Review: New Girl "The Landlord" (He Loses His Pants and His Damn Mind!)

Air Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2012, 9/8c on Fox

RATING: ★★★★★

“You know what, Jess, I guess I don’t live in a world where I smile and people do what I want them to do.” – Nick

Review: New Girl "The Landlord" (He Loses His Pants and His Damn Mind!) 1

We never got an explanation to why he was whittling his broom handle into a stake...

“The Landlord” brings to mind the craziness we can encounter in the world when we allow ourselves to open up and be nice. “You always see the worst in people.” Yes, Jess (Zooey Deschanel) shows Nick (Jake Johnson) how being nice can lead to having a gun pulled on you, upsetting the already grumpy landlord, and you guessed it, a ménage a trois. But what you haven’t guessed is the third person in the trois is the recently divorced (and not quite over it) landlord (guest star Jeff Kober). While Jess can’t exactly explain those things away, she does try to prove her point: being nice gets you good things in life into trouble (see the above mentioned). Or is that Nick’s point?

Observations and thoughts:

“Oh come on, don’t you ever wear jeans? You look like you should be distracting James Bond at a baccarat table.” Cece (Hannah Simone) does fit the model image to a tee, but I think she comes by all fancied up just to tease Schmidt (Max Greenfield). She likes him, he likes her but they’re playing a game to see who will make the first move. At least Cece was into him a few episodes ago. Or was she…? She gives him a bit of advice, which I didn’t think he would take, which leads him to discovering the meaning behind his boss Kim’s (Gillian Vigman) mixed signals. His idiocy provides us with one of the funniest scenes of the episode—him dancing around in his underwear in front of a boardroom full of Tokyo businessmen via videoconference. I didn’t expect it, loved it, and want to know what happens as a result of his striptease. Seriously, will we find out how his boss reacts to missing out on it?

Review: New Girl "The Landlord" (He Loses His Pants and His Damn Mind!) 2

Did you know Schmidt's room was the library?

Nick attacking the garbage disposal with a broom stick is hilarious. I’ve never seen anyone “fix” something by jamming a wooden stick into it and yelling at it to “get outta there!” Total spit-out-my-drink-laughing moment. What a great way to show just how much the landlord doesn’t do. On to the landlord: he’s creepy, grizzled and “ferments things in the basement.” Jess tries her hardest to be nice so he’ll fix things in their place (total waste of time in my opinion) and her good intentions put her and Nick in that bad situation I mentioned earlier. I think from now on the gang will let Nick do the fixing around the apartment.

Winston (Lamorne Morris) makes me laugh quite a bit. I guess I should say Morris is doing a great job of playing off his co-stars and pulling laughs where you’d least expect them.

Schmidt’s New Year’s resolutions from 2007: the entire list kills me, especially the one that reads, “Find out where Winston gets his sparkle, and then steal it.” Really, Schmidt?! Poor guy isn’t only a douche, he’s hopeless. You have to feel a little sorry for him. (Just a little.) I can only pray Winston gets an inkling to read more of the resolutions throughout the rest of the season. And why Winston reads it gives me a chuckle too: “Maybe I just got bored painting over your interplanetary ass-dojo.” I applaud the writers for giving Winston the killer lines. He doesn’t usually have much to do but act as Nick’s sidekick, so it’s nice to see him filling the episode with witty remarks.

Funny lines:

UPS Guy: “I have a package for Schmidt.”

Schmidt: “Sir, I’m very flattered but I must decline.”

Schmidt to Cece: “Okay, my boss and I, we’re running a pre-sex marathon right now and I feel like we’re stuck in mile 25. I’m cramping, Cece. My toenails are falling off, I’m peeing down my leg; it’s like I can see the finish line but I just can’t get there.”

The landlord to Nick and Jess: “Okay a ménage a trois is about three of us, trois, menaging fully.”

The laughs are back and I’m happy to say this season may end on a good note. We’ve only got a few more episodes to go and I imagine the season finale will end with a bang. I look forward to seeing what else the writers have in store.

Tune in to New Girl, Tuesdays at 9/8c on Fox. For more on the show, visit http://www.fox.com/new-girl/.

[nggallery id=258]

Biography of the Author(Read Below)..
Latest Posts (view them )..

Elle

Writer, mother, realist, cloud lover, daydreamer, dessert enthusiast, sweet tea addict, perfectionist, and lover of life and Christ, but not in that order. http://www.fanfiction.net/~vikingloverelle