‘New Girl’ season 4 premiere review: Jessica Biel and ‘The Last Wedding’

After a summer off, “New Girl” returned on Tuesday night with what we feel was a pretty significant challenge: Turning the show around somewhat after what was a sluggish third season on the air.

At one point, this was our favorite comedy on the year, but it has since become a little too bland and predictable. Sadly, we do not quite think that “The Last Wedding” really bucked that trend. There were a few funny moments throughout the half-hour, but the show suffered mostly for the same thing it did for a while earlier this year: Making too much of its identity all about relationships.

To us, this show is best when it is letting its characters be truly weird, and watching them mostly try for casual sex was just a little too much like “Wedding Crashers” for our taste. Jess probably had the most endearing story, given that she ended up competing with another guest (Jessica Biel) in an effort to get the best man (Reid Scott) to leave the reception with her. Suffice it to say, this ended in a pretty strange and unexpected way.

Predictably, Cece re-entered the picture single, and we found out that Schmidt was hanging all over her. Nick was kind of just there save for a brief foursome conversation, which led to the night’s best moment: Winston using salt and pepper to create an analogy for this proposal.

Really, at this point Winston is the best character on the show, given that he has the freedom to let his freak flag fly. The rest of the characters feel too much like they want to be grown up and normal, and while we understand that the message at the end was that they don’t need anyone to sleep with to be happy, it took a while to get there. Probably too long, given that we wanted this episode to be a little less about romance, and more about fun. Grade: C+.

What did you think about the “New Girl” premiere? Share your thoughts with a comment.