New Girl has moved on. The Fox comedy aired its final episode on Tuesday night, an hour-long send-off that saw star Zooey Deschanel’s title character finally get married — before segueing to an affectionate ode to the ensemble.
“Ending the show with the wedding would make it feel like the whole show was about Nick [Jake Johnson] and Jess [Deschanel], and it wasn’t,” says Liz Meriwther, New Girl‘s creator and showrunner. (Meriwether, who gave birth to her first child in April, has new comedy Single Parents set for ABC in the fall.)
The episode had its finale-requisite guest appearances — Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner, as Jess’ parents, Zoe Lister Jones’ sublimely snide politician and Ralph Ahn’s taciturn “Tran” among them — and more than its share of sentimental moments. It also offered one last comedic twist. Nick and Jess’ long-brewing eviction from the loft, the sitcom’s primary set piece since the pilot, turned out to be an elaborate prank planned by Winston (Lamorne Morris). The moving truck was already full when they found out, so they left anyway.
New Girl was a true breakout when it premiered in 2011. Fox gave the green light for this eight-episode seventh and final run last summer. But, for a moment, the proper send-off almost didn’t happen. Fans of the show are likely pleased with the timing, as that move seems like it would be far less likely at the Fox of 2018. Much of the comedy block got the guillotine last week in a move away from quirky single-cams, a genre that New Girl really heralded for the network.
Meriwether reflects on that unique legacy and the last episode.
Most comedies probably would have just ended with the wedding.
It’s something we talked about a lot. We wanted the end to be the gang in the loft. Initially we’re going to have a big, kind of bells-and-whistles finale with a lot going on and a lot of plots getting tied up. But the simple episodes, the ones were everyone was just kind of stuck together in the loft, those were my favorites. I wanted a finale that felt like our show, simple and small and about our people in this space. That’s what it’s always been. So we decided to tie up all those loose ends in the first half-hour, and the actual finale was free to be about our group hanging out.
Was the eviction always going to be a prank or was that a decision you made on the fly?
That came pretty close to the beginning…
