Take the scene when Nick is building the bear trap. The jokey interplay between Schmidt, Coach, and Nick is so well-written and their timing is great together – tumbling over each other a little, other times leaving slightly too long, like a normal conversation – that it really feels like we’re watching three real friends doing friendly things together. I’ve never got that impression with Winston, oddly enough. He’s not an outsider, I just never really buy that friendship as deeply as I buy Nick, Schmidt and Coach. It doesn’t feel as real t0 me.
Tellingly, presumably to let the machismo fly unabated, Winston is put with Jess and Cece when Nick separates the group into either hunters or gatherers. Men and women. Winston joins the girls and they have a separate fun adventure, one that builds nicely into the overarching theme of Nick’s masculinity. After all, it was Nick who persuaded the gang to venture into the forest in the first place and hunt their dinner.
Jess, not wanting to be seen to diminish his manhood in front of the guys any further, does her best to support him. To what lengths does she go for her man? Well, she eats a long-dead, half-rotten fresh water fish. And I say “fresh” in the loosest possible sense of the word. She does it to prove that Nick was right to bring them out here, and is capable of hunting a Thanksgiving dinner (of sorts). That he hunted the fish as it lay on its side on the surface of the water, and that Jess, Cece, and Winston gathered the vegetables from the local health food store, is neither here nor there. If anything, the pointlessness of eating the rotting fish just underscored how much she wanted Nick’s plan to work out.
When Jess eats the fish, we finally get to see Hallucinations Jess. This season has been sorely lacking in Hallucinations Jess, staying hidden away since she drank absinthe with Nick’s crazy stripper girlfriend Angie (Olivia Munn) in last season’s “Cabin.” She was still with Sam, to give you a little context. So it’s been a long time.
Jess starts hallucinating as a result of eating the fish, and escapes into the woods. Eagle-eyed viewers could probably guess how they would catch her in the end, and it did serve to tie up each group’s plotline in a neat little bow, a facet of late period New Girl that I’ve come to really appreciate. They’re getting really good at dovetailing the stories into one pleasing whole, to round the episode off nicely. They do get their Thanksgiving dinner eventually, and the episode has a nice happy ending, with Jess’ stated wish – that she just wants the group to be together, eating, and happy – coming true. This is a group vaguely reunited for now, and hopefully for at least a couple of episodes to come. I’m glad.
Random Robservations:
- “What are you trying to catch, a refrigerator?” was so perfectly pitched, timed, and delivered, that it gave me the biggest laugh of any line this season. A great joke that works on two or three different levels.
- Schmidt guiding Coach in the ways of Cece is really sweet. They’re warming to each other.
- I’d like Hallucinations Jess to become a recurring character, please.
Next week’s New Girl is the last one this year, so stay tuned!