LogFAQs > #953105525

Series 35. The Mindy Project (Seasons 4-6, 50 episodes, 2015-2017)

I watched the first three seasons of Mindy Kaling's show shortly after they aired. It's a silly take on romantic comedy tropes and features a bunch of guest stars you'll recognize if you watched a lot of mid-00s and early '10s network TV comedies. Mindy Kaling plays Mindy Lahiri, an OBGYN who loves romance and eating. It was canceled on FOX after three seasons, but Hulu resuscitated it. I got Hulu during the pandemic and eventually got around to wrapping up the series, five years later.

It wasn't that terrible. I did laugh several times per episode. But I feel like the increasing politicization of the world makes this a bit cringier. Mindy is a woman of color, but every love interest of a straight female character (and there are a lot of love interests) is a white man. The show is also remarkably eager to introduce and have us sympathize with a new character, a lecherous, older southern white dude who says tons of casually racist things. He's portrayed as a love interest a few times. The show's primary love interest from the earlier seasons, a portrait of toxic masculinity, also leaves the show. Now they were already too serious for a "romcom" format to work for three seasons, so it's kind of understandable - but the void isn't particularly well filled. (When that character does make his occasional returns, it definitely amps up the chemistry of the show again, but also is jarring in how he's also frequently casually racist.)

The Mindy Project has a network-sitcom-staple wacky supporting cast, but the remnants here are worse than in many others. Morgan is the default pathologically stupid and loyal henchman nurse, but he feels way too annoying and unrealistic and creepy most of the time. Tamra, the most prominent other female character, is a nurse who winds up being Morgan's love interest. This is of course absolutely preposterous. The show also goes out of its way to let us know that Mindy, despite being rotund, is incredibly attractive to men. That isn't so bad on its own, but combined with her choice of love interests and her declaring (but never showing) how good of a mother she is, it feels like a sad sort of power fantasy. And I guess it's not my type of fantasy.

After a while, the ridiculousness of the things our racist friend Jody says and the repeated effeminate mumblings of British lead doctor Jeremy do lead to laughs. But the big picture, and especially the way the show takes the romantic plots in the end, doesn't really land for the conclusion of The Mindy Project.
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yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness