When a TV episode becomes a eulogy
The Show: New Girl, Season 3, Episode 14 The Moment: Prince’s magic
Remarkably, Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and her friends are at a party at Prince’s house. Prince, intuiting that Jess needs him, pulls her aside to impart his wisdom.
In a manic montage, he has her try on outfits until she finds the perfect gown. Then he creams her at ping-pong. “14-0,” he says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning here,” she sputters. “15-0,” he says.
He locks her in a dark room. Then he’s in the room. Then they’re outside watching a Monarch butterfly. “I think I understand now,” Jess says. The butterfly lands on Prince’s shoulder. “Now do you?” he asks. “No!” she cries.
Fox reran this episode Tuesday night, as fans still reel from Prince’s death. You feel joyous wish fulfilment throughout it. It was a key moment for the series: Jess finally tells Nick (Jake Johnson) she loves him. You can imagine the writers saying, “What if we got someone cool and guru-y — someone like Prince — to make her brave?”
Miraculously, Prince agreed and embraced with deadpan relish his guru persona, and even pulled Jess onstage with him to do a rocking duet.
The last scene, in which the gang is back on their sofa, staring stunned into space, wasn’t meant to be a eulogy, but it works as one. “Did that really happen?” someone asks. “Was Prince really here? Did we get to spend time with him for a while?”
“What do we do tomorrow?” asks Schmidt (Max Greenfield). “Go to work? Get on with our lives?”
It’s the question we all ask ourselves when someone who touched us leaves too soon. New Girl airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on City and Fox. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.