The 25 best episodes of 'New Girl', ranked

The primary plot of “New Girl” involves Jess pretending to be a guy’s blind date named Katie, which is decent enough. However, what gets “Katie” on this list is the secondary plot involving Nick and an old man at the bar where he works who purports to be Nick from the future. It’s very silly, but also very funny, and that was enough to eke into the top 25.

The guy from “Katie?” Jess is still hanging out with him in “Halloween,” and now she’s starting to feel more serious about him. This episode is, of course, about Halloween, and that’s fun in a lot of ways. Mostly Nick being afraid of haunted houses.

When Zooey Deschanel was on maternity leave, she was briefly replaced on the show – written out on being sequestered for jury duty – by Megan Fox as Reagan. Those episodes are, by and large, fairly mediocre, but “Heat Wave” does stand out. Maybe it’s because characters dealing with a heatwave in a sitcom tend to be funny.

Who is Elaine? Why, Shivrang’s ex, of course. Oh, and who is Shivrang? The guy that Cece is going to marry, though perhaps not happily. The episode title is a bit of a joke because obviously, the episode is about Cece’s wedding, but also her feelings for Schmidt, Schmidt’s feelings for her, and Winston’s feelings for pranks. The second-season finale is an epic one. After all, Elaine is played by Taylor Swift.

Speaking of weddings, and pranks, they show up in the fifth-season finale as well. You know, it’s almost as if a show about a bunch of unmarried friends in their early thirties likes to rely on weddings for big-event episodes. Weird, huh? Anyway, since this time the wedding is between Schmidt and Cece, it’s one episode up on this list from “Elaine’s Big Day,” even without the Taylor Swift.

Christmas is big in sitcoms. Sometimes Christmas goes well, and sometimes it goes poorly. However, how many times has a sitcom done Christmas at an airport? Flights get delayed, presents get stolen, and all in all, we get a fairly fresh take on the Christmas from Hell in the sitcom world.

By the midway point of the first season, “New Girl” was finding its footing. Part of that was honing in on a characterization for Nick. He became a grouchy old man in a 30-year-old’s body, and also a guy who is at times almost off the grid, if only because of apathy. Nick gets injured playing football in this episode and because of a lack of health insurance won’t go to the doctor. This means him going to Jess’ friend who is an OB/GYN, but amid all this, there is actually some seriousness that works.

Does “New Girl” have an all-time series finale? No, we can’t say that. It’s a really good episode, but some of that is the inevitable “feels” that come with seeing characters you have been spending years watching for the last time. Jess and Nick are married, and they also move out of the loft that has been the centerpiece of the show for the whole run. Why do they move? Turns out it’s because of Winston’s last, and perhaps greatest, prank.

We’re back to Christmas. This time nobody is stuck in the airport. In fact, the problem is the need to go to all sorts of places. The gang hops from party to party, dealing with relationship problems amid the chaos. That adds a level of kinetic energy that really drives “Santa.”

The second season ended with Jess and Nick driving off together, ready to try a relationship on for size. In the third-season premiere, they are in Mexico, trying to figure out what comes next. Oh, and Winston does a puzzle, of course. That’s just as important.

This is the first episode of the final season, and also a literal title. After the sixth-season finale “New Girl” jumped forward three years. This allows the show to skip over a lot of stuff and get into some storytelling they wouldn’t have been able to handle otherwise. Like, say, Cece and Schmidt having a kid and Nick being a successful author. Although, he and Jess aren’t married yet, which sets the table for the rest of the season.

This is the earliest episode on the list, as it is the sixth episode. While a lot of sitcoms are big on Christmas or Halloween, “New Girl” made Thanksgiving its big holiday. The first time set the template for that, and it’s also just a really funny episode that showed some of the first real potential for the show.

The news is, indeed, big. Jess and Nick have broken up. Of course, they would get back together eventually. And no, they didn’t need to break up to “save” the show. Sitcoms can work just fine when will they/won’t they couples finally get together. “New Girl” proved that when they got Jess and Nick back together later. It just wasn’t the right time yet.

