'New Girl' Season 1, Episode 2 Recap - 'Kryptonite'

After the stellar pilot episode of "New Girl," expectations were pretty high for last night's second episode. So, it's no surprise that it fell a little short of them.

But that's okay... we still have one of the better comedies on TV on our hands here. Or, at least one of the quirkiest. There was more of the same fun stuff this week, as Jess revealed that she needed to go get her stuff from her ex-boyfriend Spencer's place. She's hesitant to do so, because Spencer is her "kryptonite," but when Jess shows off her killer basketball skills and promptly breaks the guys' TV, she has to go get hers back.

Jess finds a nice arc in this episode. She's a major pushover when she runs into Spencer the first time, and ends up taking him and his new girlfriend Rochelle to the airport. But after some coaching from Nick (those two are totally gonna do it later), Jess hulks out and gives Spencer what-for, backed up by her boys wearing her funny hats.

But for all the different places Jess goes emotionally this episode (her rock bottom in the pawn shop was especially fun in that sad kind of way), the guys are still stuck in sitcom limbo. Nick is nondescript now that his heartbreak isn't a focus, Schmidt is possibly even more one-dimensional than last week, and the new guy Winston, while showing some potential, was just introduced. And the exposition we had to go through to explain his presence totally killed the top of the show, so thanks for that, Winston. Really, we should blame ABC for renewing "Happy Endings" and stealing Damon Wayans Jr. away.

So, there's still a lot of room to grow here. The guys will need goals and aspirations of their own past who gets the big room and who is "top dog," which was all they had to bicker about this episode. Yes, it's part of the charm that they seem to only care about chicks and TV but then they put on silly hats and sing "Time of My Life," but they'll have to grow someday if we're going to care about them like we care about Jess. Plus, how many cute "we support Jess" moments can Liz Meriweather and her team come up with anyway?

Long story short, "New Girl" is still great. It just needs to figure out how to make Nick, Schmidt and Winston as interesting as Jess and Spencer, whose scenes together were pretty great.