This Tuesday night’s episode of New Girl focused on friendship, specifically the relationships between Jess and Cece and Nick and Schmidt. This episode asks these characters a simple but universal question that all people confront at some point in their lives: “Why are we friends?” Especially after being friends with another person for over a decade, like both Jess and Cece and Nick and Schmidt have been, this concern is completely reasonable. With time, people change, and the reasons why you might have become friends with that person years ago may not be relative anymore. Do you still truly care about this person or is it a friendship purely based on history? New Girl allows its characters to tackle these issues in “Models,” while still providing some great comedic moments. This episode was not the funniest one of New Girl‘s second season, but it definitely was the most heartfelt.
The main conflicts in this episode of New Girl, the fights between both Jess and Cece and Nick and Schmidt, are caused, funnily enough, by deserts. Jess makes Cece a cake to celebrate her birthday, but Cece won’t eat it because she has a modeling gig in the morning. Instead, the two of them go out to a bar with Cece’s modeling friends, where Jess calls Cece’s job “stupid,” forcing the pair to reconsider what they actually have in common and also causing Cece to drink too much and become hungover the next morning for her shoot (which leads to Jess filling in for her and doing an, um, “interesting” job). Schmidt, on the other hand, buys Nick a cookie while he is out, simply because “he was thinking of him.” Schmidt’s statement makes Nick question how much he truly cares about Schmidt and leads him to reflect on how the pair met back in college in a truly hysterical flashback scene (I could watch Schmidt eating dry Ramen noodles and Nick laughing with his creepy mustache for a whole episode).
Even though these two story lines begin for goofy reasons, they both lead to great emotional payoffs and two of my favorite scenes in the whole episode (besides Jess and Cece’s boob slapping fight, which is simply in a league of its own). The first one is the moment when Nick finally cries while talking about Schmidt, and the two of them and Winston have a “bro hug,” before shrugging it off like nothing happened (This scene is completely true to how guys act. I just had an encounter with one of my best friends like this the other night, and we have not talked about it since). The second moment that had me smiling and going “aww,” is the final scene of the episode, where Cece answers Jess’s question, “Do you think if we met today we would still be friends?”, with “I don’t know. but we’re friends now.” The sweetness and simplicity of Cece’s answer allows Cece and Jess to forget whatever differences that they might have now and embrace what they do know: they love each other.
Other thoughts: 
– Even though I mostly focused on the more serious, emotional implications of this episode, New Girl still provided a ton of laughs. As mentioned above, I loved the absurdity of Jess and Cece’s boob slapping fight and the out of nowhere comparison the models made of Jess and the cartoon, Romanian mouse. I also really enjoyed Jess’s attempts at being a model (aside from the egregious Ford product placement). Zooey Deschanel is really a master of being just awkward enough, without being too much.
– I loved that Cece and Jess watch Clueless and eat cake every year on her birthday. First off, cake is always amazing, and even though I am a twenty-year-old male, I have to say that the appeal of Clueless is simply undeniable. You don’t get much better than Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd in the ’90s, and if you do not like Clueless, you are either a liar or have no soul.
– I was SO happy to see Cece’s roommate Nadia again. She was one of New Girl‘s funniest characters last year, and her scenes always make me laugh. Her best one in this episode is her mistaking a random guy for Wilmer Valderrama from That ’70s Show. The only thing that could have made it better was if she had made him try to do the Fez voice.
Best New Girl quotes of the episode:
-““Did you guys watch porn together again? Why do you keep doing that? It’s always awkward.” — Jess.
– “Just let it rain man.” – Winston on Nick’s crying.
– “Well I guess those chocolate mints just disappeared on their own.” – Schmidt in response to Nick’s dislike of the “turn down service” that Schmidt provides for him.
– However, my personal vote for best line of the night goes to Jake Johnson’s Nick Miller for this gem: “You can’t just say ‘butt drinking’ and then not explain it. It has two of my favorite things.”
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