Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 2, Episode 22 of Fox's "New Girl," titled "Bachelorette Party."
Hip hip hooray for a great episode, where each member of the gang got to shine (including Winston and Cece) and there were jokes aplenty.
To start us off, Nick walks around wearing a horrible orange tracksuit his mother sent him that had belonged to his late dad. Though clearly a rag to be hidden and burned ("Please take that thing off, you look like a homeless pencil"), Nick refuses to take it off, claiming a "dead dad pass" -- he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants because his father just passed away. That includes tap dancing and washing his feet in the kitchen sink. Winston brings around Cece's wedding invites and Schmidt gets ticked off for not getting a plus one.
One way or another, the wedding is in three weeks and Jess decides she must throw her best friend a bachelorette party though technically she hasn't been crowned maid of honor. In preparation, Jess asks Nick and Winston to take Cece's fiancé, Shivrang, for a night out while she organizes the surprise party. Her use of the word "kidnap" to explain her plan throws Winston off a bit, but luckily he has Nick to set him straight.
At Cece and Shivrang's, the couple prepares for the big event as his aunt and grandma -- who flew in from India just for this -- glare in silence. Cece finds it a little overwhelming, especially when Shivrang then hints at all the sex they'll be having once they're husband and wife. Just then, Schmidt barges in demanding a plus one. Cece tells him she can't, plus ones are for spouses and serious partners only. If he gets a serious girlfriend by the time of the wedding, he can bring her. The challenge is on.
At the loft, Jess has the bachelorette bash all set up. That includes a whole lot of pink, a bunch of Cece's model friends and Sadie, Jess' pregnant lesbian OBGYN friend (also, anyone know where Jess' bangs went?). Cece, unaware of what awaits her upstairs, heads up to Jess' with Shivrang's aunt who insists on tagging along. As luck would have it, the first thing the girls stick in her face as she walks in is a life size cardboard figure of naked Shivrang for a game of "pin the dong." While auntie whatchamacallher stares in disapproval, Cece admits to them she has yet to see her future husband's penis.
As the ladies convene to discuss the issue at hand, Jess -- who just some episodes ago could barely speak of sex without giggling -- tries her best to convince Cece it'll be alright. Shivrang probably has a normal, garden variety penis, she says, and besides, isn't it all about the gonads? Cece explains to them how freaked out she is that she'll be spending the rest of her life with a man she hasn't seen naked, but asks the girls to keep the night G-rated -- she has to make a good impression on Shivrang's aunt.
While this is going on, Nick and Winston hijack Shivrang for a very poorly planned bachelor party. While at the bar (where else would they be?), Nick gets a call from Jess asking him to snap a photo of Shivrang's penis and if he could just do it to scale, using a nickel or a big toe, that'd be great. Nick tries his best to use his "dead dad pass," but to no avail. That is his mission for the night and he is determined to see it through.
Schmidt crashes to let the guys know that -- "spoiler alert" -- women are liars. Apparently he spent the day tracking down his ex-girlfriends, trying to convince them to get back together so he can have a date for the wedding. As they turn him down one by one (some with screams), Nick and Winston suggest Elizabeth -- Schmidt's college girlfriend. The two were together for four years but Schmidt remembers her from his "big guy" days and doesn't want to go back there, nor does he want a large date for the wedding. He wants to make Cece jealous. Somehow though, he's convinced. Just as he leaves, Shivrang returns from spending way too much time on the jukebox (no Robbie Williams, tsk tsk), and Nick tells him it's time for the fun game of snap your junk. To exemplify this, he snaps a photo of his own penis with his phone, but Shivrang refuses to follow suit.
Back at the "party," G-rated barely lasts five minutes before Cece's model friends put on the slideshow Jess pulled together featuring all of Cece's most embarrassing moments. After a few unflattering photos, Auntie Whatchamacallher gets up and berates Cece for her frivolous ways. Cece, in response, tells her she didn't want any of this and this is not who she is (though it totally is). Jess gets offended and stomps off, Cece follows her, and they start arguing. Jess thinks Cece shouldn't change herself for a man, Cece thinks Jess shouldn't give her advice about men when she's caught in a 7th grade debacle with the boy across the hall. They have such a heated argument, even Alfredo the stripper gets yelled at to leave.
At the bar, Nick and Winston follow Shivrang to the bathroom in hopes of snapping a photo of his junk. Shivrang calls them out for being totally weird and they tell him Cece is freaking out about not having seen him naked. He runs off to talk to his fiancée, and Winston, in the meantime (he's on fire in this episode), sends Jess the photo Nick took of his junk. The girls get the photo of Nick's privates and pass it around as if it's Shivrang's. When his aunt catches their drift, she tells Cece it's totally normal to freak out over this -- women in India cry over not seeing their future husbands' manhood for days.
As all this transpires, Schmidt heads over to Elizabeth's. He tries to butter her up with sweet talk but she's having none of that, having dated him for so long. He tells her the truth: that he wants his model ex-girlfriend, who's marrying a small Indian man he doesn't understand, to see him with a girlfriend, get sad, break off the wedding and run away with him. Elizabeth declines, telling him he was the greatest boyfriend until he lost weight and got mean. He stopped listening to her, he changed completely, he stopped paying for her dinners, and she has no intention of helping new, skinny Schmidt.
Nick and Shivrang rush home to see if the girls got the photo and just as they finish praising Shivrang for his manhood, Nick tells them the photo is his. Shivrang tells Cece he'll strip right then and there if it'll put her mind at ease and she tells him it's okay -- it's just that they're moving so fast ... but maybe that's a good thing, it's what makes their relationship special, this leap of faith.
After the party, as Cece cleans up, Schmidt approaches her and apologizes. Seems like talking with Elizabeth gave him some perspective and he tells Cece he is sorry if he was selfish at all during their relationship (her terrific response? "What do you mean 'if,' and what do you mean 'relationship'?). Jess also tells Cece she's sorry about the whole thing and in return Cece asks her to be her maid of honor, much to Jess' delight.
The night ends with Schmidt back at Elizabeth's house with what looks like three pizza pies. He tells her "big guy" is still in him somewhere and needs some help coming out. She tells him to eat the pizza, all the pizza, in front of her. Should we expect "big guy" to make a cameo at the wedding?!
"New Girl" airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.
