New Girl S3 E8 – Menus

Last updated on July 3, 2022

This podcast covers New Girl Season 3, Episode 8, Menus, which originally aired on November 12, 2013 and was written by Matt Fusfeld & Alex Cuthbertson and directed by Trent O’Donnell.

Episode Recap

Jess wants to take her students to the ocean as many of her students have never been but she gets shut down by Principal Foster. Instead, she terrorizes an Asian restaurant who is not being eco-conscious. Meanwhile, Coach convinces Nick to get in shape and Schmidt feels left out.

Episode Notes

On this episode’s Pop Culture section we reviewed:

• Barry Bonds – Nick shares that after training with Coach he’ll look like Barry Bonds. 
• Jason Street – When Winston has a  wheelchair after he hurt his ankle, Coach shares that he looks like Jason Street from the television show Friday Night Lights.

Additional Pop Culture References such as:

• Roberto Benigni – After Schmidt sees Winston in a wheelchair, he feels like he’s missing everything and says “What’s next? Roberto Benigni coming through the halls making everybody laugh?” Roberto Remigio Benigni is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter, and director who gained international recognition for writing, directing, and starring in the Holocaust comedy-drama film Life Is Beautiful. For that film, he was the first non-English speaking winner of an Academy Award for Best Actor. 
• Ghostbusters – Jess was calling out that the menu had the circle with the line through it to indicate “No MSG” and Winston helped her with calling out that’s ‘the Ghostbusters thing’. Ghostbusters is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film starring Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis as three eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. 
• Catch-22 – Nick is trying to help Jess by saying she should try less but she calls out that she doesn’t know how to try not to try, which Nick says is a “catch-22”. A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. The term was coined by Joseph Heller, who used it in his 1961 satirical novel Catch-22. 
• Ironside – Winston shouts “I’m coming too, because I ain’t a quitter. Ironside!” Ironside is an American television crime drama that aired on NBC from 1967 to 1975. The show focused on Robert T. Ironside, who was a consultant for the San Francisco police department who was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot while on vacation.

We also cover two “Schmidtisms” this episode when Schmidt commented on Nick eating Chinese food for breakfast and later when Schmidt tried to spy on the loft. For “Not in the 2020s” we discuss Coach and some of his comments as well as the episode showing them handing out paper menus. For “Yes in the 2020s” we love the way Nick’s speech inspired Jess to solve her problem with love and not hate. We also give a brief look into Justin Chon (Brian), the Guest Star we feature in this episode.

Also in this episode were the following guest stars who we do not discuss in the podcast: Curtis Armstrong (Dr. Foster – Previously discussed in S2E24), Steve Agee (Outside Dave – Previously discussed in S2E17), Jayda Brown (Crystal), and Jeff Lam (Menu Guy).

We also discuss how it’s possible that Damon Wayans Jr. and Zooey Deschanel went to high school together. This episode, we did not find the bear.

While not discussed in the podcast, we noted other references in this episode including:

• SUNY Binghamton – When Outside Dave is eating lunch with Schmidt, he pulls out a doll and says he went to SUNY Binghamton. SUNY Binghamton is a university that started out as a branch of Syracuse University and then in 1950 was incorporated into the State University of New York (SUNY) and renamed. In 1965, the campus was formally designated the State University of New York at Binghamton, and in 1992, Binghamton University was adopted as its informal name.

This episode got a 8/10 rating from Kritika whose favorite character was Schmidt and Kelly rated this episode a 6.5/10 and her favorite character was Nick!

Thanks for listening and stay tuned for Episode 9!

Music: “Hotshot” by scottholmesmusic.com