C/D MINDY KALING (THE DEFINITIVE POLL)

pally = A+ addition to the roster

^^

otm, i'm really hoping he sticks around long term.

He is a member of the main cast.

originally he was just recurring but they promoted him to main cast a couple weeks into the season

winky face!

This was one of the best episodes so far

do you carry fatsteps cankle wranglers - theyre for the problematic foot? ok you dont have to look at me like that

dr. dan's funky ale

http://www.buzzfeed.com/aasiddiqi/a-mindy-project-roundtable

lol that rayrons name is reagan ronald

Really enjoyed the latest episodes. So weird the shows been renewed but they're airing two eps back to back summer burnoff style.

it would be wrong to say i havent laughed at all while watching her, but i just dont the show/her all that funny. like, i get the tone is 'funny', but i just dont hear all that much funny material, or great gags. its like, its all set up to be hilarious, they just forgot the actual hilarity. she seems to think that talking really manically and acting cute = humour. but then i seem to have this problem with a lot of modern 'hip'(-ish) american comedy (aziz, donald glover, new girl/zooey, etc). its kinda bland? (maybe this series gets a lot better, im sure im behind watching it on british TV).

i liked her book though. shes endearing. just not all that comedic. also, i dunno if its been commented on in this thread, but its kinda interesting how there seem to be no other indian people in her show/in her love life (maybe she just a type and hey, that's fine i suppose). not that there HAVE to be of course, its just a bit interesting.

*just has a type

i have a problem with this womans voice

the buzzfeed link from a few posts up is literally thousands of words about how everyone else on the show is white. some interesting food for thought in the discussion but also kinda overwhelming. i just watch the show and think it's funny.

Well yeah - the stakes are gonna be different if you're approaching this show as a South Asian American! I'm like you in that I can also watch the show and just think that it's funny, that's a, uh, difference in perspective afforded to us by our racial identity in America

it's a show about an aspirational indian doctor with a conservative streak who predominantly dates white people. I can't begrudge any POC frustrated that THIS still passes for a major diversity breakthrough in TV, but when people are like "Mindy should date non-white people" I can't go there any more than I could with someone I knew in real life.

yeah totally

Well I wouldn't downplay its significance too much - it's still a sitcom aired on a major network with a very-underrepresented POC as the lead and focus of the show

But at the same time I wouldn't begrudge the criticism levied at the show in the piece above, and they were very careful to also point out that they love the show in general

I guess, you can be very critical of a show and still fête it, they're not incompatible standpoints

i died @ "Jenny! What were you thinking? A sex party? That's not for regular people. That's for couples in John Updike novels!"

I can understand the criticism on the lack of other Indians/POCs in the show (Mindy's brother did appear a few times in season 1, but I don't think we've seen him during this season?) & Mindy dating only white guys, but on the other hand the show has been pretty good at pointing out that what Mindy's not really a role model, and the stuff she does is not always ethical or politically correct. I think this kind of self-awareness/self-deprecation, acknowledging that the quirks of the "quirky" protagonist aren't necessarily a good thing, is what makes The Mindy Project better and more three-dimensional, say, New Girl. I do feel the show plays it safe in its usage of romcom tropes (even if this acknowledged on a meta level, when the show juxtaposes the plots to the chick lit and romcom movies Mindy loves), most evident in the cavalcade of boyfriends we've seen so far, and there should be room for a show that focuses more on the "Indianness" of the protagonist, but at this point taking TMP into that direction would also feel kinda forced. It is what it is, hopefully other shows can expand on that.

How long did Danny think he could keep up the ruse of being Dr Schulman? If the rabbi ever followed through on his promise to refer patients to him, wouldn't they find out he wasn't Dr Schulman almost immediately? It's not like he could write prescriptions under this name. These are the things we should be talking about.

"No, I'm Beverly something." <- key line

http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/04/23/3429922/on-mindy-lahiri-amy-schumer-and-cool-girls/

Writer of that piece thinks Mindy is cool because she isn't some mythological stereotypical "cool girl"

Do you like that article?

is it just me or was this last episode jam-packed w/ lolz?

