‘New Girl’: A break-up, a make-up and an Indian Marriage Convention

 

My personal prediction as to how the kiss would be handled this week was that Nick and Jess would both simply dismiss it as nothing. I guess I was kind of right.

 

A tossing and turning Jess and Nick ran into each other in the very hallway where they kissed what could have only been an hour or so earlier and it was the epitome of awkward. So awkward, in fact, that Nick employed what Jess described as his "panic Moonwalk." This is something he does, evidently. He did it all the way back into his bedroom and quite a few more times before the episode ended. Jess could only return to her bed, waking Sam up at the same time and feigning that she, too, was emerging from a deep sleep. Sam checks his phone, is ecstatic that he’s received ten emails and seeks out a fist-bump from an apprehensive Jess.

 

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Winston, fresh from a romp with Daisy, who he picked up last week, is awash in the return of his mojo. So much so that he’s down when Schmidt asks both him and Nick to tag along to an Indian Marriage Convention, where he overheard Cece will be, "in search of her brown husband." Nick jumps at the invite too, especially as he is terrified to run into Jess again, grappling with the kiss and why on earth he did it in the first place. He confides in Winston, who responds with a punch to Nick’s junk. He’s worried this will cost him Nick as a roommate when it all inevitably blows up, even if Mister Miller once stored centipedes beneath his bed and has named both his testicles Sharon. He demands Nick get it over with and apologize for the kiss.

 

Jess has a confidant as well – Cece. She takes it better than Winston, but also unwittingly extends the same invitation Schmidt did, which lands the lot of them in a banquet room where they are to fill out some paperwork and be assigned seats at tables with likeminded folks, all in an effort to find his or her soul-mate.

 

Schmidt is in full-court press mode, sporting head garb that makes him look, according to Winston, "like the fortune teller from 'Big'." Be that as it may, Schmidt is unabashed as far as his feelings for Cece are concerned, even if she just isn’t having it. He remembers their sex one way; she remembers that it always ended with him shouting, "Blammo! That happened."

 

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By the time Sam shows up to rescue Jess, Nick has already apologized for the kiss, stressing that it was nothing. She thinks he doth protest too much, assuring him it was and, furthermore, that it is okay to say so. Nick promptly turns the table and points out that it meant something to her, but not him. Sam can see that there is something happening between the two, even if Nick winds up at the Cece table (the one for people who don’t think things through, says she) and Schmidt winds up at Jess’s. He, obviously, is insulted, but tells Jess she should feel flattered.

 

Ultimately, Jess must come clean to Sam, who, surprisingly, punches Nick in the throat and dumps Jess. Nick tries to make her feel better later, back at the loft, dancing to some Taylor Swift that Jess wanted to listen to alone, but Jess is still hurting. Sure, she finally comes out and says that the fist-bumps every morning annoyed her, but that doesn’t mean she is happy about recent developments. Or is she? She and Nick share an awkward hug at evening’s end and the time-honored will they or won’t they returns. In short, the kiss wound up getting dismissed after all. For the time being anyway.

 

As the credits roll it’s Schmidt and Cece rediscovering each other, falling into bed, after Schmidt informed everyone in attendance at the convention that they were crazy for not lining up for Cece. He suggests that India get its crap together and dramatically slams the microphone on the floor. Cece loved it and took him home. Blammo! That happened.          

 

"New Girl" airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FOX.