After spending the first half of the year pushing everyone`s emotional buttons, New Girl seems ready to settle into a more relaxed mid-season. With a poignant – but underplayed! — Exception, last night`s episode contained no moment of deep feeling. Instead, it was all slapstick when Nick and Jess played amateur detectives and Schmidt and Winston taught us the meaning of the word pogo. I really enjoyed learning what everyone`s “pogos” are: Jess is a know-it-all, Schmidt`s toenails are long and disgusting, Winston`s erections shock people (and things), and Nick is simply that everyone feels bad about their poverty and secretly only gives him money when their pants are in the laundry. Oh Nick Miller. Even though it still wasn`t as great as most of this season`s highlights, Winston/Schmidt`s story about the band`s “pogoes” (your only mistake your friends talk about behind your back. “It`s a loft thing.”) was the funniest part of “Pepperwood.” This part of the episode combined something that felt real and relatable (everyone has certain pets when it comes to certain friends) and was molded into something extremely stupid in typical New Girl fashion. In house jargon, a pogo is a personality trait that irritates other roommates so much that they talk about it. The term comes from Winston`s overzealous bone, which appears with such surprising regularity that Nick, Jess and Schmidt had to invent an abbreviation to discuss it. Once, he actually switched channels while watching a Bears game. And you don`t want to know what it did to Nick`s pizza. Winston denies any responsibility for the pogoing, blaming “a combination of adrenaline and high traffic.” And roommates seem quite willing to accept it as an inevitable facet of loft living, even if it`s troubling for Cece, who stays in the apartment while her plumbing is repaired.
(Models are hell on showers, Schmidt says, because their low-protein diet makes them “lose like a $4 Christmas sweater.”) More disruptive than Winston`s pogo in particular is the general concept of a pogo, because if Winston has one, doesn`t everyone do it? Schmidt, who is never quite sure about his body, lashes out with self-criticism as he tries to imagine what his roommates say about him behind his back. First, he does something terrible with his eyebrows, then he threatens to cut off his mole. It turns out he`s almost there: his own pogo may be a physical problem, but he`s a little further south. As Cece reveals, her pogo is her “barnacle`s nails,” also known throughout the house as “clickety clacks.” Well, this is all relatively fun – I especially liked it when Jess compared her new eyebrows to Audrey Hepburn`s – but based on everything we know about Schmidt, how is that possible, even from afar? Excess keratin or not, this is the kind of guy who should have a weekly standing pedicure appointment. He should spend hundreds of dollars on high-end foot scrubs and know his personal toenail stylist by name. It may be the sitcom equivalent of those Game of Thrones fans who get angry when George R. R. Martin changes the sex of someone`s horse, but I refuse to believe that such a groom-obsessed character would make his nails untenable. Cece didn`t have much to do in this plot, but the recurring gag about not getting pogo because it`s “kind of a loft” was a good idea. Even better was the way the show handled Nick`s pogo. Winton has a hyperactive little Winston, Schmidt has bad toenails, Jess is a know-it-all, but Nick`s fatal flaw, which his roommates discuss behind his back, is that he can`t take care of himself. It`s not a funny pogo, but it`s cute to see how much his friends care about him, especially since the show doesn`t make a whole deal out of it.
After last week`s syrupy sentimentality, the light touch is a kind of relief. If this episode had only consisted of the pogo plot, it would have been disappointing, but Detective Julius Pepperwood – ex-cop, ex-Marine – really animated the process. New Girl has never done anything wrong with a false identity, and Jake Johnson`s first appearance as Pepperwood wearing a hat and sunglasses is pretty awesome. “I`m from Chicago. Thin crust pizza, no thanks. I`m from Chicago. I mean, who wouldn`t buy this story? This is the first time we`ve seen Jess at work in a long time, and the first time in the entire season that the show has really used its adult education class as a source of comedy. Even before the creepy student Edgar appeared with his scathing fiction about deer, the episode gave us merman eroticism (“He wasn`t a mer-gentleman”) and Nick`s own reflections on the literary arts (“writers don`t read; we write”). Jess is disillusioned with the teaching, so she`s happy to seem to have managed to reach Edgar. Nick, on the other hand, believes that Edgar is trying to kill her, which is why he creates his Julius Pepperwood costume and sits in Jess` class. This is also why he and Jess go to Edgar`s house, where they discover that Edgar is a plumber (just like his clueless protagonist) and watch him unload a mysterious gym bag that comes with it. What is it exactly? You never know, although we learn that Edgar has a shed full of disturbing drawings of deer with big eyes, just like Jess.
