Why I'm Probably Not Going to Watch New Girl

Full disclosure: I started this post a week ago, after reading a handful of mixed reviews of New Girl, Zooey Deschanel's new tv show. I watched the trailer on youtube, and it was... less than enthralling, but I was still looking to this show -- from what I can tell a light-hearted, not-too-challenging comedy about a recently dumped woman who moves in with three male roommates -- to fill a hole in my Tuesdays nights.

Deschanel is quite the polarizing figure these days. Reading the comments here, she's either the death of contemporary feminism whose quirkiness is wholly contrived and bordering on infantile, and nothing more than a ploy to attract men, or a super-cute, comedic actress with maybe a little too much hipster cachet. Both pigeonholes are a little unfair, to say the least.

The biggest complaint is that Deschanel -- or the characters she plays -- typify the "manic pixie dream girl, " existing only to pull some brooding male out of his existential funk, but with no real agency of her own. Part of why this bothers me is that the onus is never put on her male co-star, but on Deschanel herself. Granted, she ultimately chooses her movie, and now television, roles, but as one commenter pointed out, "it's not the manic pixie that's the problem; it's the dream girl part." Quirkiness I'm fine with, and I welcome awkwardness -- and New Girl's Jess is truly awkward to the point of being off-putting, albeit in a still safe-for-primetime way: Deschanel is young, thin, white, and despite the thrift-store wardrobe and thick glasses, conventionally attractive. Alyssa Rosenberg from The Atlantic says:

Jess (Zooey Deschanel) may be a teacher, but she's introduced less in terms of her capacities as an educator than her tolerance for repeat viewings of Dirty Dancing, her inability to choose first-date outfits, and a bad tendency to burn off bits of her hair when distracted.

Which is the biggest problem with New Girl. The show heavily relies on the same gender essentialist gags primetime TV has been using for decades. Jess is scatterbrained to the point of being ineffectual, only to have her male roommates save her, and it's disappointing because Deschanel has the chops to be a good comedic actress.