Today and then Never Again

andrewtsks:

nickminichino:

meghanagain:

Last week New Girl put the Internet’s problems with Zooey Deschanel into a character played by Lizzy Caplan. This was a pretty brilliant thing to do. Can you qualify “brilliant” with “pretty”? I mean that’s nearly the question, isn’t it.

I like New Girl. I actually like it a lot. I think I’ve said. I think it’s funny and I think it’s strange and I think it is unlike any other thing that I watch currently. It is a half hour and it is a comedy but it is not written like a sitcom. Or a drama. But that wonderful thing in between. And no it doesn’t bother me, as a woman, to watch this show created-written-produced by a woman; starring another woman; featuring a female character who is not specifically like me but who is still someone with whom I occasionally identify. In fact, it pleases me. This is also how I feel about 30 Rock. This is also, sort of with the words changed around, how Liz Phair feels about Lana Del Rey. I take a lot of pleasure in New Girl’s absurd deconstruction of masculinity. I take a lot of pleasure in the height of its dialogue, more funny and witty and snappy than any of my friends but pitched at this level where I feel like, when we’re all at our best, that’s what we sound like. Right? That’s what we sounds like? Come onnnnnnn we live in a sweet loft like that riiiiiight and our friends are models who are also super down to eaaaaaarrrrrrth. I am totally unopposed to aspirational television, is what I’m saying. It is basically The Depression, or I am the depression, and this is my Gold Diggers of 1933. I don’t care. Go away if you are going to be like that.

Lizzy Caplan’s character, Julia, was introduced so casually that I thought I had missed the episode where she first was on, but I didn’t. I don’t think. She’s been on two so far. In the first one she punched a guy. In this one she put on the kind of face that I think I make a lot, which is not bitchface specifically but a face where you bear a pitying anger for your opponent but also deep down understand that you are in the midst of being an awful person. Julia spends most of the episode being awful to Zooey Deschanel’s character, Jess. She says all the things that the Internet has said about Jess, about New Girl, about Zooey Deschanel the human person, Jess says, “Your whole thing! With the cupcakes, and the braking for birds, and the whole, ‘Bluebirds help me dress in the morning!’” WHAT A BITCH? Except in this episode Jess actually braked due to a bird. And served Julia a cupcake. Then Jess looks horribly wounded and says, “I didn’t realize I was doing a thing.” ZING? Because what if, Internet. What if no one is “doing” a “thing.” Does that make it better for you? Do you hate it less if it is just the way it is? UNPOSSIBLE, responds the Internet. LIES. Self-awareness is our generation’s trick and trade, you cannot be unaware! If you are doing something, it is a thing you are doing! ARRRRG

I don’t know that it’s a fair fight and it appears that neither does anyone else, because the next time Jess and Julia meet, both of them end up in tears. Did you know that New Girl is a sitcom? That’s right, both of them cry, and a third character is also crying because of a related issue, and we go to commercial with three people on this situation comedy sobbing like me watching that one episode of Full House where Michelle falls off a horse or something. I mean on balance it is basically a tragic episode of comedy. Later Julia and Jess have a third (!!!!) confrontation and Jess gets to deliver a speech about how it is possible to be both cute and strong, FYI. But even that! A speech for a thousand r’blogs! Does not bring us to a ringing victory for the girls in polka dots. Neither Jess nor Julia has definitively won the battle of what kind of woman is it okay to be, on television or anywhere else in particular. A whore or a virgin, a pant suit or a thrift dress, you guys ever heard this thing about dichotomy? Anyone have any word on whether or not it usually, like, works? For women? Asking for a friend.

Eventually Lizzy Caplan comes to apologize to Zooey Deschanel, only she doesn’t, then Zooey Deschanel stoically invites her to join her crocheting circle, because someone was like, “what is the needlecraft that most represents” and the answer was “crocheting because it doesn’t even have the cachet of knitting” and someone else was like “hold up knitting has whaaaaat” and no one heard the intern who said “cross-stitch?” the end. I watched this episode just before falling asleep a few nights ago and I woke up hours later with a sort of existential terror buzzing my bonnet. I do not want to pick sides, and I will not pick sides, and I do not blame New Girl because it is a television show with a premise to construct but come on. Will we be aligning ourselves with one or the other or will we just, for god’s sake, figure out what it is that is good about us, and work very hard to make that our light. Write the woman you are, or sing her, or stitch her, or shout her as loud as you can at the pub quiz this week. Whatever it is that is your jam. You do not have to be spoken for, if you speak.

I haven’t seen New Girl, and I wasn’t planning to, but now I am, and also I was jealous that Meghan’s piece wasn’t on my blog because it’s so good. So here it is.

Yo, just in case I haven’t been public enough about this, I am a huge fan of New Girl and I don’t care who knows it. It’s fucking hilarious. Well, actually the pilot was only OK and the second episode was pretty good but not amazing. Since the third episode, though, it’s been pure gold. And this episode in particular was great—though I must admit the part that made me laugh the loudest was Nick and Schmidt’s argument about the towel in the last 30 seconds of the episode.

I’m with Andrew on this one. My lady and I watch every week, and it’s basically the best thing going.