New Girl and the Art of Romcom Writing: Part 4 (Happily Ever After)
Added 2025-02-07 21:20:43 +0000 UTCOkay, so, first off, sorry for the delay on this! I got sick again, plus I’ve been dealing with some complications regarding my living situation, and I’ve been wicked busy with Beginner’s Guide1 , AND also I fell down the professional wrestling rabbit-hole recently (something we will talk about at a later date). THAT SAID: here we are at long last. The thrilling conclusion. Happily Ever After.
So. Without further adieu:
Hello, lovelies. Welcome to part 4.
In part 2, I alluded via footnote to the idea of ‘Moonlighting Syndrome’, also known as ‘Shipping Bed Death’, which is essentially the theory that a fictional couple can only be interesting when they’re doing an endless will-they-won’t-they-dance, that the second they actually get together their story ceases to be interesting. This is, and pardon my old-timey profanity, complete and utter poppycock. The term comes from an old show I’ve never seen called Moonlighting, and it did apparently fall apart after the main couple finally got together, but that was because the actors playing them hated each other and also both wanted to leave to do other things (one of them was this obscure character actor called Bruce Willis, whom you may have heard of from this little-known indie movie called Die Hard). That said, this idea- which probably did not begin with Moonlighting- has wiggled into its way into the collective popular culture consciousness, and, as Wikipedia teaches us, when enough people believe something, it becomes ‘fact.’
Season 3 of New Girl could arguably be seen as a demonstration of this idea… Except it’s not. As I hopefully did a good job outlining in part 2, that season is actually just an example of a poorly-executed third-act breakup that got stretched out a bit too long due to a combination of actor availability and the show generally just going a lot longer and moving a lot faster than the writers initially expected it to. If anything, I believe that New Girl provides an extended case study in how fictional couples can be just as, if not more interesting when they’re actually together (something we got a glimpse of in season 3). Because Happily Ever After is a process, not an end goal. What it means differs for each and every romantic couple out there, both in fiction and in real life, and it is constantly changing. Because life never stops changing. That’s why it’s so powerful when this show acknowledges that for a relationship to survive, it needs to grow and change with the lives of the people in it.
The first hint of this actually comes with a couple we don’t get to see all that much of: Coach and May. Coach is… Well, he’s something of a case study for the whole ‘real life circumstances changing the script’ thing that comes up in this show sometimes. Originally, he was supposed to be a series regular, but Damon Wayans Jr’s schedule conflicts resulted in him being replaced by Winston. Then, in season 3, Coach returns midway and becomes a regular in season 4. However, time, and Damon Wayans Jr’s schedule, waits for no woman, and he winds up leaving by the end of season 4. He and his girlfriend May are genuinely pretty cute in an ‘opposites attract because they have more in common than they initially realize’ sort of way, and I’m always a fan of Megan Rath getting work. However, it’s in the fact that he moves away from his friends so he can go to New York with May that we get a hint of what the show ultimately posits about true love: it’s constantly evolving.
Coach essentially reoccurs once per season starting in season 5, and midway through season 6, Schmidt, to his complete and utter shock, discovers that Coach and May have moved to North Carolina and have a foreign exchange student living with them. He has a bit of a freakout over this, but Nick points out that they’re just not consistently in each other’s lives anymore so it makes sense they’re aren’t privy to every development in Coach’s life. And there it is right there, honestly: life never stops. You’ll never be allowed to stay the same way forever. Even when you think you’ve got the happy ending signed, sealed, and delivered, you’re still gonna have to keep growing.
And Schmidt and Cece are probably the best example of this in the whole show. Following their engagement at the end of season 4, they become the new anchor couple, with season 5 detailing their engagement in glorious detail. And the changes that come with that are scary to both of them: Cece is at a turning point where she no longer knows what she’s doing with her career. She’s moving out of her terrible apartment and into the loft for reasons every bit as much financial as personal. And she’s finally engaged to the man of her dreams, but her mother does not approve. And that devastates her.
But at this point, Schmidt has proven he will go above and beyond for his woman. He will grow for her, he will change for her, he will do anything for her. A few episodes highlight the idea that he knows the old him was not good enough for her, and his insecurity over the idea that he’s still not good enough, not man enough, not successful enough, not husband material, drives a lot of conflicts. He will do anything to be worthy of her. Up to and including doing anything to get Cece’s mom to come to their wedding, to give her stamp of approval to the man her daughter loves. Not for him, but for Cece, because he will be whatever he needs to be to make her happy. Even if that means calling Mrs. Parikh every freaking day until the wedding and then getting on a plane to Portland the night before the wedding2 to personally get on his knees and beg her to come with him. Schmidt has become the kind of man who is willing to miss the wedding he planned down to the last detail in order to make his woman happy, and in doing so, he becomes the kind of man who is worthy of her. And in doing so, he becomes a man worthy of Mrs. Parikh’s blessing.
