New Girl gets even funnier and quirkier in its second season. The season opens with Jess (Zooey Deschanel) losing her teaching job, and Schmidt (Max Greenfield) getting his penis cast removed and throwing a re-branding event to announcing his re-entry into the dating world, post Cece. But are his feelings for Cece truly gone? Meanwhile the sexual tension between Nick (Jake Johnson) and Jess reaches an all-time high.

The writing on New Girl is great—often it doesn’t feel like an A, B and C story but rather 3 A stories. There is so much humor jam-packed into these episodes! I like how they mix up the loft mates each week so we get to see all of the various relationships between the characters. In the second season, we also learn more about these characters and where they came from. In addition to the fun flashbacks, in the present we see Jess’ parents (Rob Reiner & Jamie Lee Curtis), Schmidt’s cousin (Rob Riggle) and Nick’s con-man of a father (Dennis Farina). There are also numerous other fun guest stars this season, including Parker Posey, Josh Gad, David Walton, Nelson Franklin, Carla Gugino, Olivia Munn, and Nathan Corddry.

The second season of New Girl sees the return of the absolutely insane “True American” drinking game, and some of the other zany plots include Nick meeting a man claiming to be his future self, Schmidt pretending to be one of Mitt Romney’s sons, Nick pranking Schmidt to make him think he’s getting old, Jess & Schmidt trying to impress their new young neighbors, and Jess filling in for Cece at a modeling gig. We also see job-less Jess working at a haunted house, Schmidt starting a “benefits”-only relationship with his boss, Jess staging a Parent Trap to get her divorced parents back together, and Winston having sympathy PMS. Some of the other episodes find the loft mates going holiday party hopping, the gang holding Winston back from being his “blackest self”, the guys all competing for the same woman, the gang attending a dating convention, the loft mates arguing over a parking spot, Jess as an Elvis impersonator, and everyone forgetting to throw Winston a surprise birthday party.

The show looks and sounds really good on the DVD—though not quite as nice as it did when I originally watched on the HD Fox channel. The bonus features on this DVD set are a little light, though entertaining. There is just a single commentary by the creators, about 7 minutes of deleted scenes, a 7 minute gag reel, a 2 minute montage of Schmidt scenes and an extended version of “Virgins”, which adds about 3 minutes of extra footage back into the episode.

All told, this DVD release contains a whopping 25 fun and highly-rewatchable episodes, and that alone makes it worth picking up!

What’s Included on the DVD:

Episodes: (456 min)

• All 25 episodes of Season 2:
  Disc 1: “Re-Launch”, “Katie”, “Fluffer”, “Neighbors”, “Models”, “Halloween”, “Menzies”, “Parents”
  Disc 2: “Eggs”, “Bathtub”, “Santa”, “Cabin”, “A Father’s Love”, “Pepperwood”, “Cooler”, “Table 34”, “Parking Spot”
  Disc 3: “TinFinity”, “Quick Hardening Caulk”, “Chicago”, “First Date”, “Bachelorette “, “Virgins”, “Winston’s Birthday”, “Elaine’s Big Day”
• Widescreen 1.78:1
• Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1
• Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
• Closed Captions

Extras:

• Audio Commentary on “Cooler” (21:45)
  Executive Producers/Showrunners Elizabeth Meriwether, Brett Baer and Dave Finkel provide a fun, spirited discussion of this episode that ends with Jess and Nick’s kiss. They talk about the use of improv, and some of the other jokes or sequences that didn’t make it into the episode.
• Deleted Scenes (6:43)
  Collection of 9 deleted scenes from the second season
• Full of Schmidt (2:14)
  Montage of Schmidt scenes and alternate takes.
• Gag Reel (6:44)
  The cast and guest stars crack up, forget their lines and have fun on set.
• Extended Version of “Virgins” episode (24:26)
  The loft mates compete to see who has the most embarrassing story on how they lost their virginity. This extended cut runs 2:41 min longer than the aired version.

Final Thoughts:

Somehow New Girl manages to get even better in its second season, and this set contains 25 hilarious episodes that have high replay value. Add to that some minimal, though enjoyable, bonus features and this is an easy recommendation.