“Shark”
New Girl
Season 4, Episode 12
After a long winter hiatus, the show has started to creep back into its regular timeslot. It’s time for events to change things up to increase their ratings, buck the old formula for better ratings and experiment a bit. Mindy’s Project went to California for a while, Modern Family changed their core episode structure for their first week back and lots of series launched into their second half storylines. Fortunately for New Girl no need to reinvent the wheel on the return as has been done on all cylinders since the start of this season. “Shark” is an episode that does all the right things for viewers looking to return to regular television programming.
If you have been following our review of New Girl up until this point in the season you’d know that one of its greatest strengths was the fact they did not have to depend on any particular group of people for an episode to work. The roommates have such chemistry that they can be placed in any situation and thrive in both their individual and combined performances. “Shark” gives us the two groupings as we see Schmidt and Jess preparing for construction late at night while Nick and Coach are concerned about Winston starting his new job as a police officer.
This episode’s comedy rests on Coach and Nick’s shoulders as they set out to prove that Winston’s training office is too tiny to protect him. The prerequisite sitcom laughs occur somewhat easily but are less profuse. Waynes & Johnson’s quirky chemistry is on full display as they play one another breathlessly in the scene where they offer Officer Nielsen an unwrapped bag of candy. The laughs weren’t widely available this week and with it the storyline that should have focused on Winston’s graduation from the police academy was a bit missing. It does a solid job although showing that in this case, the people are just dolphins swimming in Officer Nielsen’s section of the ocean.
Jess and Schmidt’s storyline may have fewer laughs but is full of winning performances by Max Greenfield playing the political candy of Councilman Fawn Moscato, played effortlessly by Zoe ListerJones. One of the best running trends on the show is Schmidt’s inability to reduce herself to a piece of meat in terms of strong women and that is precisely what is going on here. When he realized that the Councilman was strong and sexy, he instantly turned his back on Jess and their fight against the night’s constructs in an try to get near her. He was also blind to the undeniable fact that she was using him for the rest of the episode as a puppet to further his goals until it was too late and Jess had to save him. In this case the gist of the episode’s message is obvious; men may believe they’re getting a better situation but it is robust women who are really driving the train. Jess wins the battle against construction night, Moscato uses Schmidt’s bumbling performance to win the vote and training officer Winston points out that Nick and Coach are kids pretending to be boys. These three women are true sharks and this episode shows that effortlessly. New Girl may not all the time be a show about empowerment or self-esteem but with its first episode in 2015 it has shown that it has the ability to be so much more than your average sitcom.
Grade: B+
