Granted, in the case of New Girl, when Coach appeared in the seventh episode of the third season, audiences were experiencing more of a reunion than an introduction. Damon Wayans, Jr. had appeared as Coach in the series' pilot, and was intended to be a series regular from the start. But Wayans Jr. did the New Girl pilot in second position to his ABC series Happy Endings (which was in its second season at the time). When ABC surprisingly renewed Happy Endings, New Girl was suddenly down a principle cast member.

In March, I attended a Comedy@SCA event with the writers of New Girl, where Liz Meriwether explained that the pilot was both too expensive and too beloved by the network to be reshot with a new actor playing Coach. So, instead, Meriwether and her team opted to leave Coach in the pilot and introduce a new character in the second episode (Lamorne Morris as Winston Bishop). 

Meriwether told the USC audience that the writing team was intent on making Coach's sudden exit seem plausible. No freak accidents, no swapping out of actors and pretending the audience won't notice. They kept it simple: Coach had moved to Santa Monica.

And sure, if you've braved the I-10 freeway at rush hour, then you can buy into the idea that once Coach had made his sojourn from the posse's Downtown Arts District loft to the Westside, he wouldn't be making the trek back anytime soon. But when he moves back in during the third season, audiences had to be wondering: "What's he been doing all this time? These guys are acting pretty chummy for buds that live in the same city and yet haven't interacted in two whole years." 

One of the most successful and rewarding elements of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries' transmedia strategy was the seeding of Gigi Darcy, a character that was beloved during LBD's original run and went on to star in another Pemberley Digital series, Sanditon. By developing this character concurrent with the timeline of the mother ship series, the producers of LBD could later introduce a full-fledged character with as much depth of character as the players that had appeared from the very beginning. Jay Bushman, the series' transmedia producer, calls this the "rabbit hole technique."

While choosing not to kill Coach was on the one hand a play for below-the-radar cast shifting, I gathered from the writers at Comedy@SCA that it was also a strategic move that would make Wayans Jr. a viable guest star later on in the series. With that potential game plan in mind, the New Girl creators could have enhanced their character dynamics tremendously by developing Coach alongside the regular cast. Sure, he was 20 exits down the 10, but he could have still played a substantial role in their lives online, whether on Twitter, Tumblr, or by interacting with Full of Schmidt. 

And in the same way that LBD carved out a specific place on the internet for Gigi, the New Girl creators could have seeded Coach in communities that would enhance his personality; for instance, as a personal trainer, he'd be a perfect match for Fitocracy, a fitness social network.