New Girl - "Parking Spot" - Review

New Girl is a show that works as well as it does because its characters are always consistent. The writers have these characters down to a peg, and every line and interaction feels true to what these characters would actually do and say.

It’s this attention to character detail that turns characters from joke delivery machines to individuals we want to follow on a weekly basis. 

The chase to get to the parking spot is a funny scene, but it works as well as it does because it plays off what we already know about these characters. Jess stopping to pick up trash is an amusing moment, but it’s also totally in character, and those little character beats elevate New Girl from just another show about twenty-somethings to one of television’s best ensemble comedies. 

The interactions between Nick, Schmidt, and Jess as they confront the situation of who gets the great, open parking space (and eventually the kiss-shaped elephant in the room, or “rum” as Schmidt would pronounce it) is filled with nicely observed character moments that are at once very funny and yet all the funnier for how specific the jokes are to these characters. 

Take the parking spot sit-in scene for example. Schmidt pees himself, Jess brings hard candy, and Nick essentially eats garbage. Those three actions in of themselves aren’t funny; in fact, if you told me that some show was doing these things to get laughs, I probably wouldn’t watch it. But in the context of these characters, it works and it’s funny. 

The integration of the ongoing tension between Nick and Jess into the main storyline also works really well. Rather than turning this into its own plot that would probably start to get predictable and distracting, the writers find ways for it to play off of the current antics. Jess “flirting” with Nick by wearing his hoodie and talking for what passes as sexy for Jess advances both storylines while remaining hilarious and in-character.

This cast features some great performers and the writers utilize them well to tell meaningful, endearing, entertaining stories where I never question a character's actions or decisions but look forward to seeing what those might be.

Stray Observations:

-The opening toothbrushing scene also worked really well. I particularly liked the way both Nick and Jess kept saying “Sucked face”.

-Schmidt was scrubbing out the backside of a dumpster when he discovered the parking spot.

-Schmidt asks Nick rhetorically what the Constitution says to do: “Don’t share stuff”

-The roommates play their particular trump card. Jess: female. Winston: race. Nick: lazy drunk. Schmidt: found the spot first.

-“Justice may be a lady, but Victory has a dick”

-Coach gets mentioned when Schmidt discusses the “Nail Oath”.

-Winston doesn’t have money on him and really wants to get laid: “I am in desperate need of condom,” he yells to the store’s other customers.

-“What do you think, mono is just some sort of joke?”

-“If I had kissed Winston, you’d be the first person I told”

-Jess tries to purple nurple Schmidt and can’t find his nipples … Alrighty then?

-Winston in his desperate search for a condom goes to Cece, who is the middle of trying to fix her relationship with the Indian “chemical engineer” Shivrang (Satya Bhabha) her mom's set her up with.

- “Did you just pee inside yourself?”

-“Know what drives men? Sex and competition. It’s why the U.N. was created. It’s why women aren’t allowed on pirate ships”

-“You nailed my mouth. And you nailed it good”

-Schmidt kisses Jess to defuse tensions … and it so does not work. They left this whole story a little too unfinished. It needed about a minute or two more to resolve itself before Winston barged in.  

-“You are literally sitting in a pile of your own piss”

-“Is everyone having sex but me?” - Mainly for Lamorne Morris' delivery

Grade: A