It’s gotta be rough being best friends with a model. Or at least it is for Jess in this week’s episode of “New Girl.” It’s Cece’s birthday and Jess decides to bite the bullet and go out with her and her bizarre model friends for the night.
Jess feels uncomfortable around Cece’s model friends for multiple reasons; they think she looks like a cartoon monkey from a Russian snack commercial, they lack the ability to make conversation about anything other than the objects around them, and apparently they drink vodka with their butts (this one is never fully explained).
Despite her reservations, Jess puts on her most club-appropriate outfit and sets out to celebrate Cece’s birthday with her. But after a few hours of Cece’s model friends chanting “dance, monkey, dance!” at her while Cece is off flirting with some guy, Jess can’t take it anymore. She tells the models what she really thinks: that they’re boring, and modeling is an idiotic profession—just in time for Cece to hear her and storm off, upset and insulted.
Jess runs off to talk to her, and a best-friend-boob-slap-fight ensues (it’s exactly what it sounds like). Meanwhile, Nick and Schmidt’s friendship is in a riff of its own after Schmidt gets Nick a cookie just because he was thinking of him and Nick gets thoroughly creeped out. Schmidt, on the other hand, is offended that Nick never appreciates the nice things he does for him (pillow mints, anyone?).
Winston explains to Nick that for as long as he’s known him, he’s been bad at expressing emotions causing Nick and Jess, both in the doghouse with their friends, to face a tricky question: are they bad friends? Nick finally realizes that despite it all, Schmidt means a lot to him. He comes around and returns Schmidt’s love with a simple gesture: a cookie.
The guys engage in a bro hug, and order is restored to the men of the loft. Jess, also realizing she’s in the wrong, attempts to make things right with Cece by covering for her when she’s too hungover to go to work. As a car show model, Jess fails miserably. And I mean really miserably—she can’t walk in the tight clothing, loses one of her heels on the revolving platform, and ends up locking herself in the car she’s supposed to be modeling around. So Jess learns that being a model isn’t as easy at it looks, and though she and Cece may live very different lives, they love each other, and that’s what matters (cue the collective “awwww”).