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Introduction

The hit sitcom New Girl is a well-loved comedy following the entertaining life of Jessica (Jess) Day and her new roommates, Schmidt, Nick and Winston. After finding out that her boyfriend was cheating on her, Jess moved in with those three men; mere strangers she met on the Internet. Their new life together involves whimsy, sexual tension and dealing with the trials and tribulations of full-blown adulthood. Audiences spanning different generations love New Girl for its refreshing comedy, surprisingly honest emotions, and fabulous on-screen chemistry. Analyzing the events in New Girl from an empirical communication perspective reveals dark linings to many of the very comedic moments in the show. In this portfolio, I examine five dark topics that Jess has experienced throughout the 3 seasons of New Girl: age-gap relationships, internet matching services, complaining, expressing affection and mean girls’ social aggression. While the events in New Girl may only seem funny or even unrealistic at times, examining them from the perspective of the dark side of communication demonstrates that the characters’ feelings and actions are indeed consistent with real-world dark side behaviors. 

Author: Giovanna Davila

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Age-Gap Relationship

In season 1 of New Girl, the main character Jess starts dating an older, successful businessman named Russell who is the father of one of her middle school students. We’re introduced to Russell in Season 1 Episode 17 (“Fancyman, Part I”) when he goes to speak with Jess during a parent-teacher conference about his daughter Sarah. After their first few encounters, Jess explicitly tells her roommates that she doesn’t like Russell because he seems like a snobby rich guy with little respect for people who aren’t as successful as him. Ultimately, Jess needs to grovel to Russell to make sure he doesn’t pull his funding for her school after she criticized him for the way he interacts with his daughter. She’s wildly unhappy about this though because she doesn’t like the fact that rich people like him have power over less-financially stable people like herself and her roommates. In attending a barbeque at Russell’s home, Jess is exposed to his world and all the things he has to offer as a result of his success and money. When Russell asks Jess out on a date later that evening, she happily says yes. During this conversation, we discover that Russell is 42 and it thus becomes officially established that he is much older than 31 year-old Jess. After this, they go on to be in a serious relationship for quite some time, though it ends before Season 1 concludes.

  In the encounter in which Russell first asks Jess out on a date, it becomes clear that their relationship, should it grow into anything more, would be classified an age-gap relationship due to the 11-year age difference. According to Lehmiller and Agnew (2011), people generally prefer the male to be about 3 years older in a relationship. This stands in stark contrast to age-gap relationships which have been defined in the social psychological literature as romantic relationships in which one partner is at least 10 years older than the other (Lehmiller & Agnew, 2011). Thus, it’s quite clear that Jess and Russell’s relationship fits this definition. While both the evolutionary perspective and socio-cultural perspective have been used to explain why people engage in age-gap relationships, Social Exchange Theory of the socio-cultural perspective provides the most relevant explanation as to why Jess would get involved in this age-gap relationship. According to Baumeister and Vohs (2004), a relationship is likely to continue when each person receives and gives something to the other in an equitable fashion, meaning they gain more than they lose. Since Jess doesn’t have to put in comparatively more effort or use more resources than she has in previous relationships, thus indicating low costs, it’s no surprise that she pursues a relationship with Russell, which can offer her many benefits. Additionally, this theory posits that the value of what is gained in a relationship is in part dependent on the comparison level of alternatives, which is simply the other alternative partners one has to choose from (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004). As Jess puts it in one interaction with Russell, the men in her world don’t “have it all together” as he does. Most of the men in Jess’s life are also in their early thirties and still don’t have their lives figured out yet, so comparatively, Russell is the obvious choice.

  The progression of Jess and Russell’s relationship in the next episode, “Fancyman, Part II” (Season 1, Episode 18) demonstrates that, like many in their situation, they unfortunately experienced some of the dark side of age-gap relationships. While on their second date, Jess asked Russell if he was upset when the Beatles broke up and how his prostate was, thereby demonstrating that she was already preoccupied with the age difference between them and internalizing the negative social stigma associated with age-gaps relationships. Research has shown that the beliefs one has towards their own age-gap relationship has a strong effect on relational commitment and whether or not the relationship will last (Lehmiller & Agnew, 2011). Ultimately, the perceived social marginalization had such a strong negative effect on Jess and Russell’s own perceptions of their relationship that they eventually broke up. So while we all may think that the characters in comedies are immune to the darkness associated with real-life relationships, Jess’s age-gap relationship certainly proves otherwise. 