Which leads to this:
SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!
It’s fucking beautiful, y’all. And yes, it needs to be said that because of the changes that happened in the course of getting here, the circumstances of the wedding itself need to change to accommodate that. Change is constant, even in love.
And it doesn’t stop there. Season 6 begins with Schmidt and Cece realizing a hard truth: they have outgrown the loft. As much as they love their friends, the two of them are in the next stage in their lives and they need the proper room to grow. But, as I and anyone in the greater Los Angeles area can tell you, buying a house in this city is really fucking expensive, and all they can afford is something that can be very charitably described as a fixer-upper (VERY charitably). So, in a great metaphor for their relationship as a whole, they spend about half of the season working to get the place fixed up and turned into their dream house (which a leads to a hilarious episode in which Nick has to teach Schmidt how to interact with working class people so he can make sure their renovator isn’t scamming them). And a dream house it becomes! But the cost of it is having to live there, away from all their friends! And this is horrifying to Cece especially, given her previously mentioned desperate need to be included in things! Thus, our heartwarming married couple are now constantly breaking into the loft, or their friends are breaking into their place in the middle of the night, or they’re hosting parties at their new house that get out of control very easily.
All this, while very silly, is underscored with a very genuine pathos: the fear of getting older. By this point, the characters are all in the second half of their third decade of life. They’re not as young as they used to be, and it’s scary having to watch things change, having to live with the fear of losing the connections that made you into the person you are now. It’s human. But what’s equally human is holding those connections, those people, close as you keep on growing, and that’s what Schmidt and Cece do. They adapt as their circumstances change, and they live their new lives together. And bring a new life into it, at that.
Yup, season 6 ends with Cece pregnant (a real joy given how much angst Cece had in season 2 about her time running out), and then season 7 lets us actually see them as parents! And it’s adorable! Their daughter, Ruther Bader Parikh-Schmidt, is a delightful little troglodyte who manages to hit that sweet spot between cute and realistic that child characters on TV don’t always manage (especially children as young as Ruth is supposed to be). And getting to see Schmidt and Cece as parents is a lot of fun. Schmidt, the former horndog chauvinist, ultimately choosing to leave his very lucrative marketing job to become a full-time stay-at-home dad while Cece runs her male modelling agency (a great resolution to her career situation, btw) is a really beautiful conclusion to his arc, and just in general seeing Cece get to really have it all in a way she never thought she could is incredibly heartening.
Plus, it leads to this scene:
But yeah. In spite of all the setbacks and false starts and heartbreaks, Schmidt and Cece learn to grow and change with each other. They accept that nothing will be permanent, that tomorrow will always hold something different, but they can always enjoy today together and face tomorrow arm in arm. For a couple I never expected to root for, it’s a damn-near fairy tale ending, and Goddammit it works!
Now, I still have to talk about Nick and Jess, obviously, but there’s one other couple we need to talk about first, one I haven’t really discussed as much because… Oh God, where do I even begin?
Yup. That’s right. It’s time to talk about Winston and Aly.
Remember how I said back in part one that Winston gets weirder and weirder every week? Remember how I also said back up top that Winston was originally created as a replacement character for Coach? Those two things are related. In the first two seasons, Winston is… Frankly, a lot less defined than the rest of the cast. He mostly just exists to serve as a token ‘normal’ person who reacts accordingly to his roommates’ antics. This begins to shift in season 2 when Lamorne Morris’ unique brand of hammy charisma starts to become more apparent, and fully shifts in season 3 when… Well…
If there is any one character that embodies the whole ‘ever-changing’ thing, it’s Winny the Bish. This continues in season 3 when he realizes he hates his sports radio job and decides to become a cop instead, and come season 4, on his new job, he meets her. Aly. Who at first seems like a snarky, aloof, closed-off ice queen type, but that’s only because she’s actually every bit as insane as he is. And as the show goes, she becomes more and more comfortable showing that craziness to her equally crazy boyfriend until, by season 7, they’re married, Winston has become a detective, and Aly is pregnant. Something she’s initially not happy about because it makes everyone treat her like she’s fragile… Until she realizes she can use it to get people to do what she says.
