“Who’s that girl? It’s Jess!” “Wait, did you just make up a theme
song for yourself?” New Girl’s title and its theme song
tell us what this show is about: the latest addition to a loft of
big personalities, Jessica Day. “She's in.”
"through the door] Yay, I'm in!" After a major breakup, Jess explores
a new chapter of her life: one that centers friendship and fulfillment.
But while the show started out following Jess’ journey,
as it continued, the focus changed. Her roommates became more dimensional,
with great development
and comedic timing.
“I’m gonna have to run all the way home. And I have my slippiest loafers on.”
Meanwhile, as Zooey Deschanel’s hipster schtick faded in cultural relevance,
Jess’ cutesy, quirky ‘thing’ started to feel a little played out.
"Oh, I didn't know I was doing a thing." "It's a great thing. I mean, the big,
beautiful eyes, like a scared baby.” The longer she relied on this gimmick,
the harder it became to ignore the truth of her character: for someone who falls
while standing still, Jess has her life deceivingly together.
While we’re used to watching our main characters try to mature through one
core flaw, Jess’ defining weirdness isn’t something
she needs to grow out of, “I don't need your help! I like
moving slow. I like being weird and taking my time.”
so instead, she waits for everyone else to catch up with her
“I could pretend to be more like you, Jess, and live on a sparkly rainbow
and drive a unicorn around and just sing all the time.”
“Yeah, I think you should sing all the time.”
Here’s our take on why Jess isn’t the protagonist of New Girl,
what made her too unlikable to lead for some audiences, and how
her supporting role in the series actually led to a show
with ample screentime for other characters who ended up being more
interesting. “Sometimes I think that I'm just
a riddle that... well, even *I* can't solve.”
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“When I met you, you were wearing a hat made of ribbons.”
“My ribbon hat. I love that hat.”
Without watching an episode, most People would recognize Jess from
the same traits that Zooey Deschanel became associated with: like her love
of vintage fashion, excessive ukuleles,
and bicycles with bells.
Jess was created during the height of twee
“Have you seen a girl wandering around? Um, look-looks like a drawing of
a best friend that an eight-year-old would make.”
The late ‘00s and early ‘10s were a heyday for everything quirky.
They gave us the start of New Girl alongside some of Wes Anderson’s
quaintest works, and plenty of comedy aimed at the swarm of hipster
tastemakers of the time. “What a sad little tote bag.
I know! I'll put a bird on it. Did you see this bag before? I didn't.
Now there's a bird. [giggles]” New Girl’s promo relied on this moment
and Zooey’s hipster cachet, as evidenced in its tagline “simply adorkable.”
“Also, I like to sing to myself, a lot. [sings] A lot.”
Whereas some of Deschanel’s other iconic characters were more aloof or mysterious
Jess fits the spirit of twee, too. She’s sentimental and quaint-feeling;
her whole personality feels like a performative throwback.
James Parker writes for the Atlantic that the message of twee is:
“Be as crap as you like. The crapper, the better.”
“That’s why I liked hanging out with those kids. ‘Cause they weren't
judging me all the time for not crushing it.”
When Jess feels mediocre, or doesn’t have her next move planned out,
she still feels pretty secure about her fundamental value
as a human being. Parker also quotes Marc Spitz,
the author of Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television,
Fashion, and Film, that twee’s core values include
“a healthy suspicion of adulthood”; “a steadfast focus on our essential
goodness”; “the cultivation of a passion project”
and “the utter dispensing with of ‘cool’ as it’s conventionally known,
often in favor of a kind of fetishization of the nerd, the geek, the dork,
the virgin.” all of which Jess exemplifies to a T.
“I’ll be - I’ll be like your guide." "Like Gandolf through Middle Earth?"
"Fine. I guessed I missed the moment
when everybody got cool about sex."
In retrospect, though, the twee moment
was relatively short-lived.
The world just grew tired of everything
needing to be quirky or vintage.
