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"Last week we were all about the &amp;quot;Is New Girl in a rut?&amp;quot; debate. This week, the show snapped back and put a point on the board for the &amp;quot;Nope&amp;quot; column; New Girl knows what it&amp;#x27;s doing when it comes to birthdays. Like Christmases, celebrating the gang turning a new age just happens to be one of its strengths&amp;amp;#8212;and last night&amp;#x27;s was maybe its best b-day ever. I of course cried my way through the birthday tribute&amp;amp;#8212;Fox, post the clip already!&amp;amp;#8212;especially the part about Nick still having the coin from the day they kissed. I loved the awful-birthday lead-up too&amp;amp;#8212;free diabetes test, for the win. But what I liked most about Jess&amp;#x27;s birthday was the growth it showed from other b-day episodes. We&amp;#x27;re a long way from Schmidt&amp;#x27;s bus party, and that makes sense&amp;amp;#8212;everyone&amp;#x27;s growing up (though not so much that they&amp;#x27;re not available to bum-rush a movie theater in the middle of the day). Also, getting back to the &amp;quot;rut&amp;quot; debate: a lot of the comments you guys made on our post last week suggested that the addition of Coach has knocked the show&amp;#x27;s chemistry out of whack. It&amp;#x27;s certainly been an adjustment, but last night&amp;#x27;s episode found the writers settling into a smart way to handle their new family of six: pair everybody off for story lines. It felt like the buddy system gave everyone room to breathe: Schmidt and Cece had tender moments that weren&amp;#x27;t overwrought, Nick and Jess had a couple&amp;#x27;s adventure outside the loft, and Winston and Coach really cracked me up with their baking antics. This Iron-Chef-inspired sequence, in particular, slayed me: When the ensemble gets to couple up, we see all of them more clearly (add it to the list of things that make this show the new Friends, methinks). In any case, it was an episode that reminded us how far this group has come&amp;amp;#8212;and that we&amp;#x27;ll hang on through any amount of meh wheels-spinning for magical moments like this. (Any of you who confessed to having stopped watching last week, I suggest you find a way to see this one.) Jess is another year older, and New Girl is another season wiser&amp;amp;#8212;even if both of them are still figuring it all out."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2014/01/new-girl-puts-another-great-bi>