The sixth season ends with a momentous episode. It is also, as you now know, the last episode before a three-year time jump. The end of the episode is what really gets us, a callback to the pilot episode which, admittedly, was kind of rough as an episode of TV. However, sticking around this whole time really paid off when “Time of My Life” hits at the end of “Five Stars for Beezus.”

Somebody liking the parents of the person they are dating more than them is a trope that sitcoms have surely done before. “New Girl” did a fine job with it, though. Of course, it helps that Fred’s parents are played by Henry Winkler and Julie Hagerty. Who wouldn’t want to hang out with those two?

This is the episode that first fully synthesized what “New Girl” could be. Yes, it’s not the earliest episode on this list, but in the 11th episode of the show Jess finally felt figured out as a character. It all starts to fall into place thanks to Lizzy Caplan’s turn as Nick’s love interest Julia. She’s very different from Jess, in a way that articulates Jess’ quirks, and faults, in a sharp, shrewd way.

Jess and Cece have some serious matters to attend to when they check on their egg count with their gynecologist friend. And to make things even more serious, Cece’s count is low, leading her to wonder if she will be able to have kids. As a nice counterpoint, Nick tries to write a zombie novel. It goes about as well as you would expect.

“New Girl” once got the opportunity to do an episode after the Super Bowl, and for the occasion, they got Prince as a guest star. Yes, the Prince. Apparently, he was a fan of the show. This episode is more than a mere excuse to have Prince on, though that is very cool. It’s a funny episode with plotting worthy of being given the post-Super Bowl spot.

You know it’s modern times when a show can do an episode about how weird it is to get a landline phone. Jess’ adventures at school as the new vice-principal is fun, but what’s really enjoyable is Nick basically becoming everybody’s personal secretary and hanging out talking on the landline all the livelong day.

Nick, like Jake Johnson who portrays him, is from Chicago. And if you are going to cast somebody to play the dad of a guy from Chicago, you cast Dennis Farina. Farina was perfect casting as Nick’s dad, who also happens to be a con artist. That adds some stakes and frivolity to the proceedings to be sure.

What’s in the box? In this case, it’s a bunch of stuff that Nick has refused to deal with over the years, including unpaid bills. It’s Nick at his most curmudgeonly, but in a way that isn’t over the top and works well as a counterpoint to the well-meaning Jess.

“New Girl” excelled at the “Seinfeld” thing of taking something simple and insignificant and blowing it out to absurd, hilarious proportions. In fact, all three of the next episodes on this list are in that vein. “Spiderhunt” is just about a spider in the loft. However, Schmidt is freaked out by spiders, so this becomes a matter of epic importance. Plus, Nick has to work on his sauce. You can’t ignore the sauce.

It was supposed to be a simple day. The dudes are at Schmidt’s bachelor party, so Jess and Cece decide to smoke some marijuana and have, as the title implies, a chill day. If only it could have been that simple. Thanks to a broken bread maker, the two stoned ladies end up dealing with an ordeal they are not in any position to handle.

Winston always remained an absurd character, but eventually, the show gave him some direction by getting him on track to being a police officer and eventually getting him a job with the LAPD. “Background Check” is built around an officer coming to the loft to check it out, merely as a part of the procedure of Winston becoming a cop. The only problem? Jess is pretty sure that she has a bag of meth in the house. Yeah, this episode gets pretty farcical.

“Chicago” contains the greatest scene in the history of “New Girl,” and that’s why it is on the list. Everybody has to head to Chicago due to the death of Nick’s father. This is serious, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for sublime, silly, sweet comedy. Jess is tasked with writing a eulogy, and ends up doing an Elvis impression (including the outfit) and singing “In the Ghetto.” This gets everybody singing. Deschanel dressed as Elvis singing at a funeral? It doesn’t get any better than that.