'New Girl' May Roll The “Dice” But Doesn't Seem To Gamble

Raina Deerwater ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

With the second episode of it’s fourth season, New Girl is getting topical. A fictional dating app surfaces in Schmidt’s (Max Greenfield) life, and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) wants to come along for the ride. The app is called Dice and it is essentially Tinder, all about making snap decisions based on physical appearance: something that Jess would be simply terrible at. Schmidt, however is killing the Dice game.
This results in Jess being the student, while Schmidt teaches Jess how to weed out the perverts and make the most of her Dice experience. When it comes down to it, Jess and Schmidt have entirely different approaches to the dating world. Jess is using Dice and the series of unfortunate dates to eventually find love, while Schmidt is using Dice just to date and date and date. Of course, since this show has been on for more than three years now, everyone knows that Schmidt wants to find love maybe more than any of the others. At the end of the episode, he asks his one-night-dice to maybe try something more. She says no, of course, but that’s almost irrelevant because Schmidt is really trying.

At their hearts, both Schmidt and Jess are hopeless romantics, despite the former’s string of women in his wake. The idea of a dating app that has little to nothing to do with love thrown in between the two makes for a lot of laughs and a little bit of self-discovery. It is a touching moment when Schmidt asks the girl to stay; for he learned a little bit about himself through Dice. However, this is something the audience has known for years at this point.
This was no doubt a fun episode and features some beautiful “student becomes the master” work, yet more is needed for this character. In the past, Schmidt has been up and down relationship wise. Hopefully, he will move forward from the Dice incident and find out what really makes him happy this season.

In other news, CeCe (Hannah Simone), Nick (Jake Johnson), and Coach (Damon Wayans Jr.) got high and it was more than entertaining. Since Winston’s (Lamorne Morris) about to become a police officer, they figure now is the time to do anything illegal. Unfortunately, they all are invited to Winston’s police academy party and attend, sufficiently stoned. They end up hanging out in a closet and singing/beat-boxing to “Pomp and Circumstance.” It was nice to see Damon Wayans Jr. flex his comedic muscles. Since he is the newest member of the comedy, he doesn’t get to shine as often as he could. Having him be stoned for the first time and giving out hugs to police officers was a great opportunity for Wayans Jr.’s easy charm to come out hilariously.
This plot was mostly an excuse for Nick to yell at everyone and for mistakes to be made. It was definitely humorous, but had the same problems as the rest of the episode: there should be more. Though New Girl is a sitcom, in the past the episodes have provided a depth to the characters that many other sitcoms do not. Only time will tell if the new season does this, or just continues the way “Dice” dictates it will. Either way, New Girl is still delivering the laughs.
New Girl airs Tuesdays at 9pm on FOX.