(7) Days of Zooey - Day 7 (#647.)

Since September 2011, Zooey has starred in New Girl, a Fox sitcom in which her character and three male friends live together and have zany adventures.  It was around the launch of the series that she started to actively fight her adorkable image, which feminists suggested painted women in general in a backward light, so the show shifted how it presented her over time.  Eventually and most famously in the show's run so far, Zooey's Jess developed a surprise romance with Jake Johnson's Nick.  Also featured are Max Greenfield as Schmidt (the most sitcomy of the characters), Hannah Simone as Cece, and Lamorne Morris as Winston (who often seems to be part of his own series).  If you want to see all these characters at their most hilarious (and most compromised), you may want to catch "Virgins" from the second season, in which we witness, well, how each of them lost their virginity.  If you know Community at all (and shame on you if you don't), this can almost be described as Community outside of a community college (and, sadly, with far less Dean).  Also, filmed without a laugh track, but hopefully we're all used to that by now.  Frustratingly for a guy who used to watch as much network programming as he wanted, it was around this time that this became virtually impossible, and so I have caught only the occasional episode.  (Funny enough, but the first two times I caught it, the episode "Bells" was airing.  It's a good one.)  Thankfully, I love it, and for more than just Zooey, although she's a surprisingly natural fit for the small screen, where she has more or less remained since production started on the series.  I hope it lasts many seasons (it's currently in its third), and that she can resume and build on her movie career.  I still suggest a reunion with (500) Days of Summer costar Joseph Gordon-Levitt, by the way.  They could easily become one of those classic big screen pairings.

For the record, even if you still haven't and never plan on watching the show, if you like the Super Bowl, next February New Girl (along with Brooklyn Nine-Nine) has the coveted post-game slot.  The series currently has some really terrible ratings (but that seems to be true of all the really good sitcoms these days, perhaps as an act of revenge for that 90s period where sitcom was king, especially on the famed NBC Thursday lineup), but is guaranteed to get a boost that night.  And chances are some of you will be in the audience.