It took me until the second season to catch on to New Girl, but I’m firmly on the bandwagon and the last two episodes have been hilarious and touching in a way that few other shows have matched in recent years. Will Nick and Jess get together? How will Schmidt offend/endear Cece next?

But Winston. Man, I just don’t get that guy. Maybe it was different in the first season when he had a girlfriend, but lately he’s the show’s fifth wheel, spinning listlessly a few inches off the ground while his roommates drive the show forward.

The last two episodes have been huge as Nick and Jess redefine the show’s chemistry with their mouths, and Schmidt and Cece play tug of war with their relationship. And where’s Winston during all of this? Hooking up with a cute girl and then spreading his new mojo with random characters we’ll never see again.

Winston does one thing important in “Table 34,” setting the stakes for Nick when he tells him to put things right with Jess or one of them will have to go when their fling ends. But Schmidt could’ve said that line too and nothing would’ve changed.

He looks worse when every other character is so well defined. Nick is the impulsive, cranky lovable loser. Schmidt is the squishy heart hidden beneath a plaster of Type-A, hyper-everything. Winston is just weird, and not in a consistent way.

It’s like the writers keep thinking of gags that don’t work for the other guys and then just chuck them at Winston, so he’s the one that ends up with massive morning boners, a drooling love for Nick’s tropical drinks and Indian women who want to tie him up.

The solution might be as simple as giving him a girlfriend again, perhaps that girl he met in “The Cooler.” It’d only be fair to have Winston getting to know his own new girl; happy in his bliss while his roommates suffer through their own uncertain relationships.