New Girl starring doe-eyed Zooey Deschanel, is screwball comedy gold. It gets funnier and smarter as it goes along, and is best watched binged. While the series shows off five eccentric characters, one sticks out: Nick Miller. Nick Miller is complicated as he is dysfunctional. As the series moves forward, we see significant growth in several characters and their relationships with the people they live with or are in love with. Nick, however, seems to be the same lazy, grumpy late 30s guy with boomer tendencies.
Whether the writers of the show deliberately made him this way or whether they missed a good shot at redemption for poor ol’ Nick Miller, here are the five times fans felt bad for him when he deserved better and the times fans couldn’t stand him.
Felt Bad For Him: Jess Laughs At Him When She Sees Him Naked
In season 1, episode 4, Jess accidentally sees him naked and laughs at him. This could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back when it comes to men like Nick Miller. What’s sad is that the encounter happens as soon as he starts feeling comfortable in his own skin, as he jams naked to Yellowman.
But after the encounter, Nick’s self-esteem is at an all-time low, just when he was finally ready to start seeing someone. What makes matters worse is that Jess tells everyone at the loft about it.
Hated Him: How He Couldn’t Be Upfront With Jess
Towards the end of the third season, Nick freaked out when Jess said she pictured their future in painfully vivid detail. When Nick tries to talk about what he expects of their future, he choked and said something about naming his first child ‘Ass Baby’ because he lost a nonsensical bet with Schmidt.
He gets so caught up in his excuses for not being responsible it eventually drives his relationship with Jess into the ground.
Felt Bad For Him: When He Receives A Cactus & Gets Dumped
In season 1, episode 15, Julia sends him an unconventional present, a cactus. Nick likes what he has with Julia but then fears that she might break up with him. He also thinks that she thinks of him as an idiot who can’t take care of a regular plant.
Ironically, he brings it up while aggressively watering it and then a few seconds later, drops the plant. Then, he ends up getting drunk and sending her way too many voicemails about how he felt about the cactus. He also ends up blurting the L-bomb over voicemail and the episode ends with Julia dumping him after she received the messages.
Hated Him: Abandoning Reagan On A Train Instead Of Telling Her The Truth
Nick refuses to deal with the messier aspects of his relationship with Reagan. That’s also why his relationship with Jess went south. He couldn’t admit to himself that his relationship with Reagan wasn’t as foolproof as he thought.
When push comes to shove, he decides to dump her but he couldn’t. Instead, he panics and tells her that they’re going to San Diego on a retreat together and then leaves her on the train in a panic.
Felt Bad For Him: He Can’t Take Risks
In season 1, Nick gets tackled by Jess and injures his back. Since he doesn’t have insurance, Jess takes him to her gynecologist. While he gives him pain medication, her OB-GYN finds a lump in his throat. While he refuses to address it, the rest of the loft gives him too much sympathy for him to handle.
In a conversation with Jess, he says “I can’t jump into something if I don’t know what’s going to happen. Like, if everybody went to the ocean and jumped in the water, I’m the guy on the beach guarding the wallets.” His honesty and his sense of self-awareness make him so much more endearing. The good news is, the lump in his throat is harmless and the gang splits his medical bills.
Hated Him: When He Gets Hypermasculine Around Coach
When their old roommate, Coach, shows up, Nick can’t admit to him that he’s dating Jess. When Coach proposed to take the guys to a strip club, Jess was concerned, but Nick shrugs it off. He even tells Coach he would partake in the evening’s activities since Jess and he hasn’t made it official, when they actually did.
Refusing to admit you have a girlfriend who is uncomfortable with you going to a strip club with your friends is immature, to say the least.
Felt Bad For Him: When He & Jess Went On A Couple’s Cruise As Friends
Towards the end of the third season, when they call it quits, Jess and Nick invite the rest of the gang to a romantic cruise they booked back when they were dating. Even though they wanted to be as platonic as possible, all the couple’s activities send Nick down memory lane.
He tried to kiss her, only to get rejected. It was then that he realized that he wasn’t over Jess and the only real way he has to deal with those feelings is by distancing himself from her.
Hated Him: He Refuses To Be A Functioning Adult
In season 3, as Jess and Nick begin to get closer, a lot of Nick’s quirky (and annoying) habits are slowly brought to light. He refuses to open up a savings account and says he would rather have his money in a box in his closet. In episode 5 in particular, he gets $8,000 from his late dad as an inheritance and blows it on a massage, shoes that don’t fit, and a framed headshot with crystals on it, all while refusing to pay back Winston until later in the episode.
While the eccentricity of the character is one aspect that the show nails, it’s at the cost of Nick’s basic ability to be a functioning human being contributing to society. Whether he refuses to wash his towel, open up a savings account or even pay his bills, Nick is the poster boy for dysfunctional adulthood.
Felt Bad For Him: How He Struggles To Propose
Nick is a socially inept being that a lot of people relate to. Even when he tries to confess his love to her several episodes earlier, he fails over and over again.
That being said, he puts the ‘aw’ in ‘awkward’ with his attempts at proposing to Jess, making fans cringe as much as they feel bad for good ol’ Nick. Even his wedding turns out to be a disaster when they settle for getting married in a hospital ward.
Hated Him: When He Procrastinates
In the later seasons, Nick becomes a well-established author for a teen series. Although Miller is used to being an average bum, if it wasn’t for Jess constantly pushing him, he wouldn’t have written his novel. When his first book is published, he has to come up with more ideas, which he struggles at doing.
His friends, again, had to come to his rescue to make him feel better about himself (S07, E04). He even had to hire someone to punch him in the face if he didn’t finish writing some pages. Lo and behold, the face was punched.
