With Fall comes new television, and one show there’s been plenty of buzz about is Fox’s New Girl.
Starring every girls fantasy BFF Zooey Deschanel as Jess, a woman who’s recent catastrophic break up sends her looking for a new place to live. She ends up in an apartment with three male roommates, Nick (Jake M. Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Winston (played by Damon Wayans Jr. in the pilot, and Lamorne Morrisin upcoming episodes).
This is the show’s premise, the difference between boys and girls and what happens when you thrown one female cog into a male dominated environment.
I recently got a chance to view the pilot episode and as is typical for first episodes, the entire thing felt very green. Deschanel is adequately adorable as the dorky and quirky Jess, a mixture of character traits she just naturally expels. It's what Deschanel does best, play an extension of herself that we could all be friends with.
I do think more time could have been devoted to character development. As of now the majority of the cast exist as caricatures. When the show spends time letting us get to know its characters is when it works the best, as is the case with Nick, who quickly becomes the most likeable of the three new men in Jess’s life.
There are some funny moments in New Girl, the majority of them featured on the trailer for the show. Still, these do work really well. It’s the lull in between the comedy that needs a little finessing in order for the show to really stand apart. The hope is that as actors get comfortable with their characters and their scripts they’ll get there. We’ll just have to wait and see. New Girl premieres September 20th on Fox.
Sarah McBride is a pop-culture enthusiast and devotee. Her thoughts on music, film, lit and life can be found at sarahism.com. You can follow her on twitter @sarahism.