New Girl and the art of the will they/won't they

It is all but impossible to be a TV fan and not end up getting very invested in one will they/won't they or another. The endless relationship dance between two people who should but just can't, but, oh, they should, is so core to so many series that it even pops up in places you wouldn't necessarily expect it. Like I don't think the relationship between Cassian Andor and Bix Caleen on Andor is a classically structure will they/won't they, but it's drafting off a lot of that architecture, you know?

If you ask me for the will they/won't theys I have become deeply invested in, the list is... quite short: Richard and Caroline on Caroline in the City (for some reason), Tim and Dawn on the UK Office, and Nick and Jess on New Girl. To be sure, I love, say, Sam and Diane on Cheers – which I think is the best will they/won't they ever broadcast – but I came to that one late. I knew how it was going to turn out. Similarly, I have loved the construction of many will they/won't theys while never becoming deeply invested in them. (See also: Jim and Pam on the US Office – basically a perfect will they/won't they in construction that doesn't do much for me on an emotional level.)

Of the three, I probably got most into Nick (played by Jake Johnson) and Jess (Zooey Deschanel), even as my relationship to the show they were on waxed and waned. Why? To talk about that, we have to talk about New Girl season 2, episode 15: "Cooler." But before we do that, we have to talk about me. (I know! Everybody's so excited!)

When I was still doing a terrible job of pretending to be a man, the hip TV couple to say that you were like among my critical pals was Ben and Leslie on Parks and Rec. No offense to that show or my critic friends, but I always found comparing oneself to those two completely alienating. Their cutesy banter and flirtations fit the show and those characters, but I couldn't imagine being in that relationship, not at all. I would need more arguing! Hence, I always compared my marriage to the always bantering, often squabbling, grumpy/sunshine pairing of Nick Miller and Jessica Day – except, twist, my wife was Nick, and I was Jess! Wasn't it funny that I was the girl???? But people didn't understand what I was getting at. Nick and Jess? Why would I want to argue so much?

The rough period when Ben/Leslie and Nick/Jess were running concurrently fit neatly within a TV criticism trend that argued that, in essence, TV's overreliance on conflict in relationships had made it all but impossible to pull off a will they/won't they. Better to have a couple flirt at length, then get together and stay together, conflict between them becoming exceedingly rare. It was a kind of cozy heterosexual fantasy of what love could look like.

I had always found that coziness intensely unsettling. I didn't trust a relationship without conflict, without banter, without arguing. What was weird was that my marriage wasn't really driven by argumentation; indeed, it was a very good, cozy, heterosexual fantasy. But my wife and I would perform the part of people in a will they/won't they, turning every single interaction we had into an excuse to do slightly competitive riffing, in a way that probably annoyed a lot of people or made them deeply uncomfortable. (If you ever listened to our old podcast TV on the Internet, you know what I mean.) (It's been scrubbed from the internet.) (NO, I MEAN IT.)

I think this performance of conflict – without any actual conflict backing it up – was probably some sort of attempt to fight through the veneer of straightness we'd cloaked ourselves in. It wasn't difficult to be together, but it was difficult to pretend to be the guy in a straight relationship. Therefore, I found a way to perform being the romantic lead without having to look too hard at how ill-fitting the role was. (It's worth nodding to the fact that in "Cooler," Nick spends most of the episode wandering around in a women's coat. Gender!)

Eventually, my identification with Jess became so strong that a random episode of the show nearly caused me to come out to myself. (I just really wanted to wear this dress, was all! Absolutely nothing to read into there!) Though I successfully tamped down my inner voice screaming at me on that instance, Jess got under my skin, part of a long coming-out process that took nearly 15 years from when I first realized transition was possible to when I actually started. Yet instead of doing anything about my strong identification with Jess, I turned that identification into a joke. Have you met me and my wife? We're like a gender-flipped Nick and Jess! Ha ha ha. Ha.

