'New Girl' Recap (Season 2, Episode 19): 'Roomfriends,' Fish Obsessions, Drugged Up Confessions, & Make Out Sessions in 'Quick Hardening Caulk'

"New Girl" fans rooting for a romantic relationship between the "roomfriends" Nick and Jess finally see some progress in Tuesday night's episode.

Here's a recap of the March 19th episode entitled "Quick Hardening Caulk" if you missed out:

Tonight on Fox's "New Girl" (Season 2, episode 19) Jess and Nick ( Zooey Deschanel & Jake Johnson) take a big step in their "messy" roommate romance in this latest episode involving fish obsessions, drugged up confessions, and make out sessions.

The first scene opens at Nick's bar where a new character, Shane, is introduced. As Nick's new bar manager, Shane makes her "New Girl" debut by making out with Nick in front of Winston & Schmidt after making some not-so-subtle hints about what her & Nick did last night. This new possible love interest motivates Nick to mature a bit and make some changes including charging people for drinks at the bar and planning a "guy's night" promotion event. After Shane exits, Nick tells the boys "I know this isn't going to end well, but the whole middle part's gonna be awesome!"

Nick's new ambitions prove to be a major turn-on for Jess, who literally screamed at him from sexual frustration when he started to do his laundry and smelled nice for once (Jess is still in the blind at this point that Nick is shaping up for his new manager/love interest). Jess is still acting awkward around Nick following their first kiss a couple episodes back, which confirmed her romantic feelings about her roommate/best friend. She has yet to tell Nick how she feels about him in this typical "best friend falls in love with opposite sex best friend, but is too scared to do anything about it until it's too late" plot line.

Anyway, after Nick begs Jess for a while, she finally gives into his plea to drive him to the hardware store. Nick is still oblivious as to why Jess is acting jittery around him and doesn't realize that his simple actions like touching her face to remove an eyelash and unbuckling his pants to show her his underwear that turned a different color in the wash, is borderline inappropriate for their supposed "platonic" relationship.

Meanwhile, Schmidt & Winston are in a world of their own as Winston takes his friend to an aquarium in hopes of distracting Schmidt from CeCe's recent engagement. His plan fails as Schmidt becomes obsessed with a California lion fish exclaiming: "So beautiful, exotic, perfect curves, giant almond eyes, caramel-colored stripes, sumptuous lips... floats like an angel." He will do whatever it takes to bring the fish home with him, and we quickly learn that the exotic fish is really a metaphor for his ex-girlfriend CeCe. He wants to buy the rare, beautiful fish illegally & keep it forever, but the aquarium employee tells him it isn't for sale. This sets "Schmidtty" into a typical fit of rage as he nearly attacks the worker over the lion fish. He exits while screaming, "why can't I get what I want?" Leaving without a fish, a determined Schmidt purchases a fish tank for the apartment as he looks to fill it with the precious lion fish (while making further indications that he's really talking about CeCe).

Winston hoped that purchasing a clownfish would act as an adequate substitution, but Schmidt spat back, "I don't want some janky, freshwater bitch fish, Winston!" No, Schmidt would get his lionfish straight from the source. Winston: "The ocean?" Schmidt: "That's an even better idea!" Wait, what?"

As this duo ventures to the ocean, the other two roomies are at the hardware store where its hard for Jess to think of anything else besides wanting to take this new manly, ambitious Nick back home into her bedroom. After many hardware innuendos, Jess steps in front of a line of air condition unit to cool down and reminds herself, "Just remember, you caught him pleasuring himself to a mail-order steak catalog." Nick then called Jess over to another aisle so she could admire his "big ol' pipe" - that is, he'd climbed a ladder and placed a huge metal cylinder in front of his crotch. Flustered, Jess knocked into a cart that knocked into Nick's ladder and caused him to drop the pipe, which fell onto a wooden board that seesawed up and clocked Jess in the chin and sent her to the floor.

With a nice shiner on her chin and a bottle of painkillers to numb the injury, the best scene of the whole episode begins in Jess's bedroom. High from the pain meds, Jess unleashes her innermost thoughts to Nick: "I like you.. I wanna have sex with you..beautiful white man.." A loopy Jess claiming to be "Judy Garland" with her accent continued to tell Nick "I wanna have sex with youuuuuu!" Then she basically assaulted Nick, who is extremely confused & shocked by Jess's drugged up confessions, but realizes that she's too intoxicated to do anything about it. Not getting very far with her not-so-sensual seduction, Nick attempted to fend Jess off which led to him slamming his face into her headboard and then scalding his hand in the hot soup that he made for her. Needless to say, this was not Nick & Jess's big moment that we've all been waiting for, although it was a hilarious scene.

