On Tuesday, New Girl debuted its fourth season with an episode that gives the impression of a re-pilot attempt; the show has made a clean break from its failed Nick&Jess romance and returned to the show's template of humorous hijinks that serve to ultimately re-emphasize the familial (decidedly non-romantic) relationship between the roommates. Ideally this show would give equal time to all of its characters, but since the start of season 3 the show seems to have firmly strapped Winston into the passenger seat of the car driven by Jess/Nick/Schmidt. This would be fine if this hierarchy accurately reflected the characters' relative value. I am, however, of the opinion that Winston is clearly the funniest character on the show. Season 3 systematically morphed Winston into a veritable maniac, one who combines George Costanza's neurotic, volatile insecurities with Cosmo Kramer's oblivious eccentricity. Lamorne Morris's superb acting and commitment to the bits allow Winston to steal every scene by aggressively subverting the expectations of both the other characters and the audience.
As delightful as Morris's performance is, the show's treatment of him feels problematic in a couple of ways. On the micro-level, Winston rarely feels anything more than tangentially connected to each episode's main thread. When Winston appears in a scene, it feels more like a recurring character popping up for comic relief than a main character firmly attached to the plot. New Girl would be a better show if it were more meticulous about keeping Winston tightly dovetailed with the rest of the plots.
On the macro-level, doesn't it seem odd that the show's most sparingly-used regular happens to be its funniest one? On one hand, I can imagine a scenario in which Winston's lunacy becomes exhausting when in bigger doses, although I don't think this saturation would be reached by simply shifting to a more egalitarian distribution of screen time between the leads. The biggest devil's advocate point would probably be that utilizing Winston's comedy more at the expense of Jess/Nick/Schmidt's emotional payoffs would do more harm than good for the show. But that gets to my biggest issue with the show's use of Winston, namely that he absolutely merits more stake in these emotional moments. When given the chance, Winston manages to bring a higher level of empathy and selflessness to the table than the rest of the apartment. What he might lack in conventional savoir faire, he makes up for in thoughtful, genuine caring. Consider Winston's birthday episode - for 18 minutes New Girl push the "Winston is crazy" pathos to the brink - but as soon as he finally spots the elephant in the room, he forgets about his needs almost immediately to give Jess and Nick more support in five minutes than the rest of the characters managed to pull together in 15. At his best, Winston sees the forrest where the others see trees; he is capable of providing the most honest truth and perspective out of anyone in the loft - his empathy (and the unconventional lenses through which he processes the world) allows him to reach conclusions that the other, more self-focused characters can't.
New Girl is a very good show. But good is the enemy of great, and more Winston could turn this into a great show. Winston isn't Newman - Lamorne Morris has proven that he has the comedic talent, emotional depth and versatility, and fit within the show's universe to be able to carry an episode. There's no guarantee that Winston would thrive in an expanded role, but for a show that's been so willing to adapt, it would be awfully disappointing to complete its run without experimenting with maximizing Winston's equity in the narrative.