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Half of the work of a will they/won't they has to happen before the audience knows a will they/won't they is afoot. The second viewers get wise to a show's romantic inclinations is the second the potential romance becomes all some portion of that viewership can pay attention to. What I love about "Cooler" – the episode that finally has Nick reveal he has feelings for Jess (even if he would never put it that way) – is how masterful it is at hiding the ball. Even when you know where the episode is going, it's easy to forget that it's going to twist several times on its way to its destination.

New Girl had occasionally teased Jess hooking up with all of her guy roommates at one point or another across its first season, most seriously ending an episode with the prospect of Schmidt and Jess sleeping together. Yet by the end of Season 1, it was clear that the strongest chemistry Deschanel had with any of the other actors was with Johnson. Early in Season 2, then, the series had the two spend more and more scenes together, slowly zeroing in on their chemistry but in a way that seemed designed to enhance their friendship.

In retrospect, I should have seen the relationship coming when Jess got a Special Guest Star Boyfriend named Sam, played by acclaimed Special Guest Star Boyfriend actor David Walton. Yet because Deschanel and Walton have an easygoing chemistry and because the series routinely gave the characters significant other arcs, I didn't immediately clue in to what the series was up to.

Further keeping you from realizing what's going on in "Cooler" is the way that it seems to be an episode about all three guy roommates getting back in the game, romance-wise. Schmidt (Max Greenfield) is trying to get over his obsession with CeCe (Hannah Simone), while Winston (Lamorne Morris) hasn't had sex since Labor Day. (This episode aired in late January.)

And then even further keeping you from realizing what's about to happen is the fact that the woman both Nick and Schmidt end up pursuing is played by Brooklyn Decker, who is famous enough that Fox could cut promos for the episode all about how she was going to be on the show. It also doesn't hurt that Winston's potential partner is played by Brenda Song, a well-known actor to TV fans for her work on lots of other sitcoms, particularly on the Disney Channel. "Cooler" is constantly distracting you from what it's just about to do, to the degree that the episode-ending kiss between Nick and Jess – one of the great TV kisses – is also a surprise, even though Nick admitted he sometimes imagines what it would be like to kiss Jess a few scenes earlier.

I have now worked in television long enough (about four months) to say that the hardest thing about writing for television is, indeed, hiding the ball, keeping the audience from figuring out how you're going to go to the place they already know you're going to go. If you've watched a sitcom before, then the first several episodes of New Girl Season 2 will surely key you into the notion that Nick and Jess are about to do a will they/won't they. The way the show plays little moments between them for maximum cuteness suggests as much. And if you are a student of the 22-ish episode season, then you know that the time to execute a "big first kiss" is somewhere around February sweeps.

(Brief definition: A "sweeps month" was a particular period when Nielsen sent out paper diaries to gain viewership data in addition to their usual electronic record-keeping. The name comes from how the diaries were sent out and recorded in a "sweep." As such, networks attempted to program their biggest stunts in those months to attract more eyeballs that might be then reflected in the diaries. Those months were November, February, May, and July. Nielsen ceased the processing of paper diaries in 2018, rendering sweeps month largely meaningless, though broadcast TV, especially, still tends to operate by the rhythms sweeps months set for it.)

The genius of "Cooler," then, is that it's part slow burn – Nick admitting that he's thought about kissing Jess but not as part of a dare is vintage romcom pining – and part let's just do this already face-mashing. It is a nervy episode that simultaneously lives by the will they/won't they rules as established for it and largely subverts those rules. It's no wonder that when Nick and Jess were actually a couple for the bulk of Season 3, fans felt so deflated by the prospect. The show had been so artful in getting them together, so... why did it struggle to tell stories about them as a couple?

The thing about television is that it's not actually that great of a medium for romantic storytelling. In similar fashion to how the medium struggles to tell horror stories, TV can't quite handle how romance is all about culmination, about reaching an epic peak and then assuming a happily ever after. On TV, you have to depict that happily ever after, and you either create something dreadfully boring or you have your characters steadily grow disenchanted with each other. Just like in real life!

