image: Whale belt

Last week, on Dear Television:

• Post 1: "Groove is in the Heart," from Phil Maciak
  
• Post 2: "A Serial Takeover," from Jane Hu
  
• Post 3: "Party Girl vs. Rom-Com Girl," from Lili Loofbourow
   

This week:

• Post 1: "When Worlds Collide," from Jane Hu
• Post 2: "Romney-Dad: Conservatives in Comedy," from Lili Loofbourow

¤
 

“Moby-Nick, or The Whale Belt”

Dear Jane and Lili,

FIRST OF ALL, I’m glad that our little column here has become a hotbed of political argument in these, the last few weeks of the election. Are we the October Surprise?

If you’ll be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost pal.

Jess and Nick. 47% of me feels that this relationship must never be consummated. Another 47% of me feels that these two are meant to be together. But it’s not my job to worry about that. It’s my job to worry about the part of me that’s undecided, especially because I think it reflects the particularly sticky wicket that Elizabeth Meriwether, Brett Baer, and Dave Finkel find themselves in as the showrunners of New Girl. I don’t think that we can underestimate the degree to which Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Lamorne Morris have collaboratively built this show with their writers. What began as a fairly low-functioning conceit grew a staggering amount of soul over the course of the first season, in large part because these four inventive actors created characters worth caring about and established a group dynamic that could maintain integrity despite prolonged contact with Justin Long.

The flipside of this boon is that Zooey D and Jake Johnson have kind of performed the showrunners into a corner with the Jess/Nick relationship. I agree with Jane about how formulaic the show is at its heart, but, at the same time, I'm not totally convinced that Jess/Nick were originally meant as an inevitable thing. Or, if they were, that their friendship wouldn't ultimately prove to be the stronger connection — a la Jerry and Elaine, much of whose romantic relationship happened offscreen.  However, Deschanel and Johnson have the craziest chemistry on TV right now — contrast this to the bloodless arranged marriage of Kaling and Messina — and, rather than working through this issue Seinfeld-style, these two are now at serious risk of Ross-and-Racheling. Lili, you're right, it's impossible for Jess and Nick to have sat on that car hood and not hooked ...