New Girl is the comedy that never changes – and that's why we love it

Entering its seventh and final season, this comfy sit-com has proved capable of going the distance – even while its characters never really go anywhere

Zooey Deschanel and Jake Johnson in the Season 7 premiere of New Girl (Mickshaw/Fox)

The Zooey Deschanel-led comedy New Girl returns this Tuesday on Fox for an abbreviated seventh season (it will be shown in the UK on E4 later this year), an eight-episode victory lap for a show that’s been popular in goofball, sweetheart circles since it premiered. There’s something admirable about a show so defiantly opposed to change, but something frustrating, too.

Seven seasons is a long run for any show, and the vast majority of new US series from 2011-12 have not made it this far. Of the shows that premiered alongside New Girl in the autumn of 2011, only the fantasy drama Once Upon a Time is also still airing, and that, too, is ending its run. Political thriller Scandal, which premiered in the spring of that season, finishes up in a few weeks.

Those shows are both genre dramas that went through drastic shifts in tone and direction. New Girl has amiably chugged along, hitting a few divots along the way but never sliding too far or permanently downhill. It’s one of the most consistent comedies in recent memory, so much so that almost any episode could be dropped in to any season.

And these final eight episodes (six of which were made available to critics) are just like all the rest, even as the season premiere, “About Three Years Later,” jumps forward in time. Cece (Hannah Simone) and Schmidt (Max Greenfield) are celebrating their daughter’s third birthday; Winston (Lamorne Morris) and Aly (Nasim Pedrad) are expecting their first child; and Jess (Deschanel) and Nick (Jake Johnson) are together again, at last.

Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Nick (Jake Johnson) in ‘New Girl’ (2013 Fox Broadcasting Co.)

But are they together together? Together enough? No, it seems. Which is to say: they are not married, and that is a crisis. New Girl rivals Fiddler on the Roof for its focus on engagements, marriages and parental approval. It’s also disdainful of singledom in a way that’s jarringly out of sync with the show’s otherwise sunny demeanour: the pursuit of a long-term, monogamous and almost always heterosexual romantic relationship is the be-all and end-all for every character.

So season 7 hinges on a specious will-they-won’t-they for Nick and Jess to get engaged, just as season 2 danced around a will-they-won’t-they for Nick and Jess in general (yep, they would). The show likes a slow build, but the only thing that’s ever stood in any couple’s way has been an arbitrary shenanigan.

There aren’t even ones that got away on New Girl, because everyone’s one-who-got-away comes back for a second try. Jess’s one-time one-who-got-away Sam returned, and then left Jess for his one-who-got-away. What do we want? Coupledom! When do we want it? On season finales!

In the penultimate episode of season 5, Nick, the unhygienic but lovable novelist, declared that there are only seven kinds of stories: “Man versus man, man versus dog, dog versus zombie, James Bond, stories of kings and lords, women over 50 finding themselves after divorce and car commercial.” He soon after adds an eighth: “Fat boy talks to idiot.”

These narrative categorisations are unimpeachable. And in this structure, New Girl falls under “women over 50 finding themselves after divorce”, because the thrust of the show is a slow crawl towards self-fulfillment.

The show’s overemphasis on matrimony is really its attempted emphasis on stability. New Girl is a show about hatching into adulthood, but it’s never been sure how to let its characters actually hatch. Professional advancement, enlightened attitudes about one’s parents, clarity of purpose – nothing seems to stick or to lead to any meaningful gains in confidence or conviction.

Jake Johnson as Nick and Lamorne Morris as Winston in ‘New Girl’ (20th Century Fox)

Perpetual self-doubt is the hormone that powers people through their twenties but at, say, 41, it starts to seem less darling and more tragic, on men and women alike. At the start of New Girl, Jess is cripplingly insecure, and that only barely abates as the series goes on. She’s in good company, at least, as it turns out every character on the show is insecure, and truly no one can communicate. Of the 144 episodes of the show that I have seen, the story arc for probably 120 can be summarised as: “I didn’t know how to tell you…” Imagine The Office if every character was season 2 Pam, forever.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt took the “overly innocent adult woman confronts cruel world with sunny disposition and appreciation for cuteness” to a sharper, faster plane. If you enjoy the character of Nick – a scrappy Los Angeles author with alcoholic tendencies, a bizarre but eventually successful novel, severe daddy issues and rigid, unusual ideas about personal grooming – try Jimmy from You’re the Worst. (Just substitute England for Chicago.) Brooklyn Nine-Nine does Winston-style pranks better. And Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is brilliant, weapons-grade quirkiness.

But no one does hungover like New Girl, or open, easy male friendship like New Girl, or takes cat ownership quite so seriously. New Girl never gets cynical. The more things change, maybe that’s the kind of same TV needs.

© The New York Times