Zooey Deschanel joins her older sister Emily (“Bones”) on Fox with her new television comedy “New Girl.”
Occupying the slot between Emmy-nominated comedy shows “Glee” and “Raising Hope,” “New Girl” doesn’t compare with mostly mild humor and unoriginal characters.
But the main reason why anyone would continue watching “New Girl” would be indie girl Deschanel, whose character on the show is the textbook definition of both eccentric and adorable.
In this comedy created by Elizabeth Meriwether (“No Strings Attached”), Deschanel plays Jess Day, an oddball teacher in her late 20s who moves out of her apartment after discovering her boyfriend has been cheating on her.
Answering a Craigslist ad for a roommate, she moves into a new apartment rented by three fundamentally different men.
These guys don’t know what to make of Jess at first after seeing her snivel over her breakup while watching “Dirty Dancing,” smile like a “hungry badger” and concoct personal theme songs.
But after discussing the pros and cons of the situation, they decide to let her move in after hearing that most of her friends are gorgeous models.
A recurring theme within the show appears to be that these newly found roommates end up helping each other out within the dating world.
Each of the three leading men in the show has his own problems with the opposite sex: One obnoxiously expresses his inner toolness, one yearns for his ex-girlfriend and the other has rage issues that prevent him from appropriately conversing with women.
The show actually comes off as more charming and cutesy than hilarious, mostly because of Deschanel’s portrayal of Jess Day.
Her role as the inelegant dork strangely plays out as both a regression from and quintessence of her most well-known movie roles in “(500) Days of Summer” (2009) and Yes Man” (2008).
Whether or not viewers appreciate the show’s quirkiness is completely dependent on whether they find Deschanel’s character endearing or irksome.
Max Greenfield portrays pretend-player Schmidt, who can best be described as a knockoff, sitcom version of the guys from “Jersey Shore.”
Most of the comedic moments that we get out of Schmidt involve absurdly mouthing off some chauvinist immaturity and being forced to put money in the apartment’s “d-----bag jar” — a container similar to a swear jar.
This joke starts out as laugh-out-loud hilarious but loses its wittiness throughout the pilot episode.
Jake Johnson plays Nick, the mostly well-developed and nuanced character among the three male supporting characters.
Nick is a bartender who pines for his ex-girlfriend, which serves toward the viewer’s amusement when a flashback finds Nick plugging up his ears while yelling like an adolescent in front of her.
A small sparkle of a connection between Nick and Jess is shown, which hints at the possibility of a romantic connection later on if the show finds success.
After seeing only the pilot episode, “New Girl” is complicated to criticize due to the departure of Damon Wayans Jr., who actually sparked the most as Coach.
Wayans left the show when “Happy Endings,” which Wayans stars in, recently renewed for a second season. Rather than reshooting the pilot episode with a new actor, the writers decided to write his character off and replace him with new character Winston (Lamorne Morris), a basketball player returning from Latvia.
Because of this changing dynamic within the show, it’s difficult to predict whether this series will end up canceled, like hundreds of other Fox shows, until we see how this new dynamic plays out within the series.
But its level of quirkiness, sweetness and Deschanel’s likable character make “New Girl” decent enough to stay on television long enough to fill the “d-----bag jar.”