New Girl – “Keaton”

Season Three, Episode Six

Grade: B+

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Remember how I’m always complaining about why Schmidt and Nick are friends? Well, we get a fresh reminder of exactly how good of friends they can be during New Girl’s Halloween episode. We also finally push the whole Nick and Jess story-line to the side for a moment to really address Schmidt and the misery he’s experiencing.

Max Greenfield gets to mope around a lot, specifically sitting on the couch and eating cold cuts, which is just really freaking sad in itself. But Jess wants to cheer him up, not entirely because she’s a good roommate but because she’s throwing a Halloween party and his depression will most likely ruin it. When it seems like nothing will get through to Schmidt, Winston suggests that a “certain friend” come into play. Nick is completely against it. Obviously, Jess is intrigued.

What follows after is something that you either hate or love while watching New Girl. It gets incredibly silly and cartoon-ish, but it works because it’s part of the foundation these characters have established ever since the first episode. What ends up being the driving force of the episode is that Schmidt has been getting cheered up his entire life through letters of optimism by Michael Keaton, first written by Schmidt’s mom but passed to Nick when they became college roommates. Pretty crazy right? I won’t say that I loved it, but it just felt right in place for this New Girl episode.

We do get some great comedy in this episode such as Nick putting on a wrinkled Batman mask and drinking Jack Daniels to motivate himself to write Schmidt a letter from Michael Keaton. But the laughs and few and far in-between, which would normally make for a poor sitcom episode but for this, I’m glad they went in the direction they did to re-establish the closeness of the group, specifically Nick and Schmidt. The chat they have on the curb when Schmidt finds out the letters weren’t from Michael Keaton is one of the stronger bonding moments on New Girl. And like usual, Winston isn’t anywhere to be found.

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Last but not least:

• So glad Cece was in this episode and actually had a great scene with Jess and her inability to say “Batmobile.”
• Schmidt moves out of 4D… right across the hall. He celebrates being by himself by doing a snow angel on the hardwood floor, dunking a basketball while yelling “touchdown!” and yelling at a make-believe Winston.
• Max Greenfield really goes at it with scenes with food in it. Squirting the mayonnaise and eating that huge block of cheese made me cringe.