When New Girl fans think of Schmidt, they likely think of his outrageous behavior or his one-liners first. Schmidt, however, has a great character arc for the sitcom. He goes from thinking about himself to wanting what's best for all of his friends. Schmidt also goes from a perpetual player to a married father.
Just because he has such a great arc doesn't mean his growth is a smooth course. Like most of the characters in the show, Schmidt grows in fits and starts. For every bit of genuine growth he experiences, there are also moments where he regresses to less mature times.
10 Growth: He Tells His Roommates About The Parking Spot
In the aptly titled second season episode "Parking Spot," Schmidt bursts into the loft to reveal that their apartment actually has an assigned spot in the garage, so someone doesn't have to park in one of the many inconvenient places they all have their cars. Schmidt pretty quickly laments that he shouldn't have even told them.
While the bulk of the episode then includes Schmidt, Nick, and Jess childishly fighting over the spot instead of figuring out how to share it, the fact that Schmidt's first instinct is to share the news with his roommates shows that he's starting to grow. He doesn't entirely understand it himself just yet, but the growth is there.
9 Regresses: He Breaks The Hutch
Schmidt has some control issues - especially when it comes to decorating the loft. He has a problem with second-hand pieces of furniture, wanting everything in the loft to be brand new, something his roommates can't always afford. When Jess decides to introduce a hutch that she found to the loft, Schmidt is not okay with it.
Their arguing about the hutch leads to Schmidt knocking it over, breaking several parts of it and making it unusable. It would be one thing if he could have had a calm discussion with her or explain his germaphobic tendencies (which she should have been aware of at that point). Instead, he acted like a small child who didn't get his way.
8 Growth: He Tries To Get Winston To Embrace His Blackness
This storyline is something. It's definitely offensive in a lot of ways, but it's also some real progress for Schmidt, which might seem counterintuitive.
Schmidt, after seeing Winston interact with a group of black people at the bar, suddenly worries that Winston isn't able to be himself around his roommates. He means well when he decides to help Winston embrace his culture, telling Winston that the two of them will do anything and everything Winston wants to do that he might feel like he can't do around his white friends. Winston is clearly insulted at the implications, and rightfully so, and he teaches Schmidt a lesson. What's important here, however, is that as insensitive as Schmidt usually is, and as much as he really can't read the room when he starts talking to Winston about his plan, he genuinely wants to put Winston first and make sure his friend is comfortable in the loft.
7 Regresses: He Kisses Jess
When Nick first kisses Jess after a game of True American, it changes the dynamics in the loft, shifting the ground under everyone's feet drastically. Winston tells Nick to fix things because it won't be Jess moving out, but Schmidt takes a more childish approach.
Schmidt shows Jess the oath the male roommates took when Jess first moved in and claims that in order to make things less weird, he should kiss Jess too. Weirdly, though Jess is furious about the oath, she agrees to kiss Schmidt. It's a strange thing for the two to decide to do given that when Schmidt tried to kiss her on his birthday, he ended up putting $50 in the jar as a result. It's also not clear just how it would fix the dynamic in the loft.
6 Growth: He Decides To Be A Stay At Home Dad
Much of Schmidt's worth in the early seasons is built around his work. He's concerned with whether he can impress his bosses, get the big promotions, and just how many hours he works each week. That changes once he and Cece have a child.
After the time jump in the final season, Schmidt has been staying at home with Ruth while Cece heads back into work. When the two trade their tasks and Schmidt goes back to work, he realizes how much he hates his job. It might take him a long time to figure out what's important to him, but Schmidt doesn't even hesitate to decide to be a stay at home dad.
5 Regresses: He Pranks Cece's Wedding
When Schmidt gets it into his head (admittedly, rightly so) that Cece doesn't want to marry Shivrang in the second season, he decides to delay her wedding by any means necessary. He even enlists Winston to help him repeatedly pull pranks.
To Schmidt's credit, he does try to tell his other friends what he believes first, and he's right, but Cece isn't ready to admit that she doesn't want to marry Shivrang. Schmidt's pranking, however, doesn't just delay the wedding but causes an argument between Nick and Jess, and even puts wedding guests in danger.
4 Growth: He Maturely Ends Things With His Boss
Schmidt tends to have a thing for women in positions of authority. Most of his relationships end badly. He and Emma, however, approach their dalliance maturely.
Though Emma outranks him at Associated Strategies, they work up a contract for their purely physical relationship so that work and their personal lives don't interfere with one another. When they discover that their relationship just isn't working out, there's no hard feelings or mind games, unlike what Schmidt might do with others, and they agree to go their separate ways.
3 Regresses: He Cheats On Cece And Elizabeth
At the end of the second season, Elizabeth and Cece both make their feelings for Schmidt clear. He just has to decide which relationship to pursue. Rather than break up with either woman, because he's too scared to make them angry or hurt, he lies to them both.
While the cheating in and of itself is bad, what makes it worse is that Schmidt is presented with opportunities to come clean or break things off, and he only digs in deeper. He lies to both of them when they're both invited to a party at his work, and then further allows Cece to believe that Nick is cheating on Jess instead of telling her the truth about himself. It's one of the most questionable paths Schmidt takes in the show.
2 Growth: He Breaks The Douchebag Jar
When Schmidt and Cece marry, it's after a long journey. When he proposes, after all, they aren't even dating, but trying to avoid their feelings for one another. As they marry, the tradition of the groom breaking glass beneath his feet is kept with Nick giving Schmidt the douchebag jar to do it with.
For five seasons, that jar is a symbol of just how immature Schmidt really is. Every time he does something his roommates deem "the worst," he puts money in the jar. By Nick giving him the jar to break, it's an acknowledgment that Schmidt has grown up.
1 Regresses: He Tries To Break Up Nick And Jess
After the debacle that is Cece and Elizabeth finding out Schmidt's been dating them both at the same time, he places the blame unfairly on Nick and Jess. He sees them as the reason Cece (who tells Elizabeth) finds out and despises their happiness.
Rather than just wait for Nick and Jess to hit their own stumbling blocks, he throws some in their path. Schmidt decides to be petty with his best friend, that his own happiness is more important than Nick's, which might be his most childish act ever.
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