I am sure I am not alone in falling in love with Zooey Deschanel around the middle of her "Baby, It"s Cold Outside" duet with Will Farrell. And I am not certain if I am alone in getting completely sick of her around Vol II, her dire She & Him sophomore effort.
And I wrote here,a scathing put down of her Fox sitcom "New Girl". A twee, twitty, intensely annoying and all too typical situation with the Zooey character breaking up with her boyfriend and moving into an apartment filled with guys. Four's Company, if you will.
But a funny thing happened to me on the way to the out of hand dismissal: i kept on checking it out on VOD and somewhere in the middle of the episode when she walks in on one of her room mates, Nick (a brooding Jake Johnson) naked, it clicked. I'll tell you the exact moment as well. The arrow of truth. Zooey wants to discuss what happened but the guy won't, so she brings out her "feeling stick" and the guy takes it and snaps it in two. So she goes back in her bag and pulls out her "traveling feeling stick". I laughed out loud.
And the very next episode, an excellent Thanksgiving Day, was just as good. The dorky Zooey meeting her love match in the equally dorky Justin Long (yeah, mr. mac),. A series of increasingly funny set pieces reaching a zenith where Zooey screams at a bratty Nick how much wants to sleep with the other guy and everybody can hear her.
The problem with Zooey is you have to give into her dorky charm and when you can't, when it misses, she becomes extremely irritable, But when she gets it right, and the show is improving week by week, it makes it all worthwhile.