‘New Girl’ season 3, episode 11 review: Who decided to quit their job?

There have been times that “New Girl” this season has almost gone on autopilot, and we understand why. This is a show that has done a killer job over the years of delivering great comedy, and it also made some big moves with getting Nick and Jess together, and then also getting Damon Wayans Jr. back for at least the rest of the season. Therefore, why shouldn’t it be happy to coast along on a sea of bliss?

Luckily the show managed to really get itself going again in the right direction Tuesday night with the winter premiere, which did so much right and restored the show back to what it should be: A great look at some characters who are struggling to try to make it work in their early thirties. Some of them realized that they have been doing things the wrong way, whereas some others realized that they have been living their lives the way they were meant to, and really shouldn’t question that.

The biggest shocker of the episode was probably the career shifts for both Winston and Cece, who were both realizing that there was not really anythingto gain from what they were doing now. Winston learned that he had mostly just worked in sports because it was what he knew almost from birth, rather than what he actually wanted to do with his life. Meanwhile, Cece decided that she was going to try and take up bartending, largely because of the fact that she was a model that was hardly getting any modeling work anymore.

The funny thing was that this episode, told in part via flashbacks, was really supposed to be about whether or not Jess wanted to keep her current career working as a teacher. As it turned out, she did! She just needed to hear the stories of everyone else to help make her decision, and it included some sweet and funny moments, whether it was Schmidt working as a tree salesman or Nick actually passing the bar exam, but deciding not to become a lawyer since he would have hated his life as one.

This is what “New Girl” is really best at: Making us laugh, but also making us care about these people who are quirky, real, and different than most others on TV. Well done, gang. Grade: A-.

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