Serial scan: 'New Girl'

Show: New Girl 
Channel: Star World
Time: Wednesday, 8 pm
Verdict: A must-watch
Rating: ****

One of the most successful series of 2011, New Girl, has been a fresh watch in the American comic series. Zooey Deschanel, who plays the central character of Jessica ‘Jess’ Day, has received a sea of compliments for her role as a school teacher, who is both, adorable and quirky. After starring opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Hundred Days of Summer, this is Zooey’s first stint into television and looks like it’s a big one.

The series began with Jess’s sudden break-up with her cheating boyfriend, Spencer, and her having to move out of their apartment. She finds a new place to share with three other guys — Nick (Jake Johnson), Schimdt (Max Greenfield) and Winston (Lamorne Morris). The characters are all nearing their  ’30s, but are typically ‘still finding themselves’.

Except for Schimdt, an overweight-needy-boy who turns himself into a metrosexual-fitness-freak-dipped-in-OCD-works-for-an-MNC guy. It’s been done over the top, but with New Girl, Zooey breaks the monotone. The show has it all, the shabby, unkempt guy with no real job (Nick), ex-sportsman, looking for his dream job but is still the ladies man (Winston) and the sexy, hot-shot model (CeCe), played by Hannah Simone, who happens to be Jess’s best friend of Indian origin and Schimdt’s on and off sexual interest. Madhur Jaffrey, Indian actress and food writer, also made an appearance as CeCe’s grandmother and maybe we’ll get to see more of her in the coming episodes.

Season two began with Jess losing her teaching job and Nick coming to his senses about moving in with his ex-girlfriend, Caroline. Though they introduced sparks between Jess and Nick in previous season, the new one carries on like nothing ever happened. So, one will either have to wait for a typical drunken night hook-up (the cliché seems to work with every other sitcom) or wait for the laws of attraction to call for some order. Similarly, even the chemistry between CeCe and Schimdt seems to be taking a slow U-turn, it’s a wait and watch situation. Winston, though, finally comes out of his casanova image and tries to settle down.

What holds the show together is the friendship between all of them and their eccentricities. They have tried to throw in closet sexcapades, a lock-out on a desert episode and even a medical scare in the pilot season and it’s worked for the audiences for sure, who are hooked onto the new season already!

Not quite a family bonder, this one’s a friend-bonder for sure, as it grinds an interesting plot-line to work its way around with the characters hopefully coming of age.