'New Girl' Season 1, Episode 12 Recap - 'Landlord'

Awkward was the name of the game this week on "New Girl," and it was good to see the show getting back to its roots, in a sense. Put Jess in a terrible situation and watch Zooey Deschanel make it more uncomfortable, and you have some mighty find comedy.

This week, it all revolved around a dispute between Jess and Nick over their respective outlooks on the human race. Jess is impossibly positive, which Nick finds potentially dangerous (like when she tries to befriend a man with a gun), and Nick is endlessly negative, which Jess thinks is unfair (to the man with the gun).

This argument comes to a head when Jess convinces the weird and mean landlord Remy to come fix some of the stuff in the apartment. It becomes clear to Nick that Remy is trying to sleep with Jess, which Jess vehemently denies.

This, of course, leads to Jess and Nick preparing to have a threesome with Remy because Jess won't admit that she's wrong and Nick wants to chicken her into doing so. Thus, the comedy. Nick getting his shoulders massaged while Jess dances awkwardly is a sight that you can't help but giggle at.

Schmidt has romantic entanglements of his own, as his boss is getting increasingly more suggestive toward him (he thinks). While this results in mostly more awkwardness (oh god, the Tokyo conference call), it also results in a great Schmidt scene in which he throws down his bag, runs across the parking lot with a really cool slide over the hood of a car, and starts making out with his boss. Of course, that gets interrupted by security, who thinks she's being raped, but at least he went for it.

Extra bonus points this week for Schmidt's 2007 resolutions.

Notes & Quotes:

-"Let's have a three...some."

-"You are going to be the underpants captain tonight."

-Schmidt as foreigner Jimmy. Nice.

-Nick's "turtle face" seems to be making an appearance in every episode, and I fully approve of this.