‘New Girl’ season 2, episode 7 preview: Jake Johnson’s greatest minute ever

We’ve said for over a year now, and it continues to be true: the strongest part of “New Girl” is the performance of one Jake Johnson as Nick Miller. While Jess and Schmidt are characters who never really live in what we like to think of as reality, for Nick it is almost like he puts up a house on a perfectly normal street, and then you go inside to realize that the entire place is inhabited with balloon animals and chimpanzees. His brand of crazy has been more of a slow burn, which is why it has been enjoyable to watch even more so than with some of the other actors.

With this in mind, Tuesday night’s new episode “Menzies” is going to dip yet another toe into the insanity that is Nick’s life. and it is all courtesy of one scene that we really don’t even know the context of. In the video below, you can watch a minute-long journey into the character’s soul as he starts off offended by a stranger sitting next to him on a bench, but seconds later tells him he has “a nice face” and proceeds to tell him pretty much his entire life story.

There are so many great moments in here that it is hard to know just where to begin, whether it be him jumping up and down in the air, acting as though the stranger is responding to his questions, or giving him a really uncomfortable hug at the end of the conversation. The writing here is stellar, and Johnson somehow finds a way to make this whole shtick surprisingly believable as a character with no real emotional outlet. Neither Schmidt nor Winston fully understand him, and he is almost afraid to open up to Jess completely, possibly based on the fact that there are some feelings there that he is afraid to tap into.

This may by our favorite scene of season 2 so far, and that is saying quite a bit considering the number of great scenes that we have watched already. We know that “Modern Family” has a stranglehold on the Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series category at the Emmys, but if Johnson does not get in here eventually, there is something terribly wrong in the world.

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