New Girl Review: “Clavado En Un Bar” (Season 3, Episode 11)

To start this year, fresh after the holiday break, New Girl gives us a quick little throwaway episode that we can use to cleanse our pallet of our indulgent Christmas viewing and get back to the nitty-gritty. And believe me, this is New Girl at its most throwaway and pointless. Perhaps that's a little harsh, but it's true - at the end of this episode, we haven't really learnt anything or gotten anywhere at all. We reach something close to profoundness with Winston's realisation that every decision he's ever made has been at the hands of someone else, but on closer inspection that doesn't really fly - every decision we make depends on a million of other factors, all decided on by someone else. No one is really in control in life, this isn't The Matrix. There's no secret coding, nobody who can see through the system. Winston's realisation may have consequences for the show insofar as he will no longer be able to do that job we never see him doing, but aside from that, not much at all. Now, does every episode need to be profound? No. Does every episode need to shake the very universe in which it exists? No. I'm sure I've said this all before, but it bears repeating. The premise behind this episode is that Jess has had a very tempting job offer - one that would be slightly easier, in better surroundings, and (as we find out later on) pays more. She implores the gang to give her some advice as to whether she should follow her heart and stay in teaching or go with her head and take the new job, explore new pastures, and maybe find her calling in that direction. Like with Winston, we also come close to something meaningful down this path but never further than cod-philosophising, summed up neatly by Jess when she asks Nick, "How do you know if you're on the right path?" Obviously you never know until you've made that choice, by which time it's usually too late to turn back. Such is life. Jess being an anxious soul finds this extremely worrying and her compadres each proceed to give her, in turn, examples of big decisions they've made in their lives and how they've affected them. I guess it's in sort of the same vein as last season's "Virgins," with each character looking back at a pivotal moment in their life, but ultimately it fails to have anywhere near the laughs that episode achieved. That's not to say the episode doesn't have any funny moments, it just doesn't really add up to much. Schmidt gets the lion share of the laughs with his tale of how he got into marketing. His fish-out-of-water experience as a Jewish volunteer nurse who discovers a talent for selling Christmas trees, which he parlays into a job in marketing, is a nice little story. I'd say that it could have easily been an episode in its own right, and his complete bafflement at Jess' refusal to take the new job just because it pays more than the old one was a nice sour note to end what was in danger of being slightly uplifting. Coach's story of his natural coachdom exploding out during one of Winston's Latvian basketball games was great not just because it gave Damon Wayans Jr. a chance to shout at the top of his lungs - something he does often in this episode, and always to great effect - but because it gave us a peek at Winston's "Dennis Rodman" period, image-wise. His leopard print 'do is magnificent, and it's a real shame he didn't stick with the pierced ears. If Schmidt's story was able to sidestep New Girl's worrying tendency of trying to get meaningful on occasion, Nick's manages no such thing. His story is heartening, and slightly unbelievable when you think about it. How so? Well, think of it this way - how has Nick been sold to us up to now? As an idiot? A drunken man-child? A law school dropout? Well, it turns out that all this time, Nick has chosen to work as a barman. He graduated law school, made the California state bar, but just didn't become a lawyer. He wanted to be a barman, not a lawyer. Being a barman was always Nick's destiny, apparently. He followed his heart, even though his heart led him to a job that involved a lot of self-loathing, and poverty. Does that count as a Nick win? I'm not sure. It sort of throws away everything we know about Nick thus far, which might be a good thing, but might be a bad thing. Being a barman is still better than Cece's career prospects, though. One of my favourite things about the show, that has gone somewhat unacknowledged up to now, is how badly Cece's modelling is going. Whenever we're made privy to any of her assignments, it's an increasingly tawdry job, culminating in this episode's assignment as being the caller to a sex line. Nick persuading her to work with him behind the bar would suggest that we're going to be there a whole lot more now, and that perhaps we'll get a few Nick/Cece adventures, which is probably the only character relationship the show has yet to explore. Clavado En Un Bar wasn't a bad episode, but in an ideal world I'd have liked a stronger episode with which to return from the Christmas break. It achieved everything it needed to, and set up the next few episodes nicely, but it was a bit short on laughs compared to the episodes directly preceding it. How will the guys fare with Cece at the bar? With Winston no longer at the radio station? Schmidt rekindling his love of selling Christmas trees? Coach still timing stuff? Only time will tell. Random Robservations: Coach not watching Boogie Nights because he was too busy timing it. Genius. In fact, Coach played a blinder this episode, he just didn't have much to do story-wise. "Baby Madoff" is a great name for a young criminal, and Jess thinking she'd given her young charge the means to execute his crimes was masterfully done. Cece really needs to work on sliding drinks down the bar. A lot. I'd really like to see more of Brian Posehn. Even just once per episode. He's great. Is Schmidt wearing a Livestrong/Lance Armstrong Tour-de-France cycle shirt and cap during the Latvian basketball game? Can anyone confirm/explain? See you next week for more New Girl!