Season: 3
Broadcasting Station: Fox
Number of Episodes: 23
Official Page
STEPH SAID
Rating:
Review:
*This review contains spoilers.*
The beginning and the ending of this season was terrible; I was even tempted to give it a one-star rating. Although, upon looking back at the episodes in the middle of the season, I was reminded they are good. Unfortunately, not New-Girl-season-1 good, just good. Like I said in the review of New Girl's first season, with this series is not about the “what”, is about the “how”. The question is why does a TV series that was amazing and new and innovative, now sucks big time? Because even though the series, and Jess herself, were described as offbeat, they now march to the same beat as everyone else.
The first few episodes made no sense, and didn't go along with the offbeat, regular New Girl we are used to. Schmidt playing with the feelings of two girls was not funny and completely out of character. Schmidt is a guy with self-esteem problems that comes off as a d-bag, but is, in fact, sensitive and caring. He is not the type of guy that would go out with two girls at the same time. I reminisce the first episode when Schmidt decided to not hook up with a girl so he could go console a friend. That is was Schmidt is.
Along that line follows Jess. She has turn (or is she just now showing her true colors?) into a selfish, sex crazed teenager. (“'Cause I'm going through a sexual awakening. It's like I'm tapping into this raw sexual energy [...] And it's kind of like I'm a young nun and Nick is my sexy monseigneur.”) The series' producers are wasting Zoey's unique and charming quirkiness and goofiness to focus on something that anyone else can do.
The selfish part of Jess is more evident near the end of the season, especially in the episode “Big News”. I know a breakup may involve a long and painful process where each person needs time to heal. However, for that to happen Jess and Nick needed to let everyone know about their breakup; that way they could have received some time and space to figure things out. Instead they decided to not tell anyone and focus on celebrating Winston's big news. Nick was succeeding in his attempts to focus on Winston. On the other hand, Jess was all about herself and ended up ruining Winston big night. I understand what she is going through, but she made a decision and she should have gone through with it.
This gets worse when you realize that this breakup is, almost in its entirety, Jess' fault. She knows how Nick is from the beginning, and decides to go into a relationship with him anyway. And then, she can't be with him because he is not the way she wants him to be. (“I just want you to take a little more responsibility.” Also, “Nick... if I was always honest with you then we would never stop fighting.”) In the breakup episode Nick tells Jess that he is not the type of guy to assemble a toy before giving it as a present. Jess says that's O.K.; she wants him to be himself. Yet, a few minutes before she was pestering him about not assembling the toy. I mean, a relationship in which both partners know they need to get literally away from everything and everyone they know, in order for the relationship to work, is an obviously doomed relationship from the very beginning.
Unfortunately, she is not the only one that has changed for the worst. Every character's age has apparently been downgraded from 30-ish to 15-ish. The characters are behaving so immature that it's annoying. There were some episodes that actually felt like a burden when I was watching them. The actors just make a fool of themselves, say some crazy lines and that's it.
A clear example that will summarize my feelings is Coach. He was the only character I liked this season. He wasn't great, but he was definitely better and funnier than the rest. Yet, in the last episode I lost the last shred of respect for the character and the whole series. Coach, along with the whole group, went on a cruise. The thing is, coach is afraid of boats, apparently. He could have stayed behind, but let's say that the peer pressure got to him and he decided to go. Next thing I know he is in a small boat on the deck of the cruise, "rowing" for his life and screaming, completely out of touch with reality. It was so ridiculously exaggerated that it wasn't even funny. Less is more with this sort of thing. Why didn't they just made him cry? Or suffer from paralyzing fear? That could have been hilarious. Then again, fake crying to make people laugh has been a constant in this season, so maybe the writers were bored of their own work.
Then there's Miller as a lawyer. I understand that he can forget about procedures and regulations, but a five year old could have behaved better than Miller did as a lawyer. Heck, even Winston behave brilliantly and he didn't even knew what he was doing. You only need to watch one episode of law drama to know how to behave in a court or an official meeting, like the one they attended.
Like I said earlier, the episodes in the middle of the season were good. Unfortunately, they weren't good enough to overshadow the decline in this series' quality.