On the other hand, TV is great at love stories, which I broadly define as the ongoing struggles of an established couple. The will they/won't they starts out as a romance, but the genius of it is that once it reaches that epic peak, it can quickly convert itself into a love story, with the audience none the wiser. Sam and Diane get together? Well, now we get to see how they actually blend their lives together as a couple. Not very well? Then let's break them up and see what happens next! A well-executed will they/won't they can repeat the romance-to-love-story cycle several times, though the upper limit for how often this cycle can repeat itself seems to be "two," and even that tries many viewers' patience.

For instance, I think a lot of viewers' love for Ben and Leslie stemmed from how carefully Parks and Rec set them up as... not a perfect couple, precisely, but exactly the sort of couple you could imagine being married for 5,000 years. They are a love story couple – and not a particularly dramatic one. Parks has other fish to fry anyway, so their quiet bliss suits the show just fine.

Nick and Jess were not built as characters, nor was NickandJess built as a relationship, to sustain a love story. They're built atop some of the oldest romance tropes imaginable, including "oh shit, is my best friend the one for me??" and romance often asks you not to look too closely at the idea of what these people will be like after the story ends. By virtue of being a network sitcom, New Girl had to do exactly that, and it correctly concluded that Nick and Jess had some growing up to do before they could be a successful couple.

But that's also so depressing! We don't want our TV couples to have some growing up to do, right? As New Girl continued its run and did the obligatory feints toward Nick and Jess reuniting, it was common to hear critics grouse about how, say, the show had already gone to that well and found it lacking. Why was the show still chasing the high of "Cooler"? That clearly had been a one-off!

Except... New Girl largely came up with another "Cooler" in its sixth-season finale, "Five Stars for Beezus." The will they/won't they might be an ungainly beast, but when it works, when it can find a way to blend the swooning emotion of a romance with the slow, grinding work of becoming a better person in tandem with your lover of a love story, then mix all of those tropes together, there's really nothing else like it.

Sometimes I wonder about the impulse to say that TV couples should get together and stay together, cordoned off in a corner of domestic bliss that is rarely impeded upon. And, listen: I've been married for [double digit] years, and I've been with the same person since college. I know about the wonders of domestic bliss.

But if I think about all of the people I've been in my marriage – sometimes quite literally – I realize that I've had to change so many times that I am effectively asking my wife to do another will they/won't they with me every few years. And this is true of every successful relationship I know. Every love story is one part comfort and one part trust-fall, both the terror of the plunge and the satisfaction of being caught.

Wanting our TV couples to stay together forever is, I think, a natural outgrowth of our own desire to find "the right person" and have all our problems solved. But I find the quiet bliss of a Ben and Leslie or a Jim and Pam much less realistic than the endless convolutions of a Sam and Diane or a Nick and Jess – even though, again, I've been in a stable, loving, wonderful relationship for [double digit] years.

What Nick and Jess get at, I think, is the idea that all relationships are about change and how you weather that change together – or don't weather it at all. When The Office (US) threw a random attractive man into the mix of the Jim/Pam marriage in its final season, people freaked out, but it was the most interested I'd been in them for ages. Couples struggle! Any TV show that tells you otherwise is lying to you, and while that might be a comforting fantasy, it often leaves certain storytelling corners unexplored.

I am not the person my wife married – again, somewhat literally – nor is she the person I married. So far, we've survived every test thrown at us and a few we came up with for ourselves. It's been hard work, but it's also been rewarding work. And I have to accept, on some level, that tomorrow, my wife could say she needs something else from life, and that would be that. I think the odds of this happening are very low, but people grow and change and sometimes they grow and change apart.

But would that erase all our happy years together? Of course not. The ends do not erase the beginnings. When Nick and Jess break up, that doesn't make the headiness of that kiss in "Cooler" any less potent and powerful. No love story is ever just its ending, and every will they/won't they that seems resolved is just waiting for the next fork in the road.

This week's listening music: "Happy Valentine's Day" by Outkast

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