New Girl: "Tomatoes" Review

For what started out as a very tame, peculiar episode of New Girl, "Tomatoes" really kicked into high gear before all was said and done. In anticipation of the final two Season 1 episodes, it looks like the gang was finally starting to lay things out on front street -- particularly in the relationship department. Some were good, some were bad... and some were just plain weird.

Just from the beginning of this week's episode, I wasn't expecting much. Nick's lack of green thumb was something we'd seen before on the show, so I wasn't really on board for another dedicated episode in which Nick cared for plants as a metaphor for something else. I'll admit, it's a pretty amusing quirk, but I just couldn't buy into the fact that Nick would have the motivation to plant his own tomato garden, especially after he made such a point of being terrible at it in "Bully." On top of that, the Nick/Winston tension here didn't really jive with me either. Nick's mini-grudge against Shelby wasn't entirely a bad idea, it just seemed to be a little underplayed against the tomato metaphor.

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Also odd was Schmidt and his one-off date with Nadia. While this had a few funny moments, I really wasn't into this either. Cece's standoffish demeanor seemed reasonable enough -- especially considering last week's pregnancy scare -- but I didn't like how Schmidt immediately took that as an "all bets are off" excuse to go dating other people. Not only that, but he (presumably) slept with Nadia too? This just felt kind of off.

Meanwhile, Jess's passion play with Russell was a little more entertaining. However, it's pretty weird that Jess would even want to talk to Russell's ex -- let alone have dinner with her -- but maybe that's just me. The dinner scene itself just felt like a bad idea to begin with. Honestly, the best part of this arc came during Jess's confrontation with Russell the next day. Her weird "bulging eyes and crouching" bit was pretty funny, as was her thing about the coasters. ("That's actually kind of a funny story.") But overall, not unlike with Paul, I wasn't really sold on Jess's reasons for breaking things off. It seemed a little too forced. From what I can tell, there hadn't been any previous allusion to Jess wanting more heated passion in her love life. Nevertheless, I like how they brought it back around to Nick.

Which brings me to the last seven minutes of the episode in which things made a huge turnaround. I was pretty underwhelmed by the majority of the episode, and it wasn't until the hospital scene with Schmidt and Cece that I felt like I was actually watching New Girl again. It was a strange series of events that led to Cece admitting she actually liked Schmidt, but I'm glad they finally went there. Likewise, it was a weird way of getting to that moment, but I really enjoyed the Nick/Caroline/Jess debacle that followed Jess's breakup with Russell. Jess and Nick's yelling/butt-shaking contest proved to be the best scene in the episode.

Like I said, the majority of the episode was really sort of disappointing for the most part. But for whatever reason, things got awesome in the last few minutes. Whether that was intentional or not, I don't really know. In any case, I'll miss Dermot Mulroney. But at least now we're poised for a very interesting followup for next week.


Max Nicholson is a writer for IGN, and he, too, gets aroused by freshly baked bread. Follow him on Twitter and IGN for more pastry references.

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