As quickly as they had become cool, Jess’s penchant for the adorkable was
all of a sudden annoying in the popular consciousness.
In the end, using a fad to create a main character backfired.
When twee went out of fashion, so did the appreciation for a lot
of qualities that are crucial to who Jess is as a person.
“I brake for birds. I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched
glitter in the last 24 hours." And the cultural irritation
with everything quirky led to her being sidelined in the show.
“Looks like you make your own jewelry. I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't
want to hear about it.” Spitz understood the impulse to dislike
people like Jess, but asked us to look deeper: “There’s a level
of preciousness to some of these people that you just want to wipe the smile
off of their face. It’s a true, honest emotional reaction,
but that doesn’t mean that the people who have annoying tendencies aren’t
sincere in wanting to make the world a better place.”
"Sometimes I think I was bred in a lab to help people"
Some of the hatred for hyperfeminine girls like Jess can border on misogyny.
Before Jess existed, Zooey Deschanel had been painted as the real life
example of the manic pixie dream girl, a term that’s slightly ridiculous
to apply to an actual person as it’s used to criticize the unreal
one-dimensionality of how a quirky fictional love interest
is written, especially by male screenwriters
“You know what I do when I feel completely unoriginal?
Blah blah blah blah blah la. I make a noise or I do something
that no one has ever done before”. As people misread her character in
500 Days of Summer, a direct commentary on men who see women this way
“We talked about Banana fish for like 20 minutes. We're so compatible,
it's insane”. Zooey herself became a prime target
for hating unconventional women. "It's bein' quirky and here's your host
Zooey Deschanel” “I'm Zooey Deschanel and my soul was born
in 1901." Jokes about her actual quirkiness were
exaggerated, until public perception had a hard time distinguishing between
the real person and the caricature they’d made of her.
“[singing] But the best kind of girl is a quirky girl. [twee noise]”
She even got backlash against her vocal fry, “You have to dress so you can
make a quick getaway” a criticism that’s increasingly
recognized as sexist. "Most of the time when people are
complaining about vocal fry and uptalk they're complaining
about women's voices, and especially young women”.
Thanks to these external culture factors and the show’s marketing
decisions, Jess was doomed to fail as a protagonist. New Girl banked
on her hyperfeminine quirks and style to carry the character, which limited
where she could go after her
adorkability wore out its welcome.
“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve led a very
fortunate life.”
But to her credit, Jess is known to take a stand against any
misconceptions about her femininity. “I hate your pantsuit. I wish it had
ribbons on it or something to make it just slightly cuter. And that doesn't
mean I'm not smart and tough and strong.”
When we meet Jess, she’s at a seriously low point of her life--
she learns her boyfriend Spencer is cheating in the worst possible way,
and now she’s stuck living with three guys she met online.
“Hey, are you gonna murder me 'cause you're a stranger I met on the internet?
“Yes, I am." “He says no.”
This kind of beginning is actually
pretty common; traditional stories
start with some kind of disruptive change for the main character, called
the inciting incident . Jess leaves behind the relationship she
had planned her life around – “I'm happy you cheated on me.
Thank you. Because if you hadn't, I would’ve married you.”
-- and in return, she gets a new life which suits her much better.
“I got a really great deal on Craigslist. I got all of you.”
But the inciting incident usually does more for the story than introduce
a new chapter. It’s also related to a personal trait that defines
the main character’s arc, in terms of both their problems and their growth
At the beginning of Friends, Rachel Green is sheltered, spoiled,
and helpless; by embracing risk in New York, she sets up an arc
to become more independent, savvy, and self-assured.
“If I can actually do my own laundry, there isn't anything I can't do.”
Similarly, How I Met Your Mother starts with when Ted Mosby meets Robin.
And while the show claims to be the story of Ted meeting his wife,
this inciting incident tells us it’s really the story of how he
initially wasn’t right for Robin “So, when you tell this story
to your friends, Could you avoid the word "psycho?"
and how he supposedly grows enough to become the partner she needs.
