"New Girl" Is A Severely Underrated Sitcom

Since quarantine started I've been trying to watch new shows, as I've spent a lot of time over the last few years rewatching The Office and Breaking Bad and not a lot of time invested in watching or starting new shows. Yeah I've dabbled here and there, but there have been so many shows that I haven't watched piled up on my list that I decided to start chipping away at it, finally. I also wanted to watch the shows people were talking about currently, which is how I ended up watching "Outer Banks" (actually not terrible…well I mean it is bad but in that lovable way) and "Normal People" (loved it, 8.9 Nateys).

But as for the older shows, I started with "You". Super creepy show. Also the Chris D'Elia character…woof bro. I watched two more new shows, "Devs" (8.0/10) and "Upload" (7.5), before watching 'Dave", which not only met the hype and expectations, but blew them away. What an incredible show. If you haven't watched Lil Dickey's show "Dave" yet, start it RIGHT NOW. I don't care if you're holding a god damn baby, drop it on its head and start watching.

Then I watched "Fleabag" which was also pretty good, especially season 2. After that I kinda bounced around a bit, not really finding anything that drew me in. And during that time, I feel there was a 190% increase in Nick Miller gifs going around Twitter. I knew what New Girl was, a sitcom with Zooey Deschanel. I'd seen clips online. But I never thought to pay much attention to it. It wasn't til I was talking to John Henry and he told me Nick Miller is a top 5 sitcom character of all time (yeah, I gave him the ok, sure pal reaction as well) that I decided to see what the hype was about. And boy am I glad I did.

"New Girl" is a fantastic sitcom. In fact, the worst part of it might be that it's called "New Girl". If you can plow through the first 5-6 episodes when Jess (Zooey's character) is wayyyyy over the top, it's smooth sailing the rest of the way. Once they develop the characters and the chemistry sets in, it's as funny as any other sitcom out there. 

And unfortunately for Zooey, she becomes the weak link in the cast. I kinda feel bad for her because they put her in a cast with very good and hysterical improv comedians, and the writers allowed the characters to improv lines. She stood no chance in a cast with Nick, Schmidt, and Winston. They are an all-time trio. Nick gets most of the shine for being an outrageous human being, but Schmidt's annunciations of words and Winston's pure zaniness make them next-level. 

To think I've watched The Office through 20 times and New Girl only once, shame on me. Just shame on me. I can't wait to watch again and pick up on more Nick and Schmidt lines that I missed the first time. 

So please, if you've been missing or even avoiding "New Girl" because you think it might not be for you, you are as mistaken as can be. It's a great sitcom and if they weren't on network television (FOX), I cannot imagine how over the top it would have been with way fewer restrictions. Nick is basically a network version of Charlie from It's Always Sunny…oh what could have been if they ever met in the television world.