New Girl - Landlord

Sooooo Julia’s final episode is still to come, eh? Good. Has anyone else noticed that the name “Julia” is getting a lot of use on TV? That’s the in-name right now, we guess. This week could not top last week, but last week set the bar higher than ever, not just for this show, but for all comedies. However, this episode continued the trend of explaining and defending Jess. She is positive because people have treated her well. She’s cute and innocent, and people respond to her as if she were a woodland creature. She lives in a bubble of kindness and sincere warmth. How nice for her. Nick comes along to represent everyone else.

Since the doctrine of Original Sin came into being, and possibly before that, a debate has raged: Are people good deep down inside or evil deep down inside? One of us suspects that the answer is “both.” There is a leaning and possibility in both directions, for everyone. They both come from inside. Most questions in life can be accurately answered by blending the two opposing viewpoints, but if people did that, how could Democrats and Republicans fight and hate each other all day!?! So the debate rages on. This part of the plot reminded one of us of the Debate 109 episode of Community. On New Girl, Jess believes that people are fundamentally good, because she is an optimist and people treat her nicely. Nick thinks people are evil inside, due to his own life experience.

The episode started with Nick and Jess pulling into a parking space, only to be cut off by a guy in a truck. Nick yells at him, and the guy pulls a gun. Nick ducks, but Jess starts being nice to the guy through apologetic expressions and hand gestures. As Jess tells Nick, this guy must just either be having a bad day or doesn’t know any way to respond to conflict except for violence, due to the cruddy way he’s been treated all his life. The guy backs down and gives them the parking space. Nick is flabbergasted.

After realizing that lots of things in the apartment are broken, Jess wants to ask the landlord, Remy, to fix them. The guys have nothing to do with Remy, because he is the scariest guy ever to set foot on a show this cute. Jess brings him cupcakes and tries to soften him with compliments. “I like your bucket of…gasoline. Super practical.” Jess accidently tells Remy that there are four people living in their apartment. There are only supposed to be three! Remy storms up there.

Jess gets there ahead of him, so the guys pull off their plan to get rid of the fourth bedroom, pretending they use it as a library. Schmidt pretends to be a foreign visitor. It’s all very strange, funny, and hard to recap. Remy does not buy any of it, but Jess charms Remy into being ok with the foursome living there. Remy only wants them to paint over the “sexually charged zero-gravity tea ceremony” Schmidt had painted on Winston’s wall when Winston was gone/Schmidt had Winston’s room. Good Lord, YES, please paint over that.

Jess also gets Remy to fix the apartment, but Nick sees that Remy is only doing all these nice things because he wants to sleep with Jess. YES. Remy is not unselfish inside but is acting out of lust. After Nick warns her, Jess denies that this is the case and thinks she and Remy are just nice, new friends. She invites Remy to have dinner in the apartment and Nick joins them, to protect Jess. Thank God. It was at this point that Ern starting feeling really uncomfortable. Nothing bums Ern out more than a well-meaning guy going after a girl who is going to (and should) turn him down. When Ern has to do it in real life, it’s ugly. She’s no good at it. In fact, she should be shot for her inability to turn a guy down in a classy, courageous way. Thankfully, the rest of the episode proceeded with hilarious awkwardness, rather than crushing awkwardness.

Jess briefly gets Remy and Nick to like each other, and even embrace, by bringing up that they were both victims of being dumped after long relationships. Remy goes to the bathroom and returns with no pants. He thinks they are all going to have a threesome. Nick admits he did not see this coming. Jess isn’t ready to admit to Nick that Remy is a bad person. Nick says he is totally going to do the devil’s threesome, trying to get Jess to admit she is wrong and expel Remy. Jess is all, “Oh, no. I’m totally gonna do this threesome.” The three go into a bedroom where Remy puts on “Send Me on My Way” by Rusted Root. This song is so fun that even this creepy scene didn’t ruin it.

It’s not fair to call it creepy though, because it was really funny. Nick was deemed the underpants captain and Remy suggested that Jess and Nick get everything started. They go in for a kiss and before contact, Jess admits she is wrong. They refuse the threesome and Remy accepts their refusal gracefully, recognizing that cold feet are not uncommon. Winston looks into the room at that moment and Remy runs off, saying that he isn’t ready for a foursome.

Schmidt has this whole plot where he can’t tell if his boss is trying to get him to make a move. Cece tells Schmidt that he should just nut up and go for her. Schmidt grabs her in a parking garage and starts kissing her. She loves it, but the security guards think it looks like an attack and jump on Schmidt. Later, Schmidt shows her his list of 2007 New Year’s Resolutions. They say, among other amusing, embarrassing things, that he is going to only masturbate to the hot new CFO every other time. Schmidt admits that this was not a resolution he could keep. His boss tells him to go into the conference room and dial him into the Tokyo call. This is not code, but Schmidt thinks it is. He ends up being broadcast in his underwear to a room full of Japanese businessmen. This is probably ok. Have you seen Japanese entertainment? It’s zany. In other news, Leeard is falling in love with Schmidt (but still prefers Nick) and can’t get over the way he said “chutney” last week. Ern prefers Winston.

Episode grade: B+