“This is a story about how you’re totally in love with Aunt Robin.”
Jess’ story is different; being cheated on doesn’t speak to any central problem
within herself. All we learn from the situation is that Jess
is awkward, and spending that long in a single relationship hasn’t given
her much experience with adult dating. “It's been six years. Everything I know
about sex, I learned from Spencer or the Clinton impeachment trials.”
In the first season, she’s learning to deal with the consequences
of being cheated on in a long-term relationship -- like a discomfort
with sex, “I don't know what I'm doing emotionally,
or let’s be honest, sexually.” casual dating, and sometimes
even herself. But this uncertainty is just a phase, more from Spencer’s
mistake than her own. In most situations, Jess is resilient,
bouncing back from insults about her weirdness and rarely willing
to let someone else’s opinion interfere with her self-image
"You don't know how to be real. I can't have you trying
to cheer people up." "I know how to be real”.
The breakup is merely a brief detour from her default of being comfortable
with herself “You know what? You're right, I am sophisticated.
I'm gonna do this.” -- a state that doesn’t leave Jess much
room to keep evolving. After an inciting incident, comedies
often use positive arcs to show how characters improve over time.
But by the time she starts dating Nick in season 3, Jess has already
reached a good, stable place. She’s over her Spencer-related
insecurities -- he hasn’t been mentioned since the first season.
“Spencer-! Wore-! Jellies-!” Finding the strength to try things
with Nick marks the end of her arc, since Nick is much like a kinder,
more charming version of Spencer “My ex-boyfriend failed to send it
to me before the court date, because he doesn't believe in mail.”
“My boyfriend doesn't believe in banks.” and Jess still finds the courage
within herself to give him a chance. When they do break up, it has a lot
to do with Nick being so unstable. “What do you want from me, Jess?”
“I just want you to take a little more responsibility”
Her steady commitment to doing what’s best for herself keeps Jess
from needing a positive arc for the rest of the show. She has a kind of maturity
that most characters -- and maybe most of us -- don’t have:
she knows how to make the hard decisions in relationships that don’t work
for her. Most of her long-term relationships end with her recognizing
something’s wrong and respecting herself enough to take it seriously
“So I thought we were feeling the same things for each other.
Y-You seemed like you were.” “I feel like maybe you were feeling them
a little bit more than me.”
Rather than an overarching growth, what we see in Jess is
more of a zig-zag. She learns a lot about life in and out
of relationships, but she ultimately doesn’t discover anything huge
about herself -- because the truth is, she already knows herself pretty well.
“I'm only attracted to guys who are afraid of success and think someone
famous stole their idea. I like an underdog.”
In her professional life, too, she’s aware of what she loves
and she’s doing it: she’s a dedicated teacher with a uniquely Jess brand
of care and passion for education. “I have to get to school ‘cause it's
astronomy day and I'm dressing up as Galileo, so I have
to put on my beard.”
Life ends up throwing her a few career speed bumps and changes
“I've always wanted to be a teacher, but maybe I should be
doing something else. I don't know. How do you know when you're
on the right path?” but she remains happiest when she’s
doing what she’s always been good at. If Jess is a little emotionally mature
and grounded for a protagonist, though, her messy life is definitely familiar
to the millennials who watched New Girl as it aired. HuffPost contributor
David Anthony’s description of millennial life reflects Jess’
situation perfectly: “The thing that remains the most
constant in your life, is that nothing is ever the same.”
For a generation defined by uncertainty about growing up and entering
the post-Recession workforce “What'd I miss?”
“From the pa- from the past two years?” “Gimme the Highlights”
“Highlights. Okay, uh…Country's broke” “hm”
watching Jess and her friends’ chaotic life changes can be comforting.
And her sense of self is strong enough to encourage us to trust our weirdness,
even if the external details haven’t yet lined up.
