A quick seven-year refresher: Jess Day (Zooey Deschanel), a bubbly and offbeat school teacher, breaks up with her cheating boyfriend and finds three people looking for a roommate on Craigslist. Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Coach (Damon Wayans, Jr.) are initially against living with a female until she mentions having friends who model, prompting them (Schmidt specifically) to immediately change their minds. Fast-forward a little bit and ladies’ man Schmidt has fallen in love with Cece Parekh (Hannah Simone), one of the previously mentioned models and Jess’s childhood best friend. Coach moves away almost right after episode one, giving us the gift from the comedy gods that is Winston Bishop, aka “Winnie the Bish” (Lamorne Morris), completing the Nick/Schmidt/Winston friendship sandwich that’s apparently been a thing since they were kids as well. (Max Greenfield, Hannah Simone, Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson and Lamorne Morris are pictured left to right at top.)
Nick and Jess date and then break up, Cece and Schmidt do the same, and Winston eventually meets and falls in love with Ferguson, a cat previously owned by an ex of his. They (the cat included) all become great friends, argue, have each other’s backs, and play the ever-confusing drinking game True American together. Winston becomes a cop, falling hopelessly in love with (and eventually proposing to) his partner Aly (Nasim Pedrad). Nick writes a surprisingly good novel and dates a pharmaceutical rep named Reagan (Megan Fox), Schmidt and Cece marry and, eventually, Nick and Jess stop with all the “will they/won’t they” and decide that they will, but not before Jess finds out that her boyfriend at the time, Robby (Nelson Franklin), is actually her cousin. You know, normal stuff.
That brings us to now.