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Internet Matching Services

After breaking up with Russell at the end of Season 1 and losing her job at the very beginning of Season 2, Jess is not in the best place. While sitting at the bar where Nick works in Season 2 Episode 2 (“Katie”), Jess is approached by a handsome man named Sam who asks her if she’s Katie from CupidMatch.com. Caught up in the moment, Jess says that she is in fact Katie and just goes along with it. As they begin to talk, Sam expresses how excited he is to finally meet her after exchanging so many emails and learning about things like her puppy and music interests. The couple eventually ends up back at Jess’s apartment and Sam stays the night. The next day, Jess feels invigorated by getting to be fun and exciting Katie rather than her dorky, adorable self (cue pictures below).

  This chance encounter is a very good example of the deception that can be associated with Internet matching websites. Today, there are many different types of Internet matching services that rely on specific forms of match making such as random matching, self-matching and scientific matching (Sprecher, 2011). Based on the initial conversation that Sam and Jess have in which Sam goes back over the things he remembered they (well, he and Katie) had in common, it seems as though CupidMatch.com is very similar to Match.com in that it allows users to create profiles and then select their matches based on the information presented in their profiles (Sprecher, 2011). The episode did not go into more detail as to how CupidMatch worked and what exactly was displayed on the profiles, but it’s clear from the initial interaction between Sam and Jess that Sam didn’t actually know what Katie looked like or he simply mistook Jess as Katie because they looked similar. Nevertheless, the mediated nature of Sam and Katie’s emails meant that some degree of visual anonymity was clearly involved, as is common with computer-mediated-communication (CMC) (Ellison, Heino, & Gibbs, 2006). While the empirical literature has tended to focus on the deception that can occur in online interactions via dating sites, this scene in which Jess meets Sam demonstrates that deception can also occur face-to-face. Research has shown that the asynchronous nature and visual anonymity of dating sites and CMC can allow the participants to express themselves with less inhibitions, assuming that they will eventually meet in person (Ellison, Heino, & Gibbs, 2006). Jess’s interaction with Sam shows that those seemingly positive elements of Internet matching services can indeed be part of the dark side because people like Jess can easily take advantage of the visual anonymity and uncertainty of CMC and essentially steal someone’s date when the relationships shifts to face-to-face interaction.

  At the end of the episode, after Sam finds out that Jess isn’t really Katie, he goes back to her apartment to tell her that he doesn’t care that she lied to him because he lied about a lot of the information in his profile. This exemplifies one of the major dark sides of Internet dating sites: socially acceptable lies (Ellison, Heino, & Gibbs, 2006). In a study conducted by Ellison, Heino, and Gibbs (2006), it was found that people often misrepresented themselves in their profiles because they were using information they felt would help them get a good match and not fall prey to the website’s filtering system. Much like the participants in this study, Sam altered his profile so possible partners wouldn’t reject him. After telling Jess that he also lied, Sam says that he doesn’t care to learn anything about Jess; all he wants is a purely sexual relationship. Jess goes along with it because she enjoyed being fun and spontaneous but this also illustrates how online dating can lead to shallow instead of meaningful relationships (Sprecher, 2011). Luckily for Jess and Sam, the elements of the dark side of online dating seemed to help them rather than hurt them. 

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Complaining

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb4nONLCgCw

Link to the scene

In Season 2 Episode 7 (“Menzies”), Jess’s roommates keep bothering her to go get a job so they can all pay the utility bills on time. The more they pester her, the more frustrated she gets. After being called a ninny, Jess blows up at Nick, Winston and Schmidt and starts complaining about all of her PMS symptoms so they’ll stop getting on her case. While her rant is most often appreciated for its comedic value, analyzing this scene from a theoretical perspective shows that Jess’s actions are not at all uncommon.

