Structural Balance in New Girl: The Case for Random Roommates
First airing in 2011, Fox’s New Girl took the nation by storm, introducing four loveable characters –– Nick Miller, Winston Bishop, Schmidt, and Jessica Day –– to an initial audience of 10.8 million people who would soon become part of a growing and loyal fanbase. Today, the show is still gaining in popularity; it has over 2.5 billion searches on TikTok and is “trending” on Netflix, according to a Vanity Fair article published in May. As explained in the article, Netflix may even be actively looking to emulate New Girl’s emotional appeal when trying to produce similar “big, broad stories that can be told on a budget” (Vanity Fair, 2022). Beyond its admiration online, however, New Girl’s characters present another surprising application: its adherence to the Structural Balance Property.
The plot of New Girl is simple: Jess, in search of a place to live after breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, rents a room in an apartment with three strangers, who end up being Nick, Winston, and Schmidt. The four of them coexist wonderfully, becoming close friends in the process.
Shockingly enough, the relationships between these characters remain structurally balanced throughout the show –– even in a network with a random roommate. As defined by Kleinberg and Easley, structural balance is achieved when, “for every three sets of nodes (in a network), if we consider the three edges connecting them, either all three of these edges are labeled +, or exactly one of them is labeled +” (Networks, Crowds, and Markets, 2010). If we consider the four characters in New Girl, it becomes obvious that the network displayed throughout the show is structurally balanced to a T.
At the beginning of the show, the network between Nick, Winston, and Schmidt consists of three positive edges (“positive” refers to close friendships); the trio had been roommates and friends for years. When Jess is introduced, she was a stranger, indicating the edges that connect her to Nick, Schmidt, and Winston would be negative (distant relationships). Hence, all triangles of characters would contain either three positive edges or exactly one positive edge, satisfying the Structural Balance Property.
As the series progresses, the four characters quickly –– and perhaps unsurprisingly –– become close friends, meaning that all edges become positive. Thus, throughout the series, it’s clear that the network between Schmidt, Jess, Nick, and Winston is balanced. This, in turn, may indicate a surprising claim: although the show itself is fictional, New Girl’s cohesion to the Structural Balance Property may indicate that the tight-knit relationships displayed throughout the series might not be so far-fetched. This, too, may point to the public admiration acquired by the show; the idea of balanced networks is something that some may desire and wish to see portrayed on television.
Ultimately, then, if you’re looking for housing, maybe you should consider living with three random people … who knows, maybe you’ll provide the structural balance Jess did when she signed her lease!
Sources:
- Vanity Fair, 2022: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/05/how-did-new-girl-become-a-netflix-lifeboat
- Networks, Crowds, and Markets, 2010: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/