A decade after its debut, New Girl remains the best show about male friendship
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"Technically, New Girl was a show about a couple of guys and a woman living together," says Jason Diamond, marking the 10th anniversary of the Fox comedy's Sept. 20, 2011 premiere. "Practically, it was a show about a group of men around my age committed to and growing within substantive and intimate friendships. Which shouldn’t sound so wild, except that it kind of was. There’s this idea that once you hit your 30s you have a difficult time making friends. It’s been studied: not only do people have a more difficult time making friends as they hit their third decade of life, but interactions between friends also decline as we age. And men, traditionally, have a harder time making or keeping friendships. As an extreme extrovert and also a man, these things all sound about right. New Girl got all this. The real theme of creator Elizabeth Meriwether’s show often seemed to be men living with and cleaning up their own messiness. It was about how it’s never too late for a coming-of-age story. There are plenty of examples throughout the series. All of the men suffer from being raised or abandoned by bad fathers. Jake Johnson’s Nick drinks too much; Schmidt is a sex-crazed ex-fat kid narcissist with OCD; Winston is a naive sweetheart who can’t seem to get his life together; Coach is a big baby. But there’s one episode in particular, the fifth of the second season, 'Models,' that explores the guys and their feelings, and the power of deep friendship, better than anything I’ve ever seen on television before or since."