It turns out that Edgar is not a stalker trying to kill Jess. He is a cartoonist who cannot attract the eyes. But the big revelation is not so much his fictional inclinations as his relationship status: the much older redheaded woman who lives with him and harasses Jess during the investigation turns out to be not his mother, but his girlfriend. Ultimately, however, the Edgar mystery is important mainly because it inspired Nick to write again after his zombie novel failed. His new project: Julius Pepperwood, zombie detective. (All of his murder victims are already dead.) “Pepperwood had two friends,” Nick writes, “one if you count his hat.” The other is Jessica Night, which is absolutely not based on Jessica Day. Most of the jokes in this plot are pure slapstick, and the plot itself feels like an old-school sitcom gag, with lots of falls and collisions with things. Whether they`re fighting for Edgar`s notebook or trying to hide behind his house, Nick and Jess are on top of each other, but the manipulation seems platonic, more Three Stooges than Pam and Jim.
While other sitcoms need this time to increase sexual tension, New Girl seems to build their emotional relationship. If these two ever meet, they will do so on their backs – and perhaps at the expense of – a truly strong friendship. Winston looks into the new information about why these mistakes are called “pogos” after his penis, which hits anyone and anything it gets too close to (from Cece to Nick`s pizza). Meanwhile, Schmidt is determined to figure out what his “pogo” is, even going so far as to shave his eyebrows in the “Audrey Hepburn style” if he thinks they might be her “pogo.” This plot also allows Hannah Simone to join in the comic fun as she tries to figure out what her “pogo” is and is repeatedly told that she doesn`t have one (even when she speaks with a baby voice). It`s the new year and I try to watch all the shows I can on Netflix before they leave in January. That list could include one of my favorite sitcoms featuring my “maniacal elf dream girl” Zooey Deschanel on a show called “New Girl” that aired on FOX from 2011 to 2018. The best aspect of this episode? Pogo. What`s your pogo? I`m racking my brain now and trying to think of the one thing my friends would all discuss behind my back. This could lead to problems if I`m not careful! Now I live alone, but three months ago I had a few roommates, one of them was Buzz, which made me wonder if he had a pogo or me? His name is POGO, AND according to the NEW GIRL in this episode (S2E14), here`s the definition: Winston`s pogo was more of the literal type. And God bless him. I don`t even know how to discuss it in this review without laughing.
Winston was written in the last few episodes as a much more sympathetic character, for which I`m grateful. I`m more convinced of him than Nick now, although Nick, as Jess` protector, makes him very sympathetic. And his face when he saw Edgar`s drawing in class was priceless. Produced by Elizabeth Merriweather and Zooey Deschanel, the series follows four roommates, Nick, Winston, Schmidt and Jess, who live in a loft in Los Angeles and how the introduction of a girl (Zooey Deschanel/Jess) affects group dynamics. The whole Edgar situation was pretty ridiculous, but it served to reunite Jess and Nick in a crazy and humorous situation, so it worked for me. Especially Edgar`s mother friend who surprised me when I thought I couldn`t be surprised anymore. Eating waffles has a whole new disgusting meaning. Have we already figured out Ceces Pogo? Or does he simply have none? Is she pretty? Because if that`s the case, it`s just not fair. But not surprising either. In any case, I was a little shocked that Jess was her know-it-all, considering that I would have chosen her aversion to big girl words.