By Ben Pobjie
"Oregon" is Episode 16 of Season 4 of New Girl (Eleven, 8pm), so continuing to use the title "New Girl" seems fairly cheeky of everyone involved. It's years since Zooey Deschanel (pictured) pranced into these men's lives: they must be used to her by now. God knows we all are. Which is not to say we don't appreciate her: in New Girl, Deschanel's Jess is the brightest spark in a fireplace full of cold embers. Say what you want about manic pixie dream girls being played out, but I'll take an attractively quirky eccentric young woman over the human sedatives filling out the rest of the cast any day.
Most TV shows involve some element of suspension of disbelief, and in the case of New Girl, it's why Jess hasn't tried to find a more interesting place to live yet. Her roommates include Nick, who makes being a supportively platonic friend even less funny than it sounds; Coach, who has a dumb name as a substitute for a personality; and Winston, who barely even exists. Then there's Schmidt, who was lots of fun when the show started, but is now as bland as the rest because he's occupied by his complicated-yet-boring relationship with Cece, Jess's best friend who is less watchable than all the others put together.
New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel. Her roommates must be used to her by now.
For this episode, the creators of New Girl clearly realised they needed something special to perk things up, and decided on guest stars. "Why not bring in Rob Reiner and Jamie Lee Curtis and see how well we can waste them?" they asked.
Reiner and Curtis play Jess's parents when the gang — New Girl is definitely the sort of show where you refer to the cast as "the gang" — travels to Oregon for her dad and his new woman's wedding. These Hollywood greats add pretty much nothing as the wedding itself becomes a significant plot point only in the last five minutes, because most of the episode is consumed with the depressing decline of Jess's relationship with the persistently absent Ryan. There's also the refuses-to-die subplot of Cece's secret love for Schmidt, which raises fewer chuckles than shots of Deschanel crying, and the occasional mention of Coach's encyclopaedic knowledge of Portland, which the writers originally intended to be important, but got distracted and forgot about it. Maybe the show is too short to flesh everything out, but with characters this dull I don't think more screentime would be good for anyone.
Further viewing: Cutthroat Kitchen (Food Network, 7.30pm) sees chefs making corn dogs in a clown car, and it's good to see traditional cooking making a comeback.
Australian of the Year 2016 (ABC1, 7.30pm) answers the big question: who has been more Australian than anyone else recently?
Ocean's Twelve (Nine, 8.30pm) is the one that nobody likes where Julia Roberts plays a woman who looks like Julia Roberts.