  Empirically, complaining has been conceptualized in many ways, but Kowalski (1996) defines it as an expression of some sort of dissatisfaction in order to vent, reach intrapsychic and/or intrapersonal goals. In this scene, it’s clear that Jess expresses dissatisfaction because she mentions her abdominal discomfort, random food cravings and conflicting as well as negative emotions, all in a very whiny tone of voice. Because she’s experiencing this emotional instability known to accompany PMS, it’s understandable that she doesn’t want to be yelled at for not having enough money to pay the bills, not having a job, or being a ninny. When Jess goes on to say, “I’ve had it! If any of you cross me, I will kick the testicles clean off your body…that’s just where I’m at right now,” it becomes clear that she’s bringing up her PMS so that she can achieve her intrapersonal goals of not being bothered and feeling excessive negative emotions. Thus, Jess’s emotional outbreak can indeed be labeled as an instance of complaining, according to Kowalski’s conceptualization.

  Getting a deeper understanding of why Jess really complains in this scene can be explained by examining the characteristics of those who have a stronger propensity to complain as well as the typical reasons for complaining.  One of the personal attributes empirically associated with increased complaining is extroversion. Those who are outgoing and extroverted tend to be more comfortable expressing their feelings to others, whether they be positive or negative (Kowlaski, 1996). Jess is quite the outgoing person as evidenced by her penchant for singing in public, being goofy and divulging lots of personal information to her friends. Therefore, Jess’s complaints in this scene can be in part explained by her general extroversion. When looking at the way in which Jess complains about her PMS, we can see that she combines complaining for catharsis with complaining for a call of accounts to achieve her intrapersonal goals. Many people simply complain for catharsis or venting purposes, which allow them to get things off their chest, release anger and/or frustration, and ultimately feel better (Kowalski, 1996). The unfortunate combination of being recently unemployed and PMSing left Jess in a very bad state. Her complaining about how she was feeling to her closest friends allowed her to finally get it all off of her chest and feel some cathartic relief from the honesty. In addition to this, Jess also complains to change the behavior of her roommates, also known as a call for accounts (Kowalski, 1996). Because of her PMS, Jess is not in a state to deal with criticism and nagging from all three of her roommates. When she asks, “Who wants to look me in the face and tell me to get a job,” after her cathartic rant, Jess is essentially telling her roommates that they need to change their behavior towards her because she simply can’t deal with it. Luckily for Jess, boys tend to be quite uncomfortable with PMS so simply mentioning her uterus got her roommates off her back.        

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Expressing Affection

Jess had been having casual sex with Sam, the guy she randomly met at the bar, for quite some time. They both decided that they wanted to keep things casual and not have any commitments. Because of this, both of them had not attempted to learn about each other so that they wouldn’t find things they liked. They were doing a good job at keeping their feelings separate from everything until Sam left his wallet at Jess’s apartment and she brought it to him at work, only to find out that he’s a pediatrician who loves kids. Seeing this sensitive and real side of Sam made Jess realize how she was in fact developing real feelings for him. Jess decided that she couldn’t ignore these feelings anymore and planned to tell Sam that she truly cared about him. When Jess told Sam how she felt in Season 2 Episode 6 (“Halloween”), he was surprised and simply told her that he was honest about not wanting a relationship. Jess expressed how she thought maybe he was too scared to express his true feelings to her but he told her that wasn’t the case. When Sam asks if he should go, Jess simply nods as she begins to tear up.

  This uncharacteristically sad event in the show is a good example of the dark side of expressing affection. Jess’s act of telling Sam how she felt is considered an expression of affection because she was communicating her feelings of strong liking to Sam, thereby showing him that she truly cared about him. Sam’s reaction to Jess’s affection, while sad for audiences to see, can be explained by Expectancy Violations Theory. This theory posits that people naturally create and have expectancies or anticipations for behavior in any given situation and relationship (Burgoon, 1993). Expectancies are constructed based on the characteristics of the communicator, the nature of the relationship at hand and situational context. When someone behaves in a way in which the other was not expecting, Burgoon (1993) labels that as an expectancy violation because the other person did not anticipate the behavior in question. According to Expectancy Violations Theory, expectancy violations subsequently lead to negative assessments of the other person and negative behavioral responses (Burgoon, 1993).  Since Sam and Jess had established that they had a casual relationship with no strings attached, he was understandably not expecting her to develop feelings for him. So when Jess told Sam that she really liked him and asked him to officially go out with her, he experienced a negative expectancy violation. Sam’s negative reaction to Jess’s affection can then be understood as a result of her violating his anticipations for her behavior.

