It’s Thanksgiving time again for the New Girl crew. After Jess almost died from their adventures last Thanksgiving, Schmidt decided they should tone things down this year, stay home, and celebrate Bangsgiving instead of Thanksgiving. According to Schmidt, since it’s approaching wintertime, it’s everyone’s last chance for sexual realization before the New Year rolls around. Schmidt makes everyone draw names from his pilgrim hat, and whoever’s name they draw, they have to set that person up on a date for Bangsgiving.
Thanksgiving Day comes, and Jess pairs Winston up with the very beautiful lunch lady from her school, Pearl. Winston pairs Coach up with the very muscular Pepper, a woman from his police academy. Thanks to Cece, Schmidt gets paired up with a woman named Lucy, who Nick used to date. Nick drew his own name and decided to invite the old Korean man, Tran that he met a while ago, who helped him have a spiritual awakening, instead of dealing with some terrible bar girl. Schmidt invited a mystery man named Geoff, with a G, for Cece, but Geoff hasn’t showed up yet. That leaves Coach to set up a date for Jess, and so Coach decides he’s going to invite Ryan, the beautiful Brit, for Jess. Yes, the one she kissed last episode.
Having an issue with their selected dates, Schmidt gathers the crew, minus their dates, outside to have a little discussion. While everyone is complaining about their perspective hookups, the group takes a vote on whether or not Jess should have sex with Ryan – even though Jess still wants to follow the rules that the principal of her school set in place about not dating the staff since she’s an administrator. Unanimously, the group votes that Jess should, most definitely, sleep with Ryan.
Donning an apron, some oven mitts, and nothing else, Jess calls Ryan to her room and starts coming onto him. Initially, Ryan is on board, and is pleasantly surprised that Jess is finally succumbing to her feelings for him, until Jess lets it slip that she wants to “bang one out of their systems” so that they’ll be over each other. Ryan is upset, because he really likes Jess and he doesn’t just want sex.
Nick doesn’t want Schmidt sleeping with Lucy, because he dated her before, and according to bro-code, Schmidt shouldn’t sleep with her. However, Schmidt says there’s a limit to the code, and insists that he is going to sleep with Lucy. Meanwhile, Coach is trying to cope with the fact that Pepper is stronger than he is, while Winston is trying to deal with the fact that Pearl is a lunch lady. Geoff still hasn’t showed up for Cece.
Since Schmidt won’t back off from Lucy, Nick decides he is going to hatch a plan to make Schmidt think he’s going to snag Cece for Bangsgiving. Nick tells Cece that he has the $20 he’s owed her for quite a while in his room, so Nick and Cece head to Nick’s room. While they’re in there, and Nick is “searching for the money,” he starts making sex noises, hoping Schmidt will hear him and think he’s hooking up with Cece. Cece says Schmidt will never believe they’d be hooking up, but Schmidt barges in anyway, and starts choking Nick.
After Ryan leaves and Nick decides he doesn’t care about Lucy, Nick and Jess talk about their issues on the roof. After Nick realized that he was scared to get hurt again, he told Jess that she shouldn’t be scared to get back out there and get what she wants.
Jess shows up at Ryan’s house to apologize to him, bringing him a pie..well, any empty pie dish. Being the corny, awkward Jess that we all love, she manages to make Ryan want her even more. Ryan kisses her passionately again, and then invites her inside.
Feeling like he struck out, Nick sits down to talk to Tran. Tran’s been throwing back the beers all day while everyone else was fussing over hooking up, and now he can’t drive himself home. No worries though, because his attractive granddaughter comes to pick him up, which was Tran’s plan all along. Nick and the granddaughter end up exchanging numbers.
Coach and Pepper come to terms with Pepper’s incredible strength by arm wrestling. Cece and Schmidt tell each other that they’re on each others never lists, and they have a sweet moment. Shortly after their moment, Geoff shows up, and he is quite the attractive guy. Feeling tempted, Cece immediately shuts it down by rambling in a different language and pushing Geoff out the door. Is there hope for Cece and Schmidt reuniting?
Winston opens up to Pearl about his childhood, err rather teen years, when the lunch lady at school was mean to him. Pearl explains that she is a lunch monitor; they don’t use the term lunch ladies anymore. Instantly, Winston feels better about her, and they hook up – oven mitts included.
It seems as though Bangsgiving has turned out to be a success. All the friends either hooked up or came to peace with their desires. It’ll be interesting to see whether we get to see these new relationships develop over the rest of the season or if we will see some old ones come back to life.