It’s time for another installment of You Forgot They’re Queer! This time, we’re talking about the two forgotten queer characters on New Girl: Jess’s best friend, Cece, and Nick’s on-and-off-again post-Jess girlfriend (what a descriptor), Reagan! The kicker? We find out when Nick introduces Reagan to his roommates that Cece and Reagan were also once roommates who had their own mess-arounds.
Heavy spoiler alerts to follow if you somehow haven’t seen this show that stopped airing nearly eight years ago.1
Cece Parekh (Hannah Simone) is Jessica Day’s (Zooey Deschanel) best friend since childhood, a gorgeous model by profession, and is on the show from the first to the last episode. Reagan (Megan Fox) shows up in season five as a smoking hot pharmaceutical rep who rents out Jess’s room in the loft while Jess is sequestered for months as a jury member in a high-profile trial.2 She eventually begins dating Nick Miller (Jake Johnson), Jess’s roommate and recent ex-boyfriend.
She is also universally hated by the audience because Reagan and Nick have a … strange relationship. Neither of them trusts people or banks, and neither speaks about their feelings, which always makes a relationship strong, healthy, and fun to watch!
A post on Threads declared, “Reagan was the worst character on the show, and the only good thing to come from it was this moment.” I don’t completely disagree, but I did notice that not one single person seemed to remember that Reagan is queer and, because of her, we find out that Cece is too, because they spent a summer hooking up at an MTV beach house in 2003.
Seriously. That’s the lore. The two hottest queer characters on New Girl were messing around on MTV. We should all (Millennials, at the very least) commit that shit to memory because we all wanted to go be gay for the summer with a hot person at an MTV beach house, did we not?!3 Am I alone in this? That’s fine; I can be alone in my principles, especially if I get to be alone with Megan Fox.
When Reagan casually reveals that she and Cece hooked up, all the men in the room freeze. Granted, that could be because she does this immediately after seeing the loft, agreeing to live there, and meeting two of the four people who live there for the first time … or so she thought. She says her MTV summer with Cece was when she realized she was bisexual, and she went for Cece because she loves big boobs. “I’m a real melon felon,” Reagan says without a hint of a joke. “Trust me, I remember,” Cece replies. Hot.
Schmidt (Max Greenfield) proceeds to air-drum a solo from Drumline to process his emotions, as Cece is his recent fiancée, and he is having big feelings about all of this. When he finally admits he is having trouble, it’s not because Cece hooked up with a woman, but because he’s concerned Cece will leave him before the wedding for her hot ex, Reagan. (“I appreciate the fluidity of sexuality; I’m basically a woman myself,” he says, not inaccurately.) According to Schmidt, he’s confident Reagan has shown up to take Cece away from him because he’s seen enough rom-coms to know that’s what happens.4 Cece leaves because she’s convinced Schmidt doesn’t trust her. Reagan tries to leave, but Schmidt convinces her to stay and “fix this.”
Nick decides to stop chasing Reagan because she’s bisexual and she likes “men and women. That’s all the people!” and how can he compete with all the people? Ugh, the number of times this has been levied against bisexual women as if it’s our fault that you’re not good enough for us and can’t compete? It’s a common theme of this episode/so many bi people’s lives.
This continues into the next episode. Nick is so freaked out by his crush, Reagan, living with them, that Schmidt and Cece start lying to him about Reagan. Specifically, they tell him that she wears a wig for “lady reasons.” How do they know? Because Reagan told her “before.” Does she know because they used to hook up? Or maybe she didn’t wear a wig then, but she does now, and she only felt confident telling Cece because they are intimately acquainted? Nope. The show, and most of the audience, has apparently already forgotten. They search her room and discover fake IDs, leading Cece to ask, “How much do we really know about her?” Cece, bitch, you know her BIBLICALLY. Why are you acting like you’ve never met her?
This fundamental hookup fact, which was a major plotline of the episode where we meet Reagan, is never mentioned again. And that’s why most people have forgotten that, yes, of course, the character played by Megan Fox is bisexual, but so is our beloved Cece. Pair that dismissal and the fact that the show wants us to believe that Nick and Reagan could be a realistic romantic coupling (which, clearly, the audience never bought5), and voila, Reagan is the audience’s favorite ex to hate on. But Reagan and Cece are nonetheless queer, and you forgot, like everyone else, didn’t you?
- But I encourage you to watch it because it is, overall, incredibly funny and an excellent show. ↩︎
- AKA, Zooey Deschanel was pregnant IRL, and they didn’t want to do multiple episodes of “Jess holding giant piles of laundry in front of her stomach/standing behind an open refrigerator door/going through an oversized kaftan phase to hide her visibly pregnant body.” ↩︎
- As adults, like, between your junior and senior year at college or something. Consensually, of course. ↩︎
- He specifically calls out The Wedding Planner but … that’s not what that movie is about?! Unless I’ve forgotten the plot, which is very possible, because I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since I was a teenager. ↩︎
- This was … more than slightly intimated on The Mess Around Podcast hosted by Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris, where they recap and talk about New Girl, often with their fellow cast members joining them. ↩︎
