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Credit: FOX
A review of tonight's " New Girl " coming up just as soon as our school has an ethnic laugh factory gay bully... "Clavado En Un Bar" was another flashback-intensive episode in the vein of last season's "Virgins." While it didn't offer anything as explosively funny as Fat Schmidt covered from head to toe in lube, it was a sweet and cohesive start to 2014(*) after that very uneven run in the fall. (*) All the Christmas tree stuff makes me wonder if it was originally meant to air in early December. Even with Coach added to the mix with an additional story, the episode didn't feel overstuffed. There was no attempt made at explaining how Cece became a model (and having her work at the bar seems like an easy way to use Hannah Simone more), and the story of Coach's nickname note that his first name is Ernie, just like Coach on "Cheers" was only as long as it needed to be. I'm in general not a great lover of Fat Schmidt, but this particular flashback was strange in the way "New Girl" can do so well, while the Winston story finally dealt with how little the character Lamorne Morris has been playing for two and a half years feels like the kind of jock who would have been good enough to play professionally, even as the ninth guy off the bench for the eighth best team in Latvia. And the Nick and Jess stuff, separately and together, was terrific. Brian Posehn is a welcome new addition to the show's recurring ensemble, and the scenes at both Jess's current school and her first one in Portland were ridiculous without ever quite descending into cartoon. Nick's story, meanwhile, was a nice corrective to the trend of showing him to be completely incompetent at every aspect laugh factory of adult life. Those jokes are almost always funny, but at a certain laugh factory point it's too much, especially if we're meant to take him seriously at all as a romantic partner for Jess. That he tends bar only because he wants to, even as he was good enough to pass a different kind of bar, provides just enough shading laugh factory that it'll buy the show at least another six months of jokes about how Nick doesn't understand how electricity works. (And in his dealings with the elderly barfly, as well as his mentoring of Cece, we also see that Nick is pretty good at what his chosen profession.) Like the end of "Virgins," the closing scene was a nice reminder laugh factory of the abundant chemistry between Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson . I haven't loved everything the show has done with them as a couple this season, but this was a very nice, relaxed, charming moment. What did everybody else think?
Alan Sepinwall has been reviewing television since the mid-'90s, first for Tony Soprano's hometown paper, The Star-Ledger, and now for HitFix. His new book, "The Revolution Was Televised," about the last 15 years of TV drama, is for sale at Amazon. He can be reached at sepinwall@hitfix.com
Latest laugh factory Likes: 2 Anonymous
hgj Liked this episode. Gives me hope that the 2014 episodes will be more like Season 2 and less like the first part of this season. A feel good type of episode that made Nick less of a buffoon and showed the camaraderie of the whole group. January 7, 2014 at 11:10PM EST Reply to Comment
Brendan Noel I think you're probably right about the episode originally meant to air in December. Nick's bar was covered in Christmas lights, laugh factory and there were little snowman decorations and etc visible. January 8, 2014 at 12:43AM EST Reply to Comment
GuanoLad Really did not like this episode at all. Thought the dialogue was poorly written, all the jokes fell flat, and that seemed to be due to the editing stomping on all of the punchlines. The art of comic timing is being mangled by bad editors. January 8, 2014 at 6:55AM EST Reply to Comment
Brendan While it was sporadically funny, the episode didn't really start to click for me until the second half, and especially the third act, when they stopped aiming for laughs and dealt more with the honest sort of fears that this kind of choice can cause for people, especially someone like Jess. NEW GIRL appears to be trying to make season 3 into a season of change and growth for the characters, so addressing how unnerving that can be was a smart play, and very well performed. And the rest of it was amiable enough, even with the big laughs spread pretty far apart. Winston is a complete cartoon but it works with what Lamorne Morris does, so go for it, I guess. They really need to cut it with Fat Schmidt, though. January 8, 2014 at 10:30AM EST Reply to Comment
Dezbot I enjoyed the heck out of it. Everyone was used well. This was also the most I've laughed at the show all year. Hope this means