In contrast to Sam’s reaction, Jess’s reaction can be explained by the risk of nonreciprocity, which simply involves not having affection returned. This can be particularly threatening in the early stages of a relationship when there is still a lot of uncertainty about the future of the dyad (Floyd & Pauley, 2011). Research shows that affection that is not reciprocated tends to be associated with a deterioration of the relationship. This is exactly what happened to Jess and Sam. Since Sam didn’t reciprocate Jess’s affection, their relationship abruptly ended. Furthermore, nonreciprocity results in a loss of positive face for the sender and subsequent negative feelings such as inadequacy, embarrassment, and vulnerability (Floyd & Pauley, 2011). Thus, Jess’s tears and sad look on her face can be attributed to the lack of reciprocated affection from Sam. Although this interaction was inherently dark, losing Jess in this scene caused Sam to realize his own feelings for her and fight for her in a later episode. Ultimately, this dark cloud had a silver lining. 

The night he wins her back :)

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Mean Girls' Social Aggression

In the most recent season of New Girl, Jess gets a new job at a local middle school but for the first whole week, she doesn’t make any friends. Apparently, a clique of 3 cool teachers rule the school and they wouldn’t give Jess the time of day. Being in a new place, Jess just wanted to feel like she belonged, yet she consistently felt like an outsider because the popular teachers ignored her, rolled their eyes at her, and simply excluded her from anything they did. Nick, Jess’s new boyfriend, comes to the teacher’s lounge with free school supplies to help bribe the clique to accept Jess. He even tells them to all come by the bar later for free teacher drinks. When they’re all at the bar together, Jess finally has the chance to befriend the 3 teachers but she and Nick realize that she needs to act more like them. So, Jess gets rip-roaring drunk and joins in on their ridiculing of the awkward principal. After their drunken night together, the 3 teachers accept Jess into their group and make it official by giving her access to the locked cabinet in the teacher’s lounge that holds cool coffee mugs.

  This aggressive behavior of the 3 popular teachers, reminiscent of high school days, can be characterized as social aggression. Various authors researching girls’ aggression have referred to this type of negative behavior as either indirect, relational or social aggression, though they essentially refer to the same set of socially aggressive behaviors (Archer & Coyne, 2005). In contrast to physical and verbal aggression, social aggression involves no physical contact or direct verbal aggression like name-calling to the victim’s face (Willer & Cupach, 2011). Alternatively, social/indirect/relational aggression involves manipulative behaviors that affect people’s relationships, social standing and/or self-esteem. This form of aggression has specifically been defined to include behaviors such as social exclusion, ignoring, rumors, gossip, eye rolls, dirty looks and the like (Archer & Coyne, 2005). During the flashback to Jess’s first week at school, we see that when the 3 teachers walk together down the hall, they completely ignore Jess’s greetings and roll their eyes when she continues to try and talk to them. In addition to this, they make snarky comments during the school meeting with the principal and giggle at his awkwardness. Clearly, their behaviors fall within the definition of social/indirect/relational aggression because of the inherently indirect and social nature of their actions. While some researchers have tended to focus on social aggression committed by girls, Archer and Coyne (2005) found that boys do also engage in this behavior, though not to the extent of girls. Nevertheless, this provides a reason as to why one of the popular teachers in the clique is a male.

    While it may seem immature for adults to be acting in this way, Social Identity Theory provides an explanation as to why. This theory posits that people organize their social lives in terms of ingroups and outgroups, meaning they mentally identify themselves as members of certain groups (ingroups) and outsiders as part of outgroups. Doing this enables individuals to differentiate themselves from seemingly different people and ultimately get a sense of who they are (Willer & Cupach, 2011). Since ingroup membership shapes one’s social identity and is considered very important, people will engage in aggression directed towards outgroup members so that they can exclude the outgroup members, thereby drawing clear distinctions between the groups. In doing do, the ingroup members they ensure their ingroup standing and sense of belonging. This theory therefore makes it clear that the 3 popular teachers engaged in social/indirect/relational aggression to draw clear boundaries between themselves and the other teachers, which ultimately bolstered their own sense of acceptance in the clique and sense of who they are as individuals. By the end of the episode, Jess realizes that acting like an ingroup member of the clique doesn’t truly make her happy and actually is a lot of effort. So while the social aggression made Jess feel inadequate at first, being part of the clique for some time eventually made her realize who she really is.