When Schmidt acts strange about the double date, knowing he can’t possibly date both of them any longer, Cece suspects he’s on drugs. “He just, like, stopped blinking…is that Whippets?” Nick reacts terribly to Schmidt’s polygamous secret: “You get one wife! That’s the way the world works!” Winston pulls a page out of Seinfeld with his ridiculous seat-saving tactics. In recent memory, some comedies have failed in terms of audience awareness: who’s watching, and what do they want to see? Happy Endings, Whitney, Don’t Trust The B—- in Apartment 23—these were shows that aimed at the same demographic and misfired terribly (critics still love Happy Endings, but as someone who watched every single episode, I found the storyline choppy and inconsistent). This can’t be said of New Girl. Meriwether has a firm finger on the pulse of the show, extremely aware of all facets from scene to scene, episode to episode, season to season. New Girl stays true to its original tone and faithful to its audience just as well or better than any other sitcom on television right now.
