When Megan Fox guest starred in New Girl in February of 2016, it was unclear whether or not her character was there to stay. Her original purpose was to take place of Zooey Deschanel’s role while Zooey was on maternity leave. While Fox’s character left the show at the end of season five, she’s back (at least for a little while) as of January 2017.
Fox plays Reagan, who comes on the show when Deschanel’s character, Jess, is stuck in a hotel for a month on jury duty for a high-profile case. Jess’s roommate, Nick, entranced by both Reagan’s beautiful looks and commanding personality, invites her to sublet Jess’s room while she’s gone. As a traveling pharmaceutical sales rep, Reagan tentatively agrees, feeling that was the best deal she was going to get on a room in LA. It sounds like she may even give Nick a chance too.
The pivotal moment in her first episode, “Reagan,” comes when Reagan moves in and meets the rest of the gang living at the loft: Winston, a cop, and Schmidt and Cece, who happen to be engaged. And as it turns out, Cece and Reagan have already met—they had hooked up with each other several years before.
Here’s the big deal about this: it wasn’t a big deal.
While it is made very clear that Reagan is attracted to both men and women in this episode, no one comments on this or turns it into a spectacle. Schmidt, Cece’s fiancé, does become jealous. But the key point here is that he’s not jealous because Reagan is a woman. Rather, he treats their romantic history the way he would if Reagan was a man.
What’s more is that Schmidt, Winston, and Nick don’t make any comment about how “hot” it is that these two women kissed. In many movies and TV shows, a bisexual woman’s sexuality is just another thing that makes her more attractive to her male counterpart. Often she’s there so the man can fantasize about a potential threesome with her and another woman, because that’s the only context he cares to imagine two women being together.
New Girl makes it clear that this is not their intention for Reagan’s character in the next episode, “Wig.” While Reagan is obviously stunning, there are other more important elements to her character. She is clever, witty, a little cynical and also has relationship troubles just like anyone else. Reagan struggles over how to break up with someone because she doesn’t want to deal with the confrontation, which is a pretty normal thing to worry over. It just so happens that in this case, she’s trying to break up with a woman. What’s great is that none of the characters treat this any differently from any other relationship or breakup. It’s about Reagan’s commitment issues, not the gender of the person she’s dating.
This season, Reagan is back in the loft because (spoiler alert!) she and Nick are now in a relationship. They’re dealing with the normal relationship issues that any other couple can have, whether that couple is straight, gay, or any way they want to define it. But no matter what happens in Nick and Reagan’s future, it won’t take away from Reagan being such an important part of seasons five and six. So thank you, New Girl, for bringing back a bisexual character who is three-dimensional, intelligent, confident and most of all, is treated like a person, not a spectacle. The representation is more important than we can put into words.