We knew it was coming, but that didn’t make Zooey Deschanel’s return to New Girl any less exciting to witness firsthand. In fact, I don’t think I realized just how much I missed her until now, which made the show’s 100th episode (a huge milestone, by the way) all the more special. However, her arrival was also marked with hint of sadness since it signified Reagan’s departure from New Girl — a realization that Nick spent a majority of the episode grappling with. In the end, he decided that the best way to leave things between the two of them was for Nick to give Reagan a “Goosebumps Walkaway.”
Now, what exactly is a Goosebumps Walkaway? Not only is it the name of the episode, but it’s also the term Nick has coined to represent the line a guy says to a girl in a movie that is so good that it gives her goosebumps right before he walks away from her forever. And this is exactly what he wants to do to Reagan because of course he does. Naturally, most of his ideas regarding what to say were pretty terrible and ranged from “Wherever the fridge of life takes you” to “Stop thinking that this is goodbye and start knowing it is.” But after a little coaching from Schmidt, he decided to go with telling her, “Sayonara Sammy.”
Yeah… it pretty much made no sense whatsoever and involved him walking away right into the shower, so it wasn’t the most epic goodbye ever. That being said, Reagan later called Nick from the airport, wanting to tell him how much she likes him, but ended up chickening out and just repeating, “Sayonara Sammy” to him.
But I don’t look at this as a missed opportunity. If anything, I think it offers up hope that things aren’t over between the two of them. They may not have been able to say what they were feeling out loud, but, in a way, this “Sayonara Sammy” thing is kinda like a masked representation of those feelings. For the life of me, I can’t tell you who the heck Sammy is, but I do know that this sayonara isn’t forever.
Image: Greg Gayne/FOX