After this awkward encounter with his "loopy" friend who nearly raped him, Nick finally had a moment of realization: Jess's drugged up confessions actually represented her true sober feelings. Nick admitted that he shared Jess's feelings and wouldn't have started anything with Shane if he'd known about them. Alas, Jess emerged from her bedroom before Nick solved his conundrum and obviously she didn't remember anything from last night's encounter.

Meanwhile, Winston & Schmidt go fishing in the ocean in hopes of capturing a lion fish to fill Schmidt's new fish tank. However, they get sidetracked when a poisonous jellyfish attacks Schmidt's face as he has another hilarious "Schmiddy fit." Winston reveals that he already peed in the ocean and therefore cannot pee on the jellyfish sting like Schmidt wants, but he can do "number 2." It then cuts to a hospital scene, where CeCe shows up with a lion fish, (upon Winston's request) but Winston quickly realized that the best way he could make Schmidt happy was to was ask Cece to back off since her engagement is "killing" Schmidt. It was really uncomfortable, but Cece agreed to give him some space and headed out as he woke up. When Schmidt awakes, he reveals his stream of consciousness and admits that the fish he's been obsessing over is really a metaphor for CeCe. He finally decides to let the lion fish go and attempts to bring it back to the ocean where it can swim freely. Keeping the fish metaphor in find, this is a huge moment for Schmidt. WIll he finally be over CeCe for good and let her get married?

That night, Jess showed up at the bar to support Nick's new "Guys' Night" promotion. (Even Jess had to admit giving guys free drinks at a dive bar was the world's worst idea, though apparently the bar was making mad money on nacho mark-up.) Nick tried desperately to separate Jess and Shane and, failing that, tried to play it cool so neither of them would notice his relationship with the other. Of course Shane blew that by slapping his butt and being super aggressive with Nick in front of a blind-sided Jess. Nick tried to cover it up by claiming that he gets handsy and sexy with all of the coworkers, including a guy named Big Bob, but the cover was clearly not believable (although Big Bob did lay a kiss on Nick's cheek to try to help his story out). Nick apologized and Jess sputtered out that she had not reason to be upset because they weren't anything. A confused Shane, who could never understand the wacky relationship between the two roommates, questioned Nick about Jess. He stumbled around until he settled on the term "roomfriend."

Jess left, and Nick chased after her. After making some jokes about the name Shane and pretending not to care about Nick's relationship with her, Nick told Jess what she'd said on the pain meds and admitted getting together with her was something he'd "thought about a lot." He lost his train of thought a little when he started talking about his "little piggy," and she yelled, "What are you talking about?!" He asked bluntly, "Do you want to have sex with me or don't you?" Jess: "YES! ... NO! ... YES!" (And we'll count that a win for the "Yes"-es.)

Terrified of the silence between them, she backpedaled furiously that she was only attracted because he was getting his s- together. He called her a gold digger, and she snapped back that, if that were true, she'd be "the worst gold digger in the world." It was clear he was having fun with it, ribbing her as he moved in closer. She moved in, too. And then they were face to face. She said one last time, "I'm not a gold digger!" Nick: "Then prove it." Andddd another kiss occurred, followed by a make-out session that was kind of hot yet still funny as the "roomfriends" continued to reinjure each other and yell/fight between the romantic kisses. The make-out session seemed to be escalating quickly followed by Nick's magical words "shut up and take off your damn clothes. I mean it." On their way to sealing the deal, the canoodling couple knocked into the fish tank and it shattered all over the apartment.

Nick volunteered to get some paper towels, and Jess immediately snarked about what an absurdly under-response that was. And so they had stopped kissing and were back to bickering playfully. Leaving the mess on the floor, the couple separated to go into their own bedrooms. They slammed their doors then immediately (and predictably) reopened them so they could meet in the middle for one more intense hook-up before heading back to their rooms alone.

Tonight may not have been the night, but it was a major one for the two roommates who we've been hoping would get together since the 4th episode of Season 1 of "New Girl."

What's in store next for Nick & Jess? Luckily, we only have to wait one week this time to find out. This week's episode of the quirky Fox sitcom definitely did not disappoint as it left fans laughing and craving more of the "roomfriends," Nick and Jess.