Between a battle with being one-note and her pretty solid sense of self,
Jess has the hallmarks of a supporting character
”I guess I was just hoping that with all the mistakes I've made,
at least I could help you guys find love. That I didn't go
through all that for no reason.” And the other key reason Jess was
sidelined over time was to give more space for her friends to develop.
They not only proved to be compelling and funny characters, but they also
were still discovering themselves and had more conventional growing
to do in order to catch up to Jess. “She doesn't think I can take care
of a regular plant.” “Well, you can't.”
“Any idiot can take care of a cactus, Winston. She thinks I'm an idiot.”
One of Jess’ defining qualities is how deeply she cares about people.
“Do you just walk around all day thinking about other people's feelings?”
“Yeah. Don't you?” “No. How do you get anything done?”
“It's hard.” So her personality sets her up
Perfectly to get involved in her friends’ business,
and she really shines most when she’s helping her friends.
"I'm getting married tomorrow and I look like Mike Tyson."
"Okay, nothing little cotton balls and olive oil can't fix! In a few
minutes we are gonna laugh about this" As early as the third episode,
Jess shows us how well she plays a supporting role by pretending
to be Nick’s girlfriend at a wedding. “Oh my god, was she jealous?
I think she was jealous. You did so good.”
We see already how Jess’ stable self-assurance makes her a naturally
good friend. “She has a boyfriend...”
“Yeah.” “She shouldn't have been flirting
with you all night. You can't be her back up plan”.
Also in the first season, she’s willing to throw Schmidt a birthday party at
the last minute, even when she doesn’t yet understand him and his friends.
“You are not emotionally, mentally, and spiritually prepared to throw
these d-bags a party." “I'm gonna do some research.”
And when she needs to, Jess is ready to put aside the quirky gimmick to give
out some tough love. “You want me to get real and stop being
all cutesy and whatever, fine. Let's get real. You don’t do anything.”
When she’s called to Jury Duty, the joke is that all the roommates are
falling apart because of how much they rely on her
"Hey, uh, Jess? If one were to put a hammer through a wall,
what would one do?" "Did that wall fall down?"
"Just please don't leave again." And throughout the course of the show,
she’s helped three separate couples with marriage proposals.
“Will you marry him?” “[voice breaks] Yeah”
“Is that a yes?” “Yes!”
At Jess’ core -- in her careers, relationships, and friendships –
is a desire to help people, so she shows off what’s good in her character
whenever we see her exercise this side of herself.
“What am I watching here?” “What do you mean?”
“This is friendship. Pure, unadulterated friendship.”
And in the end, she illustrates how turning the supposed star of a show
into support for an ensemble can make for really good entertainment.
Jess’ transition from main to supporting character was gradual, but eventually,
it was undeniable: she wasn’t the protagonist anymore.
The “Who’s that Girl?” theme song just became a quick instrumental motif.
When Zooey Deschanel’s maternity leave took Jess off the show for six episodes,
the show was fine without her by most reports -- and some argued, better.
“You know If Jess were here, she would tell me to [imitating Jess]
‘Just believe in yourself, Winston, and, like, be positive.’”
For six episodes, the show forgot about her hyperfeminine twee ideal
and eagerly shifted to focus on Megan Fox, playing to type as
the quintessential cool girl “She's hot and she's cool
and she's bisexual”. Meanwhile, over time, Winston surpassed
Jess in quirkiness, providing all the “weird friend” comedy
the show needed "How's my shake?"
"No, no no, no, no, no no. Do not go in with two hands".
By the end of the series, Jess was far from the New Girl anymore.
Yet it’s striking that she never lost the qualities that defined her
as a person -- even the ones other people found annoying.
“I'm gonna have to go on a craft run, aren't I?”
“I'm gonna need pipe cleaners, glitter, glue, finger paints and six different
types of macaroni” In any role, at any stage of her life,
Jess shows us the ultimate power move: she never stops being Jess.
“I'm about to go and pay this $800 fine, and my checks have baby
farm animals on them”
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