About halfway through the preview for indie darling Zooey Deschanel’s The New Girl I said to myself, “What the fuck is this?” Originally I had thought I was watching a trailer for a new movie, and it was very quickly shaping up to be the most atrocious looking piece of puked-up quirky rom-com horseshit I’d seen in a long time. It just didn’t seem to have a plot. But then I started getting suspicious, because it really didn’t seem to have a plot. The story of a panderingly awkward hot tomboy (Deschanel) who moves in with three broey bros seemed like a set-up for a movie, but then there was no new romantic subplot for our heroine, just unending quirky awkwardness. Then the nightmare preview finally ended and the FOX TV logo came up and things started making a bit more sense to me.
The New Girl is an upcoming Fox one-camera comedy created by No Strings Attached‘s screenwriter, Elizabeth Meriwether, with a pilot directed by Jake Kasdan. That makes what I just sat through more contextually acceptable. Though, I don’t know, this still seems insufferable. I can’t imagine I’ll ever see No Strings Attached, so its unfair for me to speak negatively of it, but I like Jake Kasdan quite a bit. But still… Jesus. This preview was so relentlessly quirky it made me want to punch my computer, then all my neighbors, then myself. Then my computer again. Yet, I have to admit, I feel a strange urge to check out the pilot just because I feel like I need to understand what the flow of the show will actually be. This just doesn’t feel like a TV show. Color me masochistically fascinated.
Be warned.