Time for another TV show - “New Girl”. I’ll probably do a few blogs about this one as I have quite a few comments about various episodes.
For today, though, I’m just focusing on “Eggs” from season 2. For those unfamiliar with the show: it’s about a quirky teacher named Jess (Zooey Deschanel), who lives with recovering douchebag/OCD overachiever Schmidt (Max Greenfield), former Eastern European basketball player/idealistic weirdo Winston (Lamorne Morris), and eternal screw-up bartender/potential love interest Nick (Jake Johnson. Other regulars on the show include Hannah Simone playing Jess’s model best friend Cece, who Schmidt pines for, and occasionally Damon Wayans Jr. as Coach, a former roommate uncomfortable with Jess’s outward displays of emotion. Not sure if Coach is in any of the episodes I’m going to be covering here - by Damon Wayans Jr. is hilarious in this show. Just saying.
The episode itself is about being an “adult” and a sense of creation. That description makes it sound semi-deep, but you’ll see what I mean. The whole thing opens on Jess and CeCe toasting their gynecologist friend and her wife announcing that they are pregnant. Nick sits with them, getting steadily more uncomfortable as the discussion turns to how many eggs the women have remaining and chances of getting pregnant being more difficult after 30. The main plot of the episode becomes about Jess freaking out that she’d going to miss the chance to be a mom. In addition, there’s a whole side plot about Schmidt banging his boss (Carla Gugino) which is funny, but really has no bearing on this blog. Apologies to Schmidt’s gross plot line.
The other large event within the episode Nick being inspired to finally write the zombie novel he’s been talking about for a long time. This burst of energy comes from him seeing Winston at his new nightly radio station job, amazed by how responsible and “take charge” his friend suddenly is within his own life.
Here is one of the best writing jokes in the episode is placed. Nick accuses Winston in doubting his ability to finish a novel. Winston replies “Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t want to write.” The audience is treated to a flashback of Nick with scraggly facial hair subtly pushing a laptop to the floor and throwing his hands up in defeat when it breaks.
This is a truth of writing. One of the hardest parts is STARTING. Just sitting down and staying focused to complete an entire plot. Scene will come to you and there will be this feeling of invisibility. Then, you hit a wall. More experienced writers will usually skip that wall and continue with what they can to keep the pace going, returning to problem areas later. But when a lot of people write a first novel, they the let the walls block them completely. I like that show was trying to make a joke about both what a slacker Nick is, but also how difficult starting a large project can be.
Winston promises to be the first to read Nick’s novel and attempts to encourage him by saying “Just sit down and write!. You ain’t Hemingway.” . Nick misinterprets this as needing Hemingway-like adventures in his life for writing (said adventures starting with doing research, because Nick knows very little about Hemingway). His answer to this is to drag Winston to the zoo while shouting “real life experience” and taking shots from a flask, dubbing it “writing fuel”.
Quick shout-out to Winston in this episode. Besides being my favorite character on the show (just watch an episode where he tries to do a jigsaw puzzle - it’s amazing), Winston is the only other character besides Jess who is really good with emotions. In this episode, despite that he should be sleeping days for his new job, he goes with Nick on this unrelated-to-zombies zoo journey because he wants to show support. Luckily, I have Sidney Reetz and Kira Shay for this and generally they provide me with non-Hemingway related booze and encouragement (because I’m allergic to whisky and I think Hemingway was an ass).
Eventually, Winston calls out Nick for just being “drunk at the zoo”, messing with his “adjusted schedule”, and being scared of actually finishing anything. This results in Nick staying awake for 14 hours typing up “Z is for Zombie", his first finished novel which includes the dedication “To Winston, have a nice summer”. Winston declares it is the worst thing he ever read and Nick admits that the word search he included in the novel has no words in it.
Still, the roommates all declare that they are proud of Nick for at least finishing the damn thing. Winston starts to read it allowed, and like many first first drafts, it’s awful. Actually, it’s even worse than most first drafts, but everyone has to start somewhere.
Overall, I’ve said most of what I wanted to say about writing how it’s depicted in this episode already throughout this blog, but just to repeat - boo procrastination, yay encouragement, and don’t put crossword puzzles in zombie novels until they have something to do with the plot.
Image owned by Fox