New Girl – “The Box”

Season Three, Episode Five

Grade: C

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You know how I’m always questioning why Schmidt and Nick are even friends? Well it looks like I’m going to start questioning why Jess and Nick are even going out. For the first two seasons it made sense. Nick was actually a decent human being who tried to do the right things while Jess was just trying to fit in and grow up. There was large appeal to these two characters and it seemed like they both needed each other to get to the place they both wanted to go. And even though that’s exactly where we end up at the conclusion of this episode, there were plenty of moments that had my scratching my head, trying to remember why I wanted Jess and Nick to get together in the first place.

A creepy old guy drops off a brown paper bag with $8,000 in it for Nick, just a little something his dad left for him after he passed. Nick is what you would call poor, and I’m not surprised at Nick spending the money carelessly. I am surprised at the fit he threw when 1. Jess suggests he uses the money to pay off some of his bills and 2. When Winston asks Nick to pay him back the $1,900 he owes him. Seriously, what kind of person is Nick? Because he seems like the biggest asshole you could ever live with.

Nick’s temper tantrum gets worse when he finds out Jess went into his sacred box of unpaid bills and actually paid them with his bag of money. How does he get back at her (because that’s the Nick Miller way when he’s mad), he tosses all of her colorful purses out the window. I wouldn’t have minded this ridiculous scene if it were funny, but nothing about this made me laugh.

What were the other friends up to this episode? Schmidt tries to do good things to convince himself he’s a good person, so that good things happen to him. He saves a man who was choking after a bike accident, but then realizes that being good doesn’t protect him from bad stuff happening to him. While all of this makes sense to Schmidt’s character, none of it was entertaining (which is hard to do while sharing scenes with Jon Lovitz).

Winston… well all he tries to do the whole episode is to get his $1,900 back from Nick. It starts out with Winston being nice to Nick, then blackmailing Jess for the money. And that results to about four minutes of screen-time for Winston. Typical New Girl. In the end, Nick opens up a checking account and him and Jess share a cute moment getting the processing fee waived because, well that’s the Nick Miller way. Cute, yes. But seriously…

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Last but not least:

• No Cece in this episode, means that I’m not liking the direction New Girl is going in.
• I’ll never get tired of scenes where Nick gets wasted in.
• Words of wisdom from Winston, “You’re a good man. You did a bad thing, it doesn’t make you bad. You just have to try to be better, you know?”

How I Met Your Mother – “The Poker Game”

Season Nine, Episode Five

Grade: A-

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From the first scene of Marshall describing the mouth-watering pizza to Daphne while they continue their road trip, to the end scene where Robin and Loretta declare all out war against each other, “The Poker Game” was a great half hour for How I Met Your Mother. It’s the sort of quick-cut, flashback-heavy episode that never leaves you without a smile on your face.

We’re still 48 hours away from the wedding and Lily is foaming at the mouth from Ted’s plan to give Barney and Robin not one, not two, but three wedding gifts! All because Ted never gave a wedding gift to Marshall and Lily, no matter how many hints Marshall dropped to Ted in the past. When Marshall finally confronts Ted, he claims he gave them a great wedding gift: a coffeemaker, one-tier-down model of his favorite coffeehouse. The argument gets flipped upside-down when Ted accuses Marshall and Lily of never sending them a thank you note for his wedding gift.

Meanwhile, Robin gets sick of James making fun of the marriage and takes it into her own hands when Barney refuses to stand up for her. She ends up winning James’ wedding ring in a hand of poker, but this causes Mama Stinson to step in to defend her son, resulting in her losing her sequin dress to another poker hand. After a brief tug-of-war with Barney in-between Robin and his family, he completely cuts off James and his mom, saying his family means nothing to him since he now has Robin. The kicker is that he throws Robin under the bus saying this all came from her. It’s not the funnier half of the episode, but it sure sets up a nice future-encounter between the two most important women in Barney’s life.

Back to the mystery of who sent Marshall and Lily the coffee maker, the culprit happens to be Stuart, who has become a real sleaze-bag (but in a funny way). Ted finally makes everything right by delivering Marshall’s favorite Chicago pizza pie right to their car.

While this is another episode we don’t see Cristin Milioti, it contains all the silly jokes we love about How I Met Your Mother. It’s another throw-away episode, but it’s a better episode than last week. I do expect a more serious episode in the very near future, one that might focus on Ted and Robin as the wedding inches closer and closer. But for now, I’m going to go grab myself a pizza!

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Last but not least:

• Ted’s first wedding gift to Barney and Robin is a framed photo of the gang at the bar.
• Marshall never forgets to write thank you notes because his family has a saying, “Lick it before you stick it.” It being the stamp on the thank you note, before you stick it in the mailbox.
• Ted never forgets to send wedding gifts to his friends because his family has a saying, “Wrap it before you tap it.” Wrap the gift before you tap the person on the shoulder and say, “Here’s your gift!” These were my two favorite jokes of the episode.
• The Stinsons always use the word “bluff” when they’re bluffing: “Should we get some bluffalo wings?” “I saw an all you can eat bluff-et.” “I could use a bluffberry muffin, a blueberry bluffin, a bluebluffy bluffmuff, all in!”