New Girl S3 E21 – Big News

Last updated on February 12, 2023

This podcast covers New Girl Season 3, Episode 21, Big News, which originally aired on April 15, 2014 and was written by Berkeley Johnson and directed by Steven K. Tsuchida.

Episode Recap

Winston shares the “Big News” that he passed the LA Police Exam and to celebrate, demands the loft mates throw him a “Honey” Roast. However, it’s also the morning after Jess and Nick break up and while they tried to keep it a secret, so as to not take away from Winston’s accomplishment, they are not successful.

Episode Notes

On this episode’s Pop Culture section we reviewed:

• Patrick Swayze / Movies He Stars In – In this episode, Nick and Jess have a couple conversations mentioning Patrick Swayze movies, including:
  • Dirty Dancing
    • Hungry Eyes – Song from Dirty Dancing sang at end of episode.
  • Ghost
  • Road House
  • To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

Additional Pop Culture References such as:

• Chumbawamba / Tubthumping – When Cece is studying at the bar, Schmidt said it wasn’t a great place to study because Chumbawamba was playing and it wasn’t even “Tubthumping.” Chumbawamba were a British rock band formed in 1982 and disbanded in 2012. They are best known for their 1997 single “Tubthumping”, which was nominated for Best British Single at the 1998 Brit Awards. “Tubthumping” is the band’s most successful single and topped the charts in many countries. The band had said “The song is about us – as a class and as a band. The beauty of it was we had no idea how big it would be.” 
• Whoopi Goldberg – When talking about the Patrick Swayze movies, Nick asks which one is Whoopi in. Caryn Elaine Johnson, known professionally as Whoopi Goldberg, is an American actor, comedian, author, and television personality. She has acted in over 150 films receiving two Academy Award nominations, for The Color Purple and Ghost, winning for Ghost. She has also won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, making her an “EGOT”, and she has received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
• Superman – Jess was in the closet when Nick got up in the morning and she said she was changing in there like Superman. Superman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics and has been adapted to a number of other media productions, including radio serials, novels, films, television shows, theater productions, and video games. To protect his personal life, Superman changes into a colorful costume in private and uses the alias “Superman” when fighting crime.
• “Bad Boys” – When Winston was celebrating getting into the LAPD, he was singing “Bad Boys”, which is a 1987 song by the Jamaican reggae band Inner Circle. The song is known as the opening theme to the American TV show COPS and the theme song of the Bad Boys franchise.
• COPS – When celebrating Winston, Coach shared that his uncle was on COPS, which is an American television documentary reality television series. It is one of the longest-running television shows in the United States. 
• [James and the Giant Peach] – After chanting and holding hands, Jess said “Should we all try to live inside a peach or is that weird?” James and the Giant Peach is a popular children’s novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The plot centers on a young English orphan boy who enters a gigantic, magical peach, and has a wild and surreal cross-world adventure with seven magically altered garden bugs he meets.
• CeeLo [Green] – Winston asked for a “prominent chair” and when Nick tries to clarify if he wanted a “throne”, Winston said he’s not “CeeLo”. Thomas DeCarlo Callaway – Burton, known professionally as CeeLo Green, is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor known for his work in hip hop and R&B, including the Gnarls Barkley single “Crazy” and his solo single “F*** You”. From 2011 to 2013, Green was a judge and coach on the American reality television singing competition The Voice, appearing on four of its seasons.

For our “Most Likely To” segment we discuss who is more likely to have a cat costume (or 4) laying around, keep a secret to let your friend have a moment, not know geography, and help someone study for their GED. We also cover Schmidt’s entrance to the loft for the honey roast as our “Schmidtism” this episode. For “Not in the 2020s” we chat about how Coach was only okay with holding hands as long as there were women involved. Our “Yes in the 2020s” include the honey roast for Winston and the loftmates not judging the Nick & Jess breakup. We did not dive into any new guest stars this episode.

Also in this episode were the following guest stars who we do not discuss in the podcast: Jamie Lee Curtis (Joan – Previously Discussed in S2E8) and Ralph Ahn (Tran – Previously Discussed in S2E7).

On the podcast, we also mention how this episode came out 4 months before the movie Let’s Be Cops which starred Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. and we both found the bear since “Teddy Bears buy Winstons for their kids”.

This episode got a 7/10 rating from Kritika whose favorite character was Cece and Kelly rated this episode an 8/10 and her favorite character was Jess!

Thanks for listening and stay tuned for Episode 22!

Music: “Hotshot” by scottholmesmusic.com