Monday, May 2, 2016

What I’m Watching: New Girl


New Girl: Season 5, Episodes 15 and 16 “Jeff Day” and “Helmet” (B)

From this point on, there will be two episodes per week, though this show may have ended its season by the time I get around to writing the review of the next batch of two episodes. It’s a strange way to air series, to burn off so many episodes so quickly after a midseason premiere rather than just have them run through the entire season. These two episodes were relatively funny even if they weren’t so solid, and they were typical enjoyable installments that don’t come anywhere near the greatness of what this show used to be. It was strange to see Sonequa Martin-Green outside of “The Walking Dead,” but having her introduced with a bloody knife sticking out of her arm felt familiar. I do think that Rhonda was a perfect fit for Winston, eager to pull pranks that didn’t always make sense, and now he’s married to someone who likely won’t be back on the same show anytime soon, which is peculiar to be sure. It was a better plotline for Winston than having to go head-to-head with Kal Penn’s cat agent boyfriend, an absurd profession that feels too ridiculous even for this show. The only moderately entertaining part of that entire thing was Schmidt spraying himself to become a mass cat attractor. I’m not a fan of Sam’s, and I don’t think having him around is doing the show too many favors. His competition with Nick in the first episode to be Jeff Day and be there for Jess was fun, but in the second episode he didn’t serve much purpose other than to be jealous of Nick. It’s interesting that, after Reagan was on the show, everything seems to be pushing Nick and Jess back together again. I don’t mind that, but it strikes me as odd given how the show was trying to get away from that. We’ll see what happens over the course of the next six episodes.

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