New Girl and Friends and Casual Viewing
“Who’s that girl?”
Well, it’s not Rachel Green, not anymore anyways. Its Jessica Day. Jess is the female lead in the show New Girl. New Girl premiered its seventh and final season a few weeks ago on Tuesday, April 10 so it’s probably time to look at what New Girl means to the people who watch it. If you aren’t caught up with New Girl proceed with caution, there are a few spoilers ahead.
New Girl is a show about Jessica Day and her eccentric but lovable roommates. In the first season of New Girl we learn that Jess’ boyfriend of six years is cheating on her. She decides to move out of her place that she had previously shared with him and meets her new roommates on Craigslist, where the show begins.
Her new roommates are Nick, Schmidt, Winston and Coach. Nick is a bartender who dropped out of school after trying to be a lawyer but passed the bar exam. Schmidt works some job in marketing that we never fully understand, he is known for his player-like attitude and general duchebaginess. Coach disappears after the pilot episode, but he reappears later in the show. Coach is, and this may surprise you, a personal trainer. Winston is a former international professional basketball player from Latvia, who is living with the roomates in the loft after his career has ended. These characters get together and make the show what we love to watch. It’s their friendship and struggle through life that we connect with and want to be near.
New Girl and Friends are examples of shows that you can watch simply to not feel alone. I know I turn Friends or New Girl on when I’m sitting in my room and want some background noise. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I could be cleaning or writing a paper, turning Friends or New Girl on makes me feel less alone. I get uncomfortable sitting in my room in silence and having Friends or New Girl on makes me feel less lonely. There’s probably very few Americans out there who haven’t seen an episode of Friends and understand the gist of what’s happening. The same six characters fall in-and-out of love and in-and-out of trouble constantly. New Girl has a similar feel to it which is why it’s also so easy to turn to.
Shows like Friends and New Girl have begun to alter the way that we watch TV. It’s no longer about attentively viewing a show and keeping up with the characters. When watching Friends and New Girl people can engage in a more causal viewership. TV shows like Friends and New Girl are immersed in our lives. They are shows that we turn on just to not be alone in our rooms. It’s the type of show you don’t need to pay much attention to in order to understand and connect with the characters. Friends and New Girl immerse itselves into our worlds in this manner by having realistic but ambiguous settings, familiar plots, relatable character types, and by gently examining the purpose of our lives.
Set in Convention
Friends and New Girl are very similar shows. Both are set in the real world, one in New York and one in Los Angeles and both shows force vastly different characters together to be roommates.
Being set in the real world is one of the critical characteristics of shows that we like to casually watch. Because the setting is so natural we accept it and connect with it in our lives. It’s not like Game of Thrones where there are dragons flying around. Both Friends and New Girl often take place in an apartment or loft where many friends live.
For example, a lot of Friends is shot in Monica and Rachel’s apartment, which eventually becomes Chandler and Monica’s apartment. A large part of New Girl happens at the loft where Jess, Schmidt, Coach, Winston, and Nick live. This type of setting is very normalized for the viewer because most of our lives happen in our home settings as well.
Everyone’s Plot
The plot of New Girl and Friends runalong very similar lines.
We first meet Rachel Green at Central Perk, the coffee shop where everyone in Friends chooses to hang out. Rachel has just run away from Barry, her fiance, at their wedding. She’s wearing a huge gown and is in desperate need of a place to stay. This singlas to the audience that Rachel is a very special character.
The same thing happens in New Girl.
Jess comes home early from a trip to find her boyfriend of six years cheating on her. She immediately breaks up with him and has to find a new place to live. Jess stumbles across an advertisement on Craigslist and walks into the arms of her Joey, Ross, Monica, Chandler, and Phoebe. From the beginning of this episode we know Jessica Day is going to be a unique character. Both of the female leads in these shows meet their new friends when they are in very vulnerable places.
Character Types We Know, Love and Relate To
If you begin comparing the characters between New Girl and Friends you’ll begin to wonder if these shows are not just actually the same show.
Jess and Rachel are very similar, both of their last names are words, which is a little odd. If you want to name a female lead in a popular sitcom I guess all you have to do is pick a basic white-girl name for a first name and a daily-used common word for a last name. Rachel Green, Jessica Day. This probably suggest that we like a bit of simplicity from our characters. We want them to be easy to understand.
Many of these characters, in both Friends and New Girl, fall into very similar types and Jess’s personality is a pretty even blend of Rachel and Monica’s personality. Jess is our lead girl whose love life we expect to watch like how we watched Rachel and Ross from Friends. However, Jess is a very awkward character, and at first look she is very similar to Monica. Neither are considered to be the prettiest girl and both are awkward and sometimes uptight.
Nick, the sometimes love interest of Jess, is a combination of both Ross and Chandler. Nick is similar to Ross because they have the same on again off again dynamic with the women they’re interested in. Ross has known from the first moment that he loved Rachel, and Nick knew the moment Jess walked in the door that he loved her.
He was her lobster, so to speak.
Nick and Chandler are also very similar characters because they both are creative people working at places they wouldn;t predicted. Chandler loves telling jokes and we learn in an episode of Friends that if he hadn’t gotten his business job he would’ve been writing comics. Nick wanted to be a lawyer but realized that he wasn’t going to enjoy that life. So Nick quit Law School, became a bartender and eventually wrote the Pepperwood Chronicles.
These characters are easy for us to relate to and in turn easy for us to watch. These character types create an ideal space for the casual viewership that we experience when we watch New Girl and Friends.
Relating to Life
New Girl and Friends are both shows that excellently target college-aged individuals and those in their twenties and thirties. The characters in these shows are just a few years older than us and I know I personally find it reassuring to see some sort of representation of what life will look like after I graduate college. It’s also reassuring to know that others are not always instantaneously successful. New Girl and Friends tell us this, which is why we find them so reassuring.
Rachel had to waitress for while before she got a real job and she makes a lot of mistakes that the audience gets to revel in and grow from with her. She almost marries Barry but decides it’s a bad idea. She has an on again off again relationship with Ross and she gets herself in trouble often.
We see the same things in Jess. When we first meet Jess she is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend of six years has cheated on her. She has to hit a pretty big recet button to get over him and back on with her life. Later in the show Jess loses her teaching job and picks up a minimum wage job at a fast food restaurant. We also see Jess struggle with her love life. She loves Nick but he and her can’t work things out. We see Jess fall but pick herself up so many times in New Girl.
This is reassuring to us because we fall so many times and everytime we have to find that motivation to pick ourselves up. There are times when I’ve struggled, and as twisted as it is, it’s reassuring to know that others struggle to. Life is difficult for everyone sometimes and New Girl and Friends remind us of this.
Casual Viewing is Overwhelmingly Easy
Because the drama of New Girl is so familiar it’s so easy for us to consume in this casual manner. We just have to turn the TV on so we feel less lonely. It doesn’t require a whole lot of attention. In New Girl you may notice that Cece’s dating Schmidt or that Winston got a cat but it all feels very familiar.
I know that I love shows like New Girl and Friends, They’re easy to turn on and just leave on. I don’t have to pay attention to the plot to know what’s going on. I can just hang out with Rachel and Monica or Jess and Cece with no pressure.
My relationship with New Girl and Friends might not be the healthiest however. If I’m feeling lonely, is it good for me to turn to a TV show to feel less alone?
