Failure is another word for success: ‘New Girl’

The need to create can be overwhelming at times. The drive to invent, to make real life out of dust, to be a rising tide that carries all the ships out of the storm and into a harbor full of other ships all as shiny and teeming with ideas as your own. This is an exciting prospect! There is so much constant praise about being an entrepreneur these days, so much joy in the eyes of society over the mere act of starting a business. It’s moved from neutral to good. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of something good? The only tough part comes when you want that more than thinking of any idea.

The title of the show New Girl doesn’t really accurately portray the show anymore. It used to be about Zooey Deschanel moving into an apartment with a bunch of dudes in a sort-of modern-day Odd Couple situation, but the tension dissipates pretty quickly. In that modern way, they all learn to truly appreciate each other’s differences as they make their way through their 30s. Some of the episodes don’t even focus on Zooey. Like the latest episode, “Swuit,” which took a look at two non-Zooey characters, Nick and Schmidt, and their attempt to create a business without any ideas on what to do or sell.

A little background on these two, who make up a pure Odd Couple scenario between them: Nick (Jake Johnson) is a slob/bartender/writer-in-his-mind, struggling to figure out what to do with his future. Besides Zooey Deschanel, he also lives with his best friend from college, Schmidt (Max Greenfield). Schmidt’s a neat freak, a work hard/play hard type who has recently started to feel stuck at his mid-level position in an ad agency.

“Swuit” begins with a flashback to their college days, when they started Schnick Industries in their dorm room. It’s reminiscent of Facebook’s early days at Harvard in some ways: Nick comes up with a genius idea, the smartphone (“A computer that takes self-pictures and fits in your pocket and is a phone”), Schmidt tells him to draw it up, and the two get in a huge fight. That sort of thing isn’t uncommon in young startups, but they can’t put their differences aside and lack follow-through. The conversation ends with Nick pushing Schmidt out of the room.

Flash forward to today, with Schick Industries revitalized to get both of them out of a rut. Neither of them have any ideas on what to do, but they just know that they need this company. This leads to not great ideas, the foremost being the Swuit: a suit made entirely out of sweatsuit material. This is, all sides quickly acknowledge, a terrible idea. Backs against the wall with no clear plan, they panic and start to bicker all over again. They’ve got an ally this time, though: Zooey Deschanel, who tricks the two into enough of a truce that they start to like each other again. Their idea? A GoPro for pets, allowing for owners to see what their animals are up to all day.

It’s a cute, niche idea. But the real problem isn’t the new camera, it’s their idea process: Nick and Schmidt aren’t creating a company out of any needs they’ve seen in the pet ownership market, they’re doing out of a need to help themselves. Their camera, which they forget to even bring to a demo, is hardly the point. All that’s fine for an episode of New Girl, of course. It’s a show about friends. The two get a win at the end of the day when QVC buys out the Swuit for a low-level fear of competition, but if there’s any future to Schnick Industries, the two should continue to look towards each other. Now that they’re friends again, they can figure out what they like and don’t like in the world. Then they can start remolding it.

Photo Credit: FOX New Girl

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