Also, this scene exists:
It’s great. She’s great. They wind up having like… Five kids.
The reason I’m mentioning all this is to illustrate both the ethos of ‘change is constant, especially in relationships’ that the show ascribes to, and also because both Schmidt/Cece and Winston/Aly in their respective happily ever afters are very important contrasts to… Well… Take a wild guess.
After their glorious reunion at the closing of season 6, Jess and Nick begin season 7 riding high. Three have passed in the interim. Nick’s novel series, the Pepperwood Chronicles, are a bestselling international megahit on the Young Adult Market (long story) and Jess is between jobs, but the two are living in the loft together with plenty space for both of them and Jess gets to travel the world with Nick on his book tours. But they’re not quite there yet. They’re not engaged yet, even though for both of them it’s a matter of ‘when’ not ‘if.’
Especially since Nick has obtained the blessing of Jess’ father, has a ring, and is quite literally waiting for the perfect moment.
Season 7 is only 8 episodes long and mostly serves as a very thorough denouement for the series. And, due to the sheer number of characters and running gags the show had accumulated by this point (a lot), the Nick/Jess stuff only takes up about four episodes. Not knocking it, by the way: I genuinely appreciate Merriweather & Co. going out of their way to give closure or at the very least a last hurrah to basically every character they introduced us to (the memorial service for Winston’s beloved cat Ferguson arguably being the best case of this). And the episodes that do handle the Nick/Jess stuff are honestly exactly what I was hoping for.
First, Nick spends an entire episode attempting to get Jess to open a piece of mail he sent from Europe so she can find the engagement ring he got her. Too clever by half, our guy is. Then, he constantly tries to find a way to propose to Jess under the ideal circumstances but keeps getting foiled by Jess wanting to get a dog (his name is Mario and he’s adorable). Then Mario steals the ring.
Then Nick has to propose in a public park in front of an outdoor showing of a movie that they sync up with because he got foiled by a dog.
It’s messy and it’s chaotic.
And it’s just the beginning.
The wedding episode begins with Nick and Jess’ friends toasting them at the rehearsal dinner, only for Schmidt and Winston to decide to roast Nick instead in a way that comes off as more mean than funny. Not off to a great start. Then the next day, Jess scratches her cornea after slipping on the bathroom floor and has to wear an eyepatch to her own wedding. And then her mom convinces her the whole marriage is cursed now and gets her high on the devil’s lettuce while her ex-boyfriend/current boss attempts to seduce her away from Nick.
Nick, meanwhile, just found out his publisher has dropped him, gets dressed down by his future father-in-law, bird droppings land on his shoulder, and he gets into a physical altercation with Jess’ ex-boyfriend and current boss. And also, they’re getting evicted.
And then Aly goes into labor, resulting in Nick and Jess having to have their wedding ceremony in a hospital lobby.
It’s a lot. But c’mon. It’s these two. Murphy’s Law has always been in full effect with their relationship. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. But that doesn’t stop them. It stopped them once. But this time, they’re stronger than that. They’ve learned and grown enough to roll with the punches, because they know that if they have each other, the rest is just details. It’s not a fairy tale, but it is a screwball comedy, and that’s definitely what these two are. Because for these two, this is what Happily Ever After looks like.
The series that began with Jess moving into the loft ends, fittingly enough, with Jess and Nick moving out of the loft. I won’t spoil the punchline explanation of why this all this happened, but I will say that Jess... isn’t quite ready to move on. And it makes sense. Change is scary, and she’s not ready for this one. But nobody is ever really ready for the big changes. You just have to roll with it, take the blows as they come and hold tight the people around you. And that’s what she does. She celebrates leaving with one final game of True American, and in those moments, we get a glimpse of the future: her and Nick with their son and their friends and all their friends’ kids, playing True American with soda instead of booze.
Because while you never stop having to change and grow in this lifetime, you also don’t have to let everything go either. Some things, some people, are worth holding onto. Even if you don’t live together anymore, they’re still family. They’re still home. And for Nick and Jess, for all these characters, getting to change together, getting to grow into the next stages in their lives together while still holding onto the relationships that made them who they are now, is what Happily Ever After Looks like.
Happy viewing, y’all.
1 https://ww.patreon.com/collection/777095/edit
2 right after an emotional moment in which Schmidt finally accepts his lesbian moms’ engagement after spending multiple seasons denying they were dating at all, no less!
