Sometimes I think that I'm just a riddle that...
well, even I can't solve.
Among one of TV’s best ensembles,
New Girl’s Schmidt can’t help but stand out.
For countless viewers, his quirky charms made him
the best part of the show.
I’m gonna have to run all the way home.
And I have my slippiest loafers on.
This is even more remarkable considering Schmidt is,
well, a douchebag.
He’s the kind of guy who spends his whole life
desperately trying to be cool—
which usually makes him seem anything but.
Who wants to start an Arcade Fire?
But beneath his jerky surface, Schmidt is actually incredibly genuine.
You're a good guy, you know.
If you ignore everything that you do on purpose,
and concentrate on all of the things that you do by accident.
He cares about everything— some would say too much.
We also learn that his need to be cool comes from
growing up painfully uncool—
Schmidt’s douchey persona masks some deep-seated insecurities,
I guess I'll just never be cool enough, Jess.
and his emotional immaturity makes it difficult for him to move on.
I'm not actually quite sure how to stop this.
But knowing who he is and where he came from
also gives him the confidence he needs to be unapologetically Schmidt.
It’s after Labor Day. I’m wearing whales.
Here’s our take on how Schmidt is defined by his lack of cool,
and how his uncool past is both a blessing and a curse.
Cool Guy Power. Now you're talking, Robby.
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Schmidt prides himself on keeping up with trends—
often before anyone else has heard of them.
It's so nectar.
Did you just make up nectar?
Nah, it's a volleyball term.
But chasing fads is relatively new for Schmidt—
the glimpses we see of his earlier years
paint a very different picture.
I met Schmidt a long time ago when we were in college
and he was this sweet, chubby communications major
who wore cargo shorts.
Being raised by his mom, Schmidt is used to—
and comfortable with— displaying a more feminine energy.
I had figure skating lessons until I was 13, and then my mom
sobered up and realized I was a boy.
Being repeatedly abandoned by his father makes Schmidt
want to be a better, more feeling man.
My dad never showed up.
He didn't?
It hurts so bad!
Young Schmidt is characterized by his sweet, albeit dorky,
disposition and eagerness to please.
So you like the foot rub? Softer? Harder?
That's perfect, Big Guy.
But by the time we meet him, Schmidt has changed.
He’s insensitive, inappropriate, and far too eager to take off his shirt.
[Schmidt slides out of the smoke, shirtless]
Jar.
It doesn’t take long for us to realize that Schmidt is overcompensating.
In his formative years, Schmidt’s weight was an excuse
for his peers to isolate him from important social inclusion—
ignoring him altogether, or mocking him under
the guise of ‘friendship.’
We used to make him sing that because he was fat.
[Jess stares in shock]
You know I'm just playing at you.
Yeah, hilarity, my man. Hilarity!
There’s a long history of turning a character’s weight
into a joke onscreen.
Using fat suits is a common visual punchline.
And we often see them deployed to mark an out-of-control chapter
in a character’s life.
I started gaining weight after I joined the Brown Birds.
Remember Dad bought every one of my boxes and I ate them all?
Uh, Dad had to buy every one of your boxes…
because you ate them all.
Putting Schmidt in a fat suit certainly earned its own
share of criticism.
Yet it’s notable that Schmidt’s Experiences go beyond
a throwaway joke.
Being overweight informs his internal life.
I'm sorry that Cece did this to you.
That's okay. I'm used to it.
I guess I'll just always be the fat kid with the big dreams.
Studies show that weight-bias can foster higher levels
of loneliness or anxiety.
It’s difficult for Schmidt to see the value in himself,
after so many years of being mocked and excluded.
Want to dance?
Yeah, right. Fat kid wants to dance at the cool college party.
Nice joke, stranger.
By the time he loses weight, the damage has been done—
he learns that changing your image won’t necessarily fix how you feel.
In hopes of fitting in with a world that hasn't been kind to him,
Schmidt adapts by becoming an arguably worse person.
You were the greatest boyfriend. I loved Big Guy.
But then, you lost weight, and you got mean.
But rather than improving his life,
putting all his focus into his new ‘baller’ lifestyle
only seems to make him more insecure.
As actor Max Greenfield puts it,
"[h]e thinks he’s a different person now,
but he’s not.
I think he was far more lovable and like-able
when he was a little bit bigger.
Now that he’s lost the weight… he thinks he has to act a certain way."
Wow, Schmidt, you’ve got so many boots.
You know who doesn’t have a lot of boots?
Guys who aren’t getting laid on the reg.
Schmidt’s new lifestyle creates the trendy narcissist we meet
in New Girl’s pilot.
But his high self-esteem remains colored by self-doubt.
For every great friend like Nick,
he keeps a fellow douche like Benjamin around,
reinforcing his negative feelings about himself.
We have a very weird, girl-style friendship
where we kind of hate each other.
