Thursday, December 22, 2011

New Girl 1.05: "Cece Crashes"

“You tell anyone we held hands, I have 2 people in my phone who will kill you.”
-Cece

While I don’t think I’ll ever consider “Cece Crashes” a classic episode of “New Girl” like “Wedding” was and the Thanksgiving episode I haven’t written up yet was, it was still mostly entertaining and enjoyable. I liked that we got some exploration of Jess and Nick’s relationship and significant character development for Schmidt and Cece. In this episode, I started to see that Cece might actually have a place on the show. Up until this point, she would just show up for an obligatory scene or two and be fairly inconsequential. In this episode, however, she’s important to the plot, and it’s a lot of fun to see her interact with the other characters on a more sustained basis. I think it’s important that the show finally started trying to work out how Cece’s interactions with the other characters will work on a regular basis. We saw some evidence of why she and Jess are friends despite their very different personalities (they’ve been friends since childhood and have a deep shared history). We also saw a foundation for a potential relationship with Schmidt that could be quite sweet. Additionally, it was made clear that despite her physical beauty, Cece isn’t perfect. She’s generally a good person at heart, but sometimes she takes advantage of her looks a bit too much to manipulate guys. But hey, at least she’s aware of it.

The episode opens with Jess walking into a club while still dressed in her pajamas. She’s rescuing Cece from her tool of a boyfriend who is a DJ and has face tattoos. Since she and the boyfriend are now pretty much broken up, Cece asks if she can stay with Jess and the guys for a few days. The boyfriend has been staying at her apartment, and she doesn’t especially want to see him. Jess isn’t sure if this is okay, because the guys might have big plans for the weekend. We then cut to the apartment, where Winston and Nick are just chilling on the couch, and Nick is playing an old school video game, complete with 8-bit music. Guess they don’t have such big plans after all. Schmidt wants them to have plans, though. He’s gotten a friend to invite them all to a party, but Winston and Nick don’t seem especially interested. They’re getting into a really silly fight over the ridiculous kimono Schmidt is wearing when Cece arrives. Of course, when the model walks into the room, the guys all have to act chill. Soon enough, Schmidt has given the apartment a club vibe, and he and Winston are dancing with Cece. He’s then all excited when he successfully directs Cece to sleep in his bed. Which is kind of creepy.

When Cece wakes up, Schmidt is all oiled up (more creepiness) and strapped into this ab crunch thing that is attached to the doorway. Later, the guys are all in the bathroom waiting to watch Cece get out of the shower. They really aren’t making a good impression at all. Jess is a little pissed at Nick for being involved in this, even though he kind of just walked into it inadvertently. After they eat breakfast, Cece tells Jess that she thinks Nick is into her. For some reason, Cece is super set on getting Jess a new boyfriend. Jess tries to brush it off, but Cece mentions that guys point their feet towards something they want, and Nick’s feet tend to point towards Jess. Nick interrupts to ask if Jess needs anything from the drug store, and Cece pushes Jess to go along with him.

Jess and Nick’s trip to the drug store is super awkward. Nick is trying to be serious in telling Jess that she doesn’t always need to take care of people, but Jess is too busy trying to make Nick not attracted to her. Specifically, she tells him she doesn’t use toilet paper, which was just strange. She also tries to keep moving whenever she sees Nick’s feet pointing at her. Then he grabs her arm while trying to make a point, and that just makes her freak out more. The final straw happens when Jess and Nick are stuck in heavy traffic on the way home from the store. An enterprising vendor is selling roses by the street, and when Nick buys two for Jess, she freaks out so badly that she boltss out of the car and runs away, leaving Nick sitting in the car, kind of dumbfounded. I’ll admit I’ve used “the runaway” before (albeit not from a car), quite possibly circa 2009. I don’t recommend it.

Back at the apartment, Schmidt braves an encounter with the cat on the roof (I guess he’s afraid of cats or something) to try and flirt with Cece while she’s sunbathing. His plain is foiled by Winston, however, who calls Schmidt’s phone to throw Schmidt of his game. I did love the picture of Winston that showed up on Schmidt’s phone when Winston called, though. It was grumpy and hilarious. Cece has quite a lot of fun ordering the boys around. When they’re all back downstairs in the apartment, she orders Schmidt (who is now sunburnt, poor thing) back up to the roof, and she orders Winston to make her a sandwich. She’s completely lost control of herself.

Jess arrives back at the apartment, closely followed by Nick. Nick is really upset, because he was very worried about Jess and where she might have gone. Cece tries once again to get things going between Nick and Jess, but Jess physically grabs hold of Cece and stops her. Finally, Jess and Cece reach an understanding, and Cece realizes that she’s been obnoxious while staying with Jess. Then poor Schmidt screams from up on the roof. The cat is on one of the lounge chairs. Jess goes up and gets Schmidt off the roof, and she encourages him to stand up to Cece. Because he’s in pain, Schmidt really wants his bed back (he had been sleeping on the couch), and he and Cece both end up sleeping in his bed while holding hands. And of course Schmidt has to ruin the cuteness to call Winston to brag about “closing”…sort of. Jess and Nick sort of reach an understanding, too, while they brush their teeth. Jess apologizes for acting so strange, and Nick’s feet no longer point towards her. Guess this “will they, won’t they” is going to go on for a while longer.

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