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"You know how Abraham Lincoln said that a house divided against itself cannot stand? (I know, between this and telling Congress to watch the &amp;quot;Work, Bitch&amp;quot; video, I&amp;#x27;m real political today.) Anyway, the TV version of that is: A loft coupled within itself cannot stand. Or rather, a show where the main characters all couple up is interesting for no one. Which is why&amp;amp;#8212;though I didn&amp;#x27;t expect them to do it so quickly&amp;amp;#8212;I wasn&amp;#x27;t surprised to see New Girl smash Schmidt and Cece&amp;#x27;s relationship into smithereens last night. (Apparently for them, the third time isn&amp;#x27;t the charm. This was the third time, right?) The episode cleverly kicked off with Nick, Jess, Schmidt, and Cece planning a double date, when neither that one nor any others would ever happen, thanks to the way the rest of the episode unfolded. They clearly felt they had to blow up the happily hooking-up apartment and not just to save the sanity of this poor guy: Source By &amp;quot;guy,&amp;quot; I of course mean Ferguson, who&amp;#x27;s got to be feeling extremely smothered by Winston right now. But this is a tradition we&amp;#x27;ve seen enacted over and over again on our favorite shows. The secondary couple has to get got. It&amp;#x27;s why Nate/Serena/Chuck/Blair wasn&amp;#x27;t the way to go on Gossip Girl. It&amp;#x27;s why Rachel and Joey, experimenting in the background of Monica and Chandler&amp;#x27;s newlywed bliss, never worked out on Friends (OK, that never worked out for many reasons). And it&amp;#x27;s why on The O.C., the clearly kismet Summer and Seth couldn&amp;#x27;t date peacefully when Ryan and Marissa were in hand-holding mode. The logic is simple and reasonable: Nobody wants to watch a show where everybody&amp;#x27;s settled down, right? That&amp;#x27;s not fun, that&amp;#x27;s surveillance. Here&amp;#x27;s the thing, though: I actually think New Girl could have made the two-couples/five people thing work, simply because Schmidt and Cece aren&amp;#x27;t that interesting of a couple. No offense! OK, since everyone knows that saying &amp;quot;no offense&amp;quot; does absolutely nothing to soften the mean thing you just said, let me explain. I like Schmidt and Cece. I like Schmidt and Cece together. But while I love to watch Nick and Jess get to know each other, I&amp;#x27;ve never felt like there&amp;#x27;s a ton of potential for Schmidt-Cece story lines. He&amp;#x27;s crazy; she&amp;#x27;s mad. She&amp;#x27;s taken; he&amp;#x27;s sad. That&amp;#x27;s pretty much the long and short of it. Nick and Jess share a chemistry and weirdness that elevates their couple adventures to the enjoyability level of the show&amp;#x27;s classic group antics. Cece and Schmidt don&amp;#x27;t. There&amp;#x27;s nothing wrong with that, and I actually think it presents an advantage: New Girl really could have two couples and Winston winding through its story lines, because a lot of the great group plots don&amp;#x27;t change depending on whether Cece and Schmidt are coupled up. More than any show in recent memory, New Girl has transcended the obvious fodder of love and dating to become that show that just nails universal this-age experiences (like getting turned away at snotty restaurants, and being broke, and feeling on the outside of the in-crowd at work). Romance is only part of what brings us back every week. The flip side, of course, is that there&amp;#x27;s actually a disadvantage to splitting Schmidt and Cece right now: How are we ever getting them back together again? If there&amp;#x27;s anything I&amp;#x27;m feeling maxed out on, it&amp;#x27;s their back and forth. The writers seem to be running out of breakup speech material too: I mean, Schmidt invoking his former fatness last night? The only way I could&amp;#x27;ve found that lamer is if a guy used it on me in real life. (Note to dudes everywhere: If you had a chunky phase in college, please don&amp;#x27;t wave it around like a doctor&amp;#x27;s note when you&amp;#x27;re &amp;#x27;fessing up to infidelity. Thx.) What&amp;#x27;s your take on the New Girl couples situation? Photo: FOX"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2013/10/new-girl-schmidt-cece-breakup>