We're bronemies. He's my fremesis.
He even flexes on his real friends,
fabricating a rivalry with Winston over this compulsive need
to prove himself.
I'm not jealous of Winston.
Okay, it's been two years, he's gonna have to recognize.
I'm a lot flyer now.
Wanna see me flex my base?
No, no, no, no. Put your shirt on.
Let me flex my base!
The more we learn about him, the more obvious it becomes:
Schmidt is obsessed with his image,
and it seems to explain almost everything he does.
He regularly brags about his success at work.
I crushed it all day today,
and then I crushed it some more,
and then it asked me what I was doing
and I told it that I was crushing it.
But in reality,
his job is far from fulfilling— or even very healthy.
I am just trying to do my work. I'm just trying to do a good job here.
Nice tie, can I borrow a tampon? His pursuit of status feels endless,
because he wants it to fill the much bigger hole within himself.
Friending Kanye is the most efficient way
for me to jump social strata.
Instead of looking for what will actually make him happy,
he sets his sights on everything he couldn’t have before—
Jess, I have to go home with Brooke tonight.
I deserve someone like Brooke, she's perfect.
and being so unable to move on
from the pain of his past ends up ruining the things
that matter most.
And I got caught up in this thing, and I used to be so fat.
And now I'm not, and girls like me,
and I don't know how to do this.
This is LLS: Ladies Love Schmidt.
The area where Schmidt’s life changes the most is female attention,
from his socially awkward college years—
Back in high school, they used to call me...
the sex- the sex haver.
to the unrepentant womanizer we meet as the series begins.
Oh, my God. You slept with the same girl twice in a row?
Was it a mistake? Was she wearing some kind of disguise?
When his romantic life picks up, Schmidt’s experience with women
is still fairly limited.
He regards them as an other, not as equals or even real people—
and some of his attitudes toward them are borderline offensive.
Without sex, she's not your girlfriend. She's a friend you buy meals for.
But Schmidt wants to be there for the people that need him.
By including Jess in his inner circle, he demonstrates that—
despite some of his behavior—
he doesn’t really think of women solely as conquests.
You used to inspire me.
In a vague, kind of
‘look at that go-getter in a... in a brightly colored sweater’
kind of way.
Through Jess he meets Cece— the most frequent target
of Schmidt’s douchebag behavior, but also the best catalyst
for him to finally start growing up.
Over the course of the show, it becomes clear
that Schmidt and Cece truly belong together,
but it takes time to get there.
Schmidt’s hang-ups continue to sabotage their relationship
from season to season.
Because I'm in love with you. Deeply.
But I assumed that you would never because I've...
I've messed this up so many times.
Schmidt doesn’t consider himself worthy of Cece,
so he accepts that she doesn’t want to be seen with him.
Okay, come on, Schmidt,
I can't be the first woman who's ashamed to be with you.
Their secret fling eventually does blossom into something more equal,
but even then, Schmidt can’t make peace with their imbalance.
He can’t help feeling inadequate,
especially when comparing himself to the men in Cece’s world.
That's my job.
Gino is just some guy that I see around the office,
except for, in my office,
they rub us down with baby oil before we start.
We see that, relatively early in their connection,
Cece actually does like Schmidt.
You like me? For my personality?
I was surprised, too.
But he just can’t seem to accept that someone like her
could be fulfilled with him—
Schmidt’s low self-esteem and the trauma of his past
makes him naturally more prone to feelings of rejection
Why are you trying to push me away.
I saw the text message from Gino.
Eventually he realizes he’d rather end things with Cece
than risk getting hurt.
And he frames the break-up as him doing her a favor—
that he loves her enough to think she deserves someone better.
You know, she's a good egg.
She's never gonna be happy with somebody like me, Jess.
Schmidt only becomes ready to be with Cece
by dating other people,
which allows him to outgrow his old bad habits.
When he reconnects with his college girlfriend Elizabeth,
his reasoning is just as immature and selfish as ever.
I want you to pretend to be my girlfriend
so she gets very sad, and then breaks off the wedding,
and then runs away with me.
But it proves to be an important step in his self-improvement:
For the first time, he revisits his uncool past willingly.
He deliberately brings someone into his life who reminds him
of a time before his personality was all cardigan collections
and celebrity trivia.
You knew me when action sandals were my necessary footwear.
And while at first he acts embarrassed of Elizabeth,
just like Cece did with him,
Do you know her?
Mmm... no...?
No?
I... I feel like I'm trap- I'm being trapped, am I not?
unlike Schmidt, Elizabeth is happy with herself.
But why are you wearing that shirt?!
I'm not gonna let you make me feel bad about myself!
I love this shirt!
And dating her for a second time helps Schmidt access
the side of himself that doesn’t care so much about what others think.
Welcome home, melted cheese.
It's like waking up from a bad salad dream.
