt (Max Greenfield), basketball player turned radio-host turned cop (and poster boy for ‘characters who get weirder and weirder every week’) Winston (Lamorne Morris), and cynical, depressed, drunken law school dropout turned bartender/wannabe writer Nick (Jake Johnston- I eventually got used to hearing Spider-Man’s voice come out of his mouth, but it took a minute), who serves as Jess’ primary love interest over the course of the show. Joining them are Jess’ bestie Cece (Hannah Simone), a hard-partying model trying to figure out what comes next, and, sporadically, resident not-so-wholesome giga-chad Coach (Damon Wayans Jr). Together, they live, they learn, they love, and they get up to some of the most deranged, unhinged shenanigans in the history of network television.

Full disclosure: the first season of this show is a bit rough around the edges. They took a bit of time to figure out the exact flavor of quirky, madcap comedy they wanted to go for, as well as a certain degree of needing to figure out how to write the characters to best suit the strengths of their actors. While there are definitely a handful of season 1 episodes I would say are worth watching (particularly near the end), it’s generally accepted that the show finds itself in the second season. And nowhere is that truer than it is with Nick and Jess.

Throughout the first season, Nick and Jess form a sort of odd couple/unlikely friends dynamic: Jess is flighty and bubbly, Nick is surly and bitter; Jess loves her job, Nick has yet to find his true calling in life; Jess is a hopeless romantic in spite of the setbacks she’s faced, Nick has had his heart ripped out by a toxic ex-girlfriend and is aggressively uninterested in getting it back. But still, he’s the first to be charmed by Jess’ screwball antics, the first start to really appreciate what she’s brought to their home, and the two become more and more emotionally intimate during season 1 to the point where, at its climax, Jess is ultimately the one who causes Nick not to move out of the loft and back in with his terrible ex.

This carries over into season 2, as more and more episodes highlight how entangled the pair of them are, with Jess helping Nick with his low self-esteem and encouraging him to take charge of his mess of a life and Nick teaching Jess how guys work (a running theme of the early seasons is that Jess has never had guy-friends before and has no clue how they think; this gradually gets phased out via character development to the point where it barely comes up anymore in its final years) as well more generally grounding her in reality. Plus, the two genuinely just enjoy each other’s company, with lots of scenes of them hanging out and messing around, all while discovering they actually have a lot in common. Until, in the episode ‘Fluffer’, they finally acknowledge what’s going on.

Nick realizes he’s Jess’ ‘emotional fluffer’, a ‘boyfriend without the benefits’ so to speak, and when he calls Jess out on this, she asks him very pointedly ‘do you want benefits?’ And at the same time, she admits she’s thought about it (which leads to one of the funniest cutaway gags in the entire show). They both try to walk it back, try to act like there’s nothing going on, but now it’s out. They’ve admitted it- they’re into each other. They can only hide from it for so long.

And this is one of those areas where the full-order American network television seasons of 22 episodes really works to the show’s favor, because they’re allowed to slow-burn it in a way that movies and even most books can’t really do. Jess and Nick’s mutual attraction starts factoring into more and more episodes, with the writing and direction increasingly leaning into the shockingly sizzling chemistry between Deschanel and Johnston. They’re like something out of an old school screwball comedy in all the right ways, and the results are unhinged and hilarious and very often steamy. It builds and builds, even factoring into episodes where it doesn’t come directly such as ‘Pepperwood’, ‘Cabin’, and ‘Chicago’ wherein the connection between the two serves as the emotional bedrock.

That part is deeply important, because it solidifies that it’s more than just lust or infatuation with these two. If it were just one or both of those, they wouldn’t be nearly as caught up in each other. They wouldn’t be spending nearly every free moment together, bouncing off of one another like it’s the highlight of both their days when they get to interact. And given that most successful romantic relationships are escalations of rock-solid friendships, it helps you buy both the idea that they’re the most important people in each other’s lives and that, even if they never dated, they would still want to be around each other.

And then, it happens. The kiss. The episode is ‘Cooler’, in which Jess (who is dating a hot doctor named Sam at this point- remember Sam, he’ll be important later) is told by Nick that she can’t come with him out to the bar that night because her proximity makes it harder for him to get laid. She stays home and does some very strange stuff that leads me to believe she was very stoned, until finally she freaks out enough over a strange sound to call the boys home from the bar with two hot girls in tow. They wind up playing a drinking game (True American, a Calvinball-esque incomprehensible menagerie of patriotism, booze, and inside jokes that will only make sense if you’ve ever had a close-knit group of friends with whom you get up to whacky, degenerate hijinks), and, long story short, Nick and Jess wind up locked in a room together until they kiss.

And Nick won’t do it.

Jess begs and pleads with him, finding everything he says to be an excuse, demanding to know why, until finally, he shouts ‘not like this!’

Which of course begs the question: like what, then?

We get the answer later that night. Everyone is asleep, but Jess and Nick run into each other in the hall. Jess turns to leave, and Nick grabs her and… It’s easier if I just show you:

“I meant something like that.”

SWOON! Good golly. Look, obviously, this is matter of opinion, but if that isn’t one of the hottest kisses you’ve ever seen on TV, then please, inform of me alternate champions, because I’m gonna need to see it to believe it. Not for nothing, the story goes that Deschanel and Johnston nailed it one take at the end of a long day of shooting and everyone APPLAUDED in response.

