Jess & Coach Bond, Winston Finds His Way

It is never, ever a good idea to let Jessica Day know that you think of her as anything less than a true and constant friend. It is this reason — as well as the fact that New Girl and other such ensemble sitcoms thrive off of splitting their characters into different combinations — that meant that Coach was pretty much screwed the second he introduced Jess to one of his dudefriends as his "buddy's girlfriend."

This week's going to be another case where recapping this show means largely just quoting it, because no one says this stuff better than the characters themselves, so go watch the episode and then let's just revel in all of that. These writers have, after all, established some really great voices for all of these characters.

And so Jess has to learn Coach 101, which apparently mostly involves basketball — or, as Jess calls it, 'basketsball.' Alas, Coach supports the Pistons while Nick supports the Bulls, which is a sentence Jess does just not understand at all. As Nick says, "It's a rivalry." Jess' contributions to the rivalry canon: Sharks and cats, whales and dolphins, Jean Valjean and Javert. Still, her faking of Pistons fandom means we get to see Coach and Jess butt-bump, which I am all for.

Still, the whole thing also results in Nick in an upset state due to his girlfriend's rooting for his team's rival, and so he decides to do the withholding sex thing that sitcoms are so fond of, but only after forbidding Jess to be a Pistons fan failed. This escalates into a comedy of terrible seduction techniques ("Is that some Paula Abdul stuff?"), which is a comfortable level of weirdness for Nick and Jess to be hovering near. Their conflict also leads to an A+ Nick Miller monologue about analog versus digital. It's Bonkers, Which Is Why It's Amazing: The Nick Miller Story.

"I don't like basketball! There's no fun parts, there's no themes!"

Winston, meanwhile, attempts to locate his next career step by shadowing Schmidt at work, which is exactly the whirlpool of douchery it should be ("Gwen turned 45, so we had to fire her." "Obviously."), especially when Schmidt has to mentor an older new recruit of the company. The old dude turns out to be kind of a dick and a little anti-Semitic ("I'll get you next time, Hebrew."), but we do see Winston come into his analytic skills, which leads him to the revelation that he should become a cop. ("You've already got high cholesterol and weird people skills.")

Bonus mini-fact: Cece's trying her hand at bartending now that the show's realized the unfortunately unrealistic quality of having a model character over the age of 30.

Jess, of course, eventually sways Coach into admitting that she is more than just his buddy's girlfriend to him — or, rather, Nick does. Coach: "I've never seen a baby pigeon before." Nick: "Tell that to her and you've got a friend for life." And so it is that Coach finds himself even more thoroughly enmeshed in the loft's insanity.

Jess: "I found a way to force myself into all of your lives and you just didn't know it. [Pointing to Nick] Food! [To Schmidt] Clothes! [To Winston] Onesie pajamas!"

Winston: "I like the butt-flap."

Nick, however disagreed: "You think mine was food? I can think of five other reasons why I wanted to be your friend: Boob, boob, vagina, buttcheek, buttcheek."

Schmidt: "In that order?"

Nick: "Well I'm not gonna say 'vagina, buttcheek, boob, buttcheek, boob."

See you next week, folks. The episode's called "Birthday," so probably expect some wacky situations.

Image: Fox