I must have missed the memo when everyone in America agreed that Zooey Deschanel was funny. Sure, as a professionally trained actress she knows how to deliver lines humorously but somewhere between her “comedy” website, HelloGiggles.com and her lead role in New Girl, this idea starts to bug me. It seems like she has found her niche in playing weird, quirky girls who get laughs only because they do atypical things. Which makes New Girl the perfect new role for Zooey, a character in which every line she says tries outrageously hard to show you how preciously unique she is while still just being herself. The writing on the show is constantly in-your-face with bad examples of how special this girl is and it gets old quite fast. She loves to sing to herself! She watches Dirty Dancing when she’s sad! She wears big nerdy glasses! She feels comfortable making Lord of the Rings references! The character of Jess is trying so hard to be something special, it just feels like all of the bad surface elements of Ellen Page’s Juno and Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon with none of the rich emotional depth that makes them memorable characters. It’s pretty funny how ironic it is that the creators made an extremely typical atypical character. While comedy pilots are notoriously weak, I would at least expect one strong lead voice.

I can’t say much more about the supporting cast. As you probably know by now the hook of this show is that our lead moves in with three guys who have even more generic sitcom elements making up the core of their characters. Each of the guys have about one short sentence in the script defining their history, but it’s also this short history that informs everything about the character. Her old roommate and friend gets even less. You can describe her in one word: model. Plot points, dialogue, and even wardrobe all revolve about the smallest pieces of information and most importantly don’t provide a whole bunch of likable or relatable aspects about the people.

Most of the elements of this show that left a bad taste in my mouth were due to the ridiculously traditional sitcom format. Musical cues occurred incredibly too often, none of the characters seemed like real people, the situations and relationships felt slightly forced and worst of all the words coming out of the actors mouths didn’t seem natural. Deschanel was the worst at this, with mostly everything coming out of her face seemingly painstakingly worked over both in writing and delivery. Once in a while I found some things absurdly humorous, but often times most of the jokes were extremely predictable and occasionally strange in the name of humor, but not actually funny. A notable occurrence was the only flashback in the episode, where a young Jess sings “What If God Was One of Us?” while playing guitar. The punchline of the scene being a teen child covering his ears screaming “Make it stop!” That’s a half-assed joke at best.

In my book. Zooey Deschanel has always been likable and in fact in some instances, a reason to see a project but some of my faith was lost on this one. I don’t believe it to be as bad of a show as I might’ve worked it up as, but it’s pandering to too large of an audience for my liking and just doesn’t have the elements that make a unique show that I would keep watching. Damon Wayans Jr. was also one of the better actors on the show, but replacing him after the first episode may be another speed bump that’s hard to overcome. While New Girl has the potential to please, it will be because (some) men want Zooey Deschanel, and (some) women want to be her, not because it’s making any new strides in comedy television. New Girl premieres on Fox on September 20, 2011.

2/7