Two more New Girls remain to air in 2014, but everyone involved could call it a year after “Thanksgiving IV” and go home happy. The show’s latest take on the United States’ most gluttonous holiday feels like a culmination, and that’s not just because it ends with each of the principals engaged in some sort of love connection. The first chunk of season four has been a remarkable course correction for New Girl: While paring away the excesses of season three, Liz Meriwether and company hit upon an incredibly funny streak of episodes, a reboot powered by the seasoned chemistry and ripened characterization of its principal players. “Thanksgiving IV” keeps that streak alive, using the titular celebration to loop back to Schmidt’s dire prophecy from “The Last Wedding”: Winter is coming. Los Angeles’ bounty of singles won’t last forever—it’s days are pretty much numbered in the loft. And thus the pilgrims (or the man in the pilgrim’s hat, at least) declared a new holiday: Bangsgiving.
New Girl has been toning its funny bone in recent weeks, but it did so at the expense of its heart. When it wants to be, this is the most emotionally satisfying sitcom on TV, and tapping into that strength is what made a frequently charming and occasionally witty freshman sitcom into the show we know and love today. With all of the relationship drama last year, New Girl mashed that particular button a little too hard; blocking any romances among the main characters threw season four into comedic overdrive, but it’s still nice to see “Thanksgiving IV” riff on the roommates’ sexual frustrations while admitting there has to be more to life than Schmidt’s lascivious ultimatums.
It comes down, as it always does, to Nick and Jess. Lost in Schmidt’s rebranding of Thanksgiving—in which the main course is really just a prelude to dessert (which is served in the bedroom. Because the dessert is sex)—New Girl’s two-person core adjourns to the roof for mild, pop-culture-based ribbing and episode-defining conversation. The roof comes in handy throughout “Thanksgiving IV,” presenting Jess, Nick, Winston, Schmidt, Coach, and Cece with a neutral space in which they can regroup and refocus, out of earshot from their guests, who were brought to Thanksgiving dinner to be fixed up with one of the regulars. (The cutaway to those guests, awkwardly smushed together on the couch, is the episode’s smartest joke.) But whereas this sort of scene would typically comes at the end of a New Girl, here it’s the portal to the episode’s emotional turn. “You have to put yourself out there, and that scares you,” Nick tells Jess, ostensibly about her feelings for Ryan but also speaking to his own romantic reluctance.
Once he finishes passing off Ferris Bueller’s advice as his own, “Thanksgiving IV” gives itself (and its characters) permission to move on (potentially with Tran’s granddaughter), and that’s where the feeling of culmination comes in. It truly feels like New Girl has done the work to put itself in this position, where the complications of its season-three romances are behind it and the show can be plausibly fun and filthy and flirty while also taking a step back to address the character’s deeper needs. For example: Schmidt’s deeper need to be with Cece, and vice versa.
The undeniable connection between Schmidt and Cece has been a background concern for the last nine episodes, but the way it’s treated in “Thankgiving IV” is testament to season four’s advances. It’s a legitimate surprise: Given that Schmidt cooked up this whole Bangsgiving concept, and given that the reason for Geoff’s tardiness (“apparently a wild peacock got loose on the freeway and is holding up traffic”) is so patently absurd, I fully expected this to be the episode in which we find out Schmidt’s first name is Geoff. But it’s not: There is a Geoff, and there was a peacock, which Geoff held in his arms until it died. That detail is a brilliant throwaway gag, one that makes Geoff look like the very concept of sensitivity, wrapped in a cowl-neck sweater and topped with a great head of hair.
Cece would have to be crazy to turn Geoff and his creamed spinach away; she does crazy one better, pretending that she doesn’t speak English in order to finish her night playing Tran’s authoritarian board game with Schmidt. It’s a satisfying conclusion that doesn’t rush into anything: The look of surprise on Hannah Simone’s face suggests Cece and Schmidt will end up in bed together by the end credits, but New Girl has more respect for the couple than that. If they’re going to get back together, the show’s going to do it right this time, and that means slowing its roll. In the end, Bangsgiving is about more than sex: When everyone calms down and gets to know the people they’re being set up with, they wind up having a good time. Turns out these guests are people with feelings and needs, too.
Removing the obstacles to a Schmidt-Cece relationship feels just as important to “Thanksgiving IV” as removing the obstalces to a Jess-Ryan pairing, and that’s all wrapped up in the secret of New Girl’s recent success. Since he opened season four with a rousing address at the top of “The Last Wedding,” Schmidt has been the show’s main POV character. This week’s episode puts a button on an arc exploring the emptiness of modern dating, an emptiness that Schmidt embodies. The hookup desperation in “The Last Wedding,” Dice, Bangsgiving: These are all results of seeing life through a Schmidt-y lens. (It’s only natural, then, to assume Bangsgiving and a fake Geoff are just a ploy to get into Cece’s pants—we’ve been in Schmidt’s head so long, we’re now conditioned to that sort of outcome.) With “Thanksgiving IV”’s open-hearted exchange between Nick and Jess, Schmidt hands the reins back to the people who usually drive the show, but it’s been a refreshingly hilarious break to see things through the eyes of the show’s first breakout character. The show would do itself no favors by staying in this gear forever, but it was a nice change of pace that allowed New Girl to pull itself together while approaching stories from new angles. (Same goes for the one-week stopover in Winston Land that was “Background Check.”)
Jess is told in “Thanksgiving IV” that she and Ryan should just “bang one out” in order to work past their feelings for one another, and the first nine episodes of New Girl’s fourth season feel like they follow similar advice. In this season’s first arc, the cast and crew went hard for the laugh, successfully charging past last season’s complications in the process. That course of actions wouldn’t have worked for Jess and Ryan; in the show’s case, the process is about rediscovering New Girl’s feelings, pure comedy paving the way for genuine emotion. If it can’t be the way the show closes out 2014, at least “Thanksgiving IV” can act as evidence of New Girl completing its comeback.
Stray observations:
I love the way Nick works Bangsgiving like Secret Santa: He drew his own name, so he gives himself something he knows he wants: An unfussy night of drinking with Tran. But then: “Are you the guy who’s obsessed with my grandfather?” That look on Tran’s face indicates that he had a plan all along.
Another nice touch: Nick goes to the gym in his street clothes.
New Girl enters into the great Ferris Bueller Sitcom Debates of 2014: Jess’ declaration that Ferris is actually the villain of the piece puts her in direct contention with Jimmy and Gretchen from You’re The Worst.
How serious were Nick and Lucy? “Did you ever watch her dog?” “Trick question: She had fish and I killed them.”
Winston’s police-academy training makes him the arbiter of laws and rules within the loft—in the goofiest, most Winston of fashions: “According to the statute, if you two can’t agree, we take it to a vote. The winner gets the girl, the loser gets five grilled cheese sandwiches.”