Let’s power through some more of these Nick as an author episodes of “New Girl” for the month of January. This episode has a lot going on (Schmidtt is hiring an assistant based on pretentious qualifications, Cece is starting the moving process, and Winston finds out his cat has been cheating on him with another family), but A-plot involves Jess trying to get her students to treat her the same way they did as a teacher now that’s she’s their principal. She finds in when she overhears several junior high girls discussing their love of Pepperwood after reading the copies Jess left in the school library. Quick note - again, how are these books surviving a single reading as we know they were just printer pages glued into cardboard?
Nick is going through writers block, yet is not welcoming the idea of catering to teenage girls. Then, when the young ladies express why they love his book, he gets excited about writing once again. However, Jess has to come to terms that her students want to discuss some heavy and adult subjects around her because of the book’s content. Wait. Why did she put copies in her school’s library? Are there angry parent phone calls? I feel like there would angry parent phone calls.
As a writer watching this episode, I get how the excitement of these young fans breaks Nick’s block. However, I don’t really agree with him bouncing ideas for future books off of them. That could get into some legal gray areas like fan fiction does.
As for Jess’s experience through this, she becomes “too cool” because she’s not the member of school staff who is roommate’s with the kids’ favorite author. Of course, she loses all authority and has to punish Nick and his tween girl fanbase. Nick then convinces the students to apologize for their behavior. This isn’t so much about writing, but I feel this is good lesson about dealing with teenagers.
Image belongs to Fox