And with that, the show has an anchor-couple.

Obviously, there’s still more ground for them to cover. Jess has to go through a messy breakup with the hot doctor who proceeds to punch Nick; Nick has to confront his rampaging daddy issues and explosive rage (“YOU ARE IRRATIONALLY ANGRY 365 DAYS A YEAR!”) and it takes the entire rest of the season for them to start to officially consider themselves a couple. And this is a very good thing, because it captures something at the heart of any new romantic relationship: apprehension.

When I’ve gotten crushes on people, it’s pretty consistently scared me. Granted, I have a metric-ton of what I like to call brainworms regarding my sexuality, but that’s true of any number of people. Still, the anxiety that admitting to those feelings can cause, the nervous edge that underscores the lip-biting attraction, is something that this show, and especially Nick/Jess, captures beautifully. It’s scary, admitting that another person means that much to you, that you mean that much to them, that either one of you could destroy the other if you saw fit. That you could do so entirely by accident if you’re not careful. And that’s doubly so when that person is a good friend who you care about a lot. It changes everything about how you interact with them. Like it or not, nothing will ever quite be the same again once you take that first plunge. And you can either run from that, try to keep things as they are, or you can be brave and just go for it. Take the leap of faith, and hope you land on your feet.

Jess realizes more and more that yes, she has it bad for Nick, in spite of all her instincts telling her it’s a bad idea, that they’re friends and roommates and this will ruin everything, that he’s a mess and she can’t fix him and shouldn’t try to. He starts taking up more and more room in her head, with episodes showing the slow escalation of it from ‘I want to kiss you again’ to ‘I want to sleep with you’ to ‘I want to be with you’, and you, the audience, feel it. It helps that Zooey Deschanel, with her big blue eyes and sparkly charisma, is very good at eliciting sympathy via her acting, but damn if the yearning doesn’t bleed off of the screen in every freaking scene. And damn if the gradual escalation from ‘this can’t happen’ to ‘this is a bad idea’ to ‘this is happening and I don’t know if I want it’ to ‘this is happening and I’ve never wanted anything, wanted anyone, more’ isn’t one of the most beautifully executed romantic arcs ever told across a season of television.

The moment that clinches it is the aptly titled episode ‘Virgins’, one of season 2’s more high concept episodes in which each of the core five explains how they lost their virginity. Nick winds up telling a story of how he had the opportunity to lose his V-card in high school but wound up not doing it because he wanted it to be special, with Jess’ story continually interrupted until it’s revealed at the end that she lost it to a hot fireman who literally carried her to bed. Which, of course leads to Nick doing exactly that:

One of the most beautiful, steamy, heartwarming sequences in the whole damn show. What really gets me is them both giggling and going ‘oh boy that just happened’ over the end credits. Like they’re overcome with joy that they finally stopped messing around even while they’re also a little nervous about the inevitable morning after, especially given how many people in their lives (mostly Schmidt, but also Jess’ dad) are dead-set against the idea of them dating. And while there’s still some handwringing to get through due to Jess’ insecurity over Nick not being her usual type and Nick (who is a manchild in many respects) feeling he’s not good enough. This naturally culminates in the season finale (something we will discuss more next time), where, after Jess assumes the worst in Nick at the worst possible moment (when he was actually on his best behavior, no less, in an attempt to be good enough for Jess) and Nick proceeds to double-down on the perceived infraction via a characteristic burst of self-indulgent anger, they call it off…

For about ten minutes, after which point Winston (Nick’s brother in all but DNA) tells Nick to go get his girl back and he rushes to find her… Only to find that she was already on her way to see him, because she’s sorry; because she doesn’t want to call it off; because she knows they have a lot working against them, seemingly insurmountable odds that God only knows if they’re strong enough to overcome, but she doesn’t care: she wants to try anyway. She wants to face it arm in arm with him.

Because that’s what love is. It’s taking a risk, taking a chance on someone. It’s a leap of faith that you make holding the hand of the person you’ve decided to share your heart with. And as the two of them hijack a limo and ride off into the night together while making out, it’s clear that both of them are willing to do exactly that.

I’ve taken risks in my love life. Leaps of faith where I’ve given my heart to the wrong people. And the reason they were all the wrong people for me was because they weren’t willing to take that same risk. They wanted to play it safe, even if that meant hurting me or losing me, rather than facing tomorrow together. And that’s a huge part of why this romance arc hits me so hard: it’s two people who’ve been hurt before and who know the risks of relationships in general and especially of dating each other deciding ‘fuck it. Let’s try anyway. Let’s face tomorrow together and see what happens. As long as you’re by my side, I’ll get through it okay.’ And dammit, that’s just beautiful. And that it builds so well over nearly fifty episodes before finally coming together like this is just the cherry on top of an already delicious romance sundae. It’s the moment these two became my all-time favorite TV couple.

There’s more to this story, to their story, to cover; more of the show in general I’d like to talk about and how it serves as a masterclass in romcom writing, and I’ll be back (probably next week) to talk about it more. But for now, I’ll just leave you feeling the warm and fuzzies, just like the end of season 2 did for me.

Happy viewing, y’all :)