New Girl recap: The top 5 moments from D-Day

We’ve seen bits of planning for Schmidt and Cece’s big day, with dress shopping and venue scoping, but this week that all kicked into high gear.

Schmidt and Cece have many more decisions to make, but Jess steps in to help when Cece is called away for an acting gig. It’s all going well until Schmidt realizes that the dashing, wine seller of sorts, Gavin (guest star Peter Gallagher), that Jess made out with is, in fact, his dad. As for Winston and Nick, the pair face off to see who has the harder job and give each other’s gigs a go.

Here are the top 5 “loft”-iest moments from “D-Day.”

Some seriously intense wedding planning. Schmidt is very type A, so it should come as no surprise that he’s taking his wedding planning very seriously. Case in point: “I didn’t sleep,” he says. “I was up all night preparing for an epic day of wedding decisions. I’m calling it D-Day. Of course, in this situation the D stands for decisions, and unlike the other D-Day, it will not be a walk on the beach.” YIKES. He even has a flash drive with color-coded files that would cover anything anyone would ever need for the planning process. The problem is those files are not necessarily easy for someone other than him to decode, leading Jess to meet someone Schmidt was not quite ready to have around, let alone have involved in the wedding…

Peter Gallagher as Schmidt’s dad. That person is Gavin, a wine seller and Schmidt’s dad. He’s completely charming as a very suave, silver fox, who quickly pops open a bottle of wine and flirtatiously feeds Jess some manchego cheese.“Have you ever had your eyebrows combed by a woman you just met,” Jess suggestively asks. It should come as no surprise that the two made out, but Jess didn’t know at the time that Gavin is Schmidt’s dad, and Gavin didn’t know that Jess is Schmidt’s roommate. When Jess returns to the loft, Schmidt lets out the craziest shriek upon hearing that the two had met and goes into full-on panic mode upon discovering their hot and heavy exchange.

The fallout from the makeout. The panic goes on and on and on, and Schmidt can barely bring himself to talk, let alone hear anything, about what happened. That gets even worse when there’s a knock at the door and it’s Gavin coming to meet Jess for a date. Jess says she’ll get rid of him, but Schmidt doesn’t trust her, so he makes her put on the helmet with a camera attached — the one she was wearing earlier so Schmidt could essentially live stream the appointments she was handling — so he can make sure Gavin gets the boot. Just as Gavin is about to leave, he spots a wedding invitation and sees photos of his son, making him realize that Jess knows him. (Bonus fallout: The loftees head to the bar because Schmidt needs a drink. Nick pries, asking if Jess enjoyed the makeout, and so the awkwardness continues…)

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Nick and Winston facing off. Nick and Winston get into an argument about who has the harder job, prompting Winston to try his hand at managing the bar and Nick to accompany Winston and Aly on a ride-along. Winston has a hard time organizing the staffers’ schedules but still contends that his job is much more difficult. It doesn’t look that way when he and Aly spend their time removing a palm frond from the road, but eventually the pair make an arrest, and that exchange scares the living daylights out of Nick. Aly wisely points out that Nick has to know that Winston has the more demanding gig but probably just wants to be recognized for the work he does. So by episode’s end, Winston gives Nick the credit he deserves, and the pair sit down for burgers, a play on their proud tradition of meat lunches.

Schmidt and his dad making up. After Gavin realizes Jess’ connection to Schmidt, he finds out that his son is in the loft. Jess asks him to leave him be because Schmidt isn’t ready to see him, but being a peacemaker, Jess tells Gavin that he can speak to Schmidt through the camera atop her head. He falters a bit in talking about how he wasn’t around in part because he was high throughout most of the ’90s and beyond but does sincerely apologize for not being there. That leads Schmidt and Cece to come out of their room and meet with Gavin face-to-face, and eventually Schmidt does invite his dad to the wedding, despite his earlier hesitation.

Honorable Mentions:

• Schmidt deciding on wedding invitations.
• Jess facing her camera toward a water installation and singing Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle” to calm Schmidt down.
• “They should really make a TV show based on what you guys do,” Nick tells Winston of his job…AS A COP.