New Girl – Season 1 Zooey Deschanel, Max Greenfield,Hannah Simone,Jake 2012 New

From executive producer and writer Liz Meriwether (No Strings Attached), New Girl features a young ensemble cast that takes a fresh look at modern relationships. Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel) is an offbeat and “adorkable” woman in her late 20s who, after a bad breakup, moves into a loft with three single guys. Goofy, positive, vulnerable and honest to a fault, Jess has faith in people, even when she shouldn’t. Although she’s quirky and somewhat awkward, Jess is comfortable in her own skin. More prone to friendships with women, she’s not used to hanging with the boys–especially at home.
Of her three new male roommates, Nick (Jake Johnson) is the most grounded. He had big plans for life, but somewhere along the way, he stopped caring and became a bartender. Usually the smartest guy in the room, he has an uncanny knack for reading people and uses humour to deflect everyone and everything. Schmidt (Max Greenfield) is a hustling young professional who fancies himself a modern-day Casanova. Though his heart is usually in the right place, he’s always scheming ways to climb the social ladder and is driven by an immature and almost obsessive urge to be on “the scene.” The third roommate, Winston (Lamorne Morris), is an intensely competitive former athlete who has recently come to the realisation that he’ll never play pro. He moves back into the loft and must figure out how to live in a world without basketball–a world where not everything is about winning and losing. Rounding out this group is Jess’ childhood best friend, Cece (Hannah Simone), a deadpan, somewhat cynical model. She has the street smarts Jess lacks and spends a lot of time doling out no-nonsense relationship advice that only a professional model could give. She and Jess balance each other well and accept each other despite their faults.
As their relationships progress, this fivesome comes to realise they need each other more than they ever thought they would, and end up forming a charmingly dysfunctional family.
A sitcom thats not short of some very funny moments, New Girls chief asset is clearly the wonderful Zooey Deschanel. She takes on the role of Jess here, who, off the back of a break up, moves into a shared apartment with three male roommates, played by Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield and Lamorne Morris. That sets the grounding for an ensemble comedy, that follows the path trodden many times before in American television. And truthfully, it takes a while for New Girl to find its feet and identity as a result of that.
But find its feet it does. The ensemble cast gels, and as they do so, the comedy starts to work better too. Theres good writing underpinning it, too, and while its derivative, New Girl is also very funny. Deschanel is arguably one of her generations most underrated comedy actresses, and shes clearly enjoyed her role here. Granted, each of the characters conveniently has different, well-trodden defining traits, but it does give them each plenty to play off.
The season one box set brings you the episodes themselves and there are a fair few extras to get your teeth into. The featurettes are breezy, and the gag reel is always welcome. Youll get the most out of the commentary tracks that accompany a couple of the episodes, though. Whats more, theres real and definite rewatch potential here. Its certainly intriguing to see, now the foundations are in place, where New Girl can go from here. As it stands, as this box set proves, its off to a fine and confident start. –Jon Foster