'New Girl' Season 1, Episode 19 Recap - 'Secrets'

Back to form! "Secrets" gave us an episode that had plenty of funny moments while advancing our core characters and their storylines, without the need of extraneous guest stars. Unless of course you count David Wain's very brief cameo as a guest star, which I don't but loved anyway.

Winston, who discovered last week that Cece and Schmidt are sleeping together, can't keep in the secret any longer. He tells Nick (despite Nick's protesting), which means inevitably that the secret gets to Jess... as it turns out, Nick is terrible at lying.

Jess freaks out appropriately, but it's more about Cece having kept a secret from her than the fact that Schmidt is... well, Schmidt. So Jess institutes a full honesty policy in the house, and reveals some secrets she has about the guys. They retaliate with confessions that they have all, at one point or another, thought about Jess while "self completing." So the honesty thing backfired.

Eventually Jess and Cece make up, but only after Jess discovers a secret that nobody but she and Cece know: Cece actually likes Schmidt. Somehow.

Meanwhile, Nick is still sleeping with 21 year olds after learning about it from Dirk. The problem is, he's not used to being a player and doesn't know how to lie, so he turns to Schmidt for help. "Teach me how to be a douchebag," he implores. He ends up screwing up big time with a couple of girls (one of them being "30 Rock" regular Katrina Bowden. Nicely done, Nick) before he figures it out, but by the end of the episode, he is able to successfully lie to two roommates whom he slept with. Character growth! Kinda...

It was also good to see Winston getting a storyline that had some worth for once, even though the power was soon taken away from him when he told Nick. His big speech was a nice moment, but Winston still needs a "hook."

I'm sure that will sort itself out through the rest of the season, along with some kind of resolution between Cece and Schmidt, the latter of whom still thinks that this is "just sex." Plus, that whole Nick/Jess thing will have to happen at some point.

Bonus points this week for Nick's reaction to Winston's secret: like he had just been doused in urine and shown a picture of Glenn Beck naked.

Notes & Quotes:

- "Jew in the couch!" "No, she's right."

- "This makes me hate things."

- "Two moons have passed!"

- "SSV. Short. Simple." "Vagina?" "No, vague."

- "It's one of the weirder things we've done."

- "I thought about bangs, and your face just kind of appeared."

- "Can you say the following words out loud? 'The ice roads are too dangerous, you're going to have to turn back, chief.'"

- All of Winston's speech, but mostly "Wherever you are right now, just SIDDOWN!"

- Nick's failed slow clap!

- Jess and Cece ran the 10k (six miles-ish) in over three hours. That's a pace of about 30 minutes per mile. Not great, Jess.