New Girl Review: How To Stay Friends With Your Ex. Hint. You Shouldn’t

By Nicole Bozzani

No one should stay friends with their exes. Exes always have ulterior motives. A fact that was made resoundingly clear in last night’s New Girl episode “Exes.”

The trouble starts when Nick runs into his ex-girlfriend Caroline at the farmer’s market. Remember Caroline? Yeah unfortunately she’s back and ready to stir up trouble. After an awkward encounter and an even more awkward conversation with Winston, Nick meets up for coffee with Caroline to talk. He’s supposed to mention how he’s dating Jess, but really just has a thirty minute conversation about anything else in the world. Eventually, Caroline sees the couple kissing on the sidewalk and snaps.

Meanwhile, Schmidt has finished decorating his loft and invites Winston and Coach over to see it. He gives them their own keys, which can only lead to positive things, right? Wrong. Proving this plan was entirely stupid the entire time; Winston and Coach decide to use Schmidt’s loft as a hook up den for each of their respective relationships. Schmidt’s loft is wonderfully designed. It might even be the best dressed set this show has seen.

All the while, the crazy train conducted by Caroline is rolling into the station. Not only do she send Nick a sea of nasty, mean text messages, but she appears outside the loft and ruins a random car in a moment which leaned more towards scary than funny.

Nick (Jake Johnson, R) is forced to face his ex-girlfriend, Caroline (guest star Mary Elizabeth Ellis, L), in New Girl’s “Exes” Episode. Co. Cr: Ray Mickshaw/FOX

Jess meanwhile has turned to her ex Berkley to help Nick deal with crazy Caroline. Nick believes Berkley is out for one thing when it comes to Jess – a fact she just tries to slide by. Berkley was played wonderfully by Adam Brody and what a shame if this is is one guest outing on New Girl. (It’s almost as if Seth Cohen grew out his hair, had a small child, and wore some strange hippie sweater!)

Crazy Caroline continues her rampage into the loft where she reveals she knew all along that the reason Nick left her was for Jess, and hurts Jess by letting her know what’s coming down the path of their relationship. The revelation is something Jess simply can’t handle hearing and she ends up crying in the bathroom in what is ultimately a very real and very sad scene. We, along with Jess, really want ‘Ness’ to go the distance, because, simply put, they deserve to. Eventually Nick stands up to Caroline and admits he has loved Jess since the moment she walked in the door – something that was apparent to loyal New Girl viewers already, but kudos to you, more grown up Nick Miller for finally admitting it!

This week New Girl teemed with guest appearances, (the Super Bowl special on Sunday night saw Prince guesting as himself) and none were amiss. As for the regular players of New Girl, there isn’t much that can be said. It’s still nice to see Nick maturing and becoming a more confident man. Max Greenfield is still one of the standouts of this series. Who else could making crying while eating grapes so, so emotional?

New Girl is one of those relatable shows that has a sense of humor about it. It is a comedy after all. Week after week audiences are invited in to the budding relationship of Nick and Jess and sometimes that means revisiting their zany exes. Their roommates are a stone cold bunch of weirdos which is why they spend multiple scenes naming sex positions on furniture and coming up with plans so they can all hook up like high school kids at a party. The coming weeks should be interesting, but for now all seems well in apartment 4D. Just one more thing, Berkley, are you free? Because there’s plenty of girls who would love to play cards with you.