New Girl: Season 2, Episode 20 “Chicago” (B-)
It’s always an odd thing to add a serious life event like death into a purely comedic show, one which before has tackled such things as breakups and cheating but never something quite so finite. Unfortunately, on a show as witty and entertaining as this, death didn’t look all that good, mainly because all Nick’s mom could talk about was wanting an entirely Elvis-themed funeral and Nick was suddenly Mr. Responsibility despite nothing he has done on the show up until this point indicating that he is that type of person. In theory, casting Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy for her work on “Justified” after so many years of standout supporting work, is a great choice to play Nick’s mom, but there was little for her to do here other than grumble about how she doesn’t like Jess before ultimately making her a snack for the ride home. This installment also did a disservice to the relationship between Nick and Jess, which continues to be awkward, because Nick’s family members automatically supposed that Jess was his girlfriend and Jess ended up being an extremely good friend for him during the funeral, to the point of blurring the lines between friendship and romance. Winston wasn’t relegated to his very own plotline in this episode, but instead he had company in the offshoot storyline that he shared with Schmidt, which was much more about the showier character’s fear of dead bodies, which was occasionally amusing but hardly hilarious enough to sustain the half-hour.
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