While he and Elizabeth end pretty terribly,
even that experience teaches Schmidt something about himself.
When he cheats on her and gets caught,
Schmidt sees that he’s important enough to hurt Elizabeth—
he can’t play the victim forever.
You broke my heart. Mail me my mouth guard.
His next significant relationship is the other side of the same coin.
For a while, Schmidt likes being arm candy to Fawn,
an ambitious politician— and at least at first,
he doesn’t mind being used by Fawn as a tool in her campaign.
You let me humiliate myself in public for your own political gain?
Yes.
You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever met.
But eventually, being with Fawn helps Schmidt realize
that he deserves more.
You'll be rich, I'll be powerful.
I'm realizing... just now, that it's not what I want.
Over time, and through much trial and error,
Schmidt begins to let go of the insecurities at the root
of his relationship problems.
He comes out the other side with none of the baggage
and all of the good qualities his true friends always knew were there—
and by the time he proposes to Cece, he’s fully his own man.
Oh, God, you're gonna say something stupid, aren't you?
Girl, will you marry me?
I mean, can we just take a moment to celebrate me?
Schmidt is easily one of New Girl’s most popular characters
outside the show,
even if that sentiment isn’t always shared inside it.
If I had a dollar for everybody I couldn’t hang out with
because they hated Schmidt, I’d be rich.
Like, fill-my-gas-tank- all-the-way-up rich.
We’re used to seeing the jerk-turned-hero on screen—
many of them with their own sympathetic back stories,
most of them equally well-liked.
Yet few seem as easy to love as Schmidt.
So what is it that makes us see past his douch-iest qualities
and focus on the sweeter side of Schmidt?
Unlike similar character types, he owns his emotional baggage.
I think we're all a little bit crazy, don’t you think, Jess?
Schmidt wears his heart on his sleeve, which makes him sympathetic—
even when he doesn’t deserve much sympathy.
I'm a mess, I can't sleep, I urinate constantly.
I cried the other day listening to a techno song.
He also sincerely cares about his friends,
in contrast to cynical characters whose inner pain sees them
keeping everyone else at a distance.
How long does it take you in the morning to make it look
like you have bed-head?
How many sweatpants-sport jacket combos did you try before you
found the one that said, ‘I don’t care?’
Schmidt’s blossoming friendship with Jess helps us track
this good in him.
From the beginning, his earnest attempts to help her
move on from Spencer prove just how loyal he can be.
And his unconditional love for Nick sometimes feels more passionate
than any of his romances.
And the truth is, Schmidt loves me so much,
and to be honest, Jess, it scares me.
I mean, I don't think I deserve all of Schmidt's love.
While some characters’ scumbag improprieties
are impossible to overlook,
Schmidt’s willingness to atone allows us to believe
he has a good heart— and that he has
the capacity to get better— even if it’s a slow process.
I can't believe I have to have feelings to have good sex.
I thought I'd be dead before this happened.
Although he has a clear chip on his shoulder,
he also doesn’t brood about it like some others.
He lives with the trauma of his past,
but the show also lets us laugh at and with Schmidt,
which makes him easier to connect with emotionally.
And I...
Don't say ‘broken penis.’
...have a broken penis. Don't pretend to know my pain.
In the end, his ‘redemption’ doesn’t seem like
a reversal or a surprise.
We already know he’s a lovable jerk, so we root for him—
and when he actually improves, we celebrate.
I am delighted for you to marry this man.
As Schmidt marries and settles down with Cece,
we watch him grow into the kind of dedicated father he always lacked,
one who wants only the best for little Ruth Bader Parekh Schmidt.
And if she gets into Harvard, it's a bullet train to the Oval Office.
Don't you want Ruth to be the president?
Schmidt outgrows the behavior that makes him a douche—
and keeps what makes him Schmidt.
DRILL is an acronym.
D: Do it. R: Redo it. I: Imitate what you just did.
L: Learn to keep doing it. L: Live the rest of your life doing it.
The fact that Schmidt, for all his cool-guy bluster,
is inherently uncool only makes us like him more.
Caring too deeply about everything
might not make him popular with the people he wants to impress,
but it does make him relatable— and far more enjoyable
for us to spend time with.
You, I will never give up.
And when he applies this attitude to helping his friends,
we can even see the benefit in having someone like Schmidt around.
I may have your entire life planned out on my computer.
I made a spreadsheet and everything. I worked on it this morning.
Being unpopular, especially in our youth,
can be detrimental to our self-esteem,
but Schmidt shows us how it can sometimes be a blessing in disguise.
Our inner dork allows us to remain genuine,
to be unusually sensitive, and to find people
who like us for who we are—
in the long run, embracing just how uncool we are
makes us much happier than being cool ever will.
I’m the cool rebel brother.
You’re the Mom.
Mother. Mom.