Totally mistook Mark Duplass for Matt Besser

I think the second season ended pretty nicely, but it felt like the whole series could've ended there, so I'm not sure what they can do for the third season? If they break up Mindy and Danny again, it'll feel forced, but keeping together takes away some of the story possibilities. This is always the problem with "will they or won't they?" couples in TV series: if they got together too quickly, a lot of the energy that made them interesting can be lost, but OTOH dragging the romantic tension for several season without resolving it can get pretty tiring too (see The Nanny or Fraser, for example). I think Fraser eventually resolved quite nicely: they didn't wait for the final season for Niles and Daphne to get together, and subsequently found out they could still write funny plots about the two as a couple.
I hope this route is the one TMP will also take.

Also, if Mindy's constant romantic problems aren't so much in the focus from now, that'll give them more space to develop the supporting cast. The naive receptionist girl and the British doctor totally suffered from having so little screen time during the second season, they showed some potential in season 1, but after that they haven't really had any storylines of their own. IMO the series has a nice, rounded cast of major and supporting characters, so they should really put more effort into strengthening that instead of just doing endless "Mindy's latest fling" plots, those'll get boring after a while.

more Adam Pally!

this quote from kaling suggest there won't be a lot of will-they-wont-they

“Suspense is always good, but there’s a lot of great virtues from the TV comedies we love — I Love Lucy, Modern Family — which show couples together. Mindy and Danny at Costco or (Catholic) Mass is funny — there’s so many funny places you can put them.”

considering the ratings uptick (or at least ratings uptick-over-new-girls-downtick) they got when the danny/mindy relationship heated up (and nick/jess cooled down), i think they know better than to send mindy back to the new-beau wheel

I have never been into male stripping, never found it at all sexy but that scene with Chris Messina was pretty hot IMO.

can someone find a gif of danny saying 'exsqueeze me' w/ the wine bottle plz

https://33.media.tumblr.com/8dad8dfaf1641aecf4d2bf9175ccd83f/tumblr_ndgu77dAfe1tpujrro1_250.gif

ahaha yes

This show is getting so great. Adam Pally was a great addition and I'm glad that, so far at least, the Mindy/Danny relationship is actually making it more interesting.

yeah i was totally resigned to the show never melding the romantic and ensemble aspects, but making danny & mindy a couple has kinda done the trick - we no longer have to spend half the episode with a dude outside the ensemble. and while pally just seemed like one more clown they've made him distinct over time.

do kinda regret he can't be the male lead on marry me, though

someone complained on twitter that Pally was going to waste on The Mindy Project and i was like no way, he's already had more screentime than at least 5 other characters that are or were full cast members

i could 4-5 legit laughs from this show every episode almost exclusively from mindy. the rest of the cast is good too but she is next-level imo.

yeah the comedic voice of her/her character has been really strong and fully formed from the jump, even as they've played mix-and-match with the ensemble

Pally is great, but it feels he's kinda made the British doctor redundant, that guy had hardly anything to do last season. Also, I don't like the way they've gradually reduced the female supporting cast; looks like Betsy has inepxlicably disappearead between seasons 2 and 3, just like Gwen and the two other female friends of Mindy inexplicably disappeared after sesons 1. It feels kinda weird, Mindy is depicted as a feminine women, but now she appears to have no other friends than the masculine guys from her work.

I do hope they'll bring back Rhea Perlman for more episodes... She was a perfect choice for Danny's mom, and not just because it explains his height.

i understand mourning the women that got lost in the shuffle of mindy's supporting cast (i liked betsy a lot), but i think you're making a big ol unadvisable assumption in saying a (*gingerly picks up the landmine of a phrase you gave us, thanks so much*) "feminine woman" would naturally have close female friends, and be uncomfortable in a primarily male friend circle

i mean mindy is portrayed as extremely selfish and competitive as hell, practically a cross between liz lemon and angelina jolie

I didn't say she'd be uncomfortable with guys, just that it feels weird a woman like her wouldn't have *any* female friends. Though I guess you could fanwank it away by saying that her female friends from season 1 are still there, the series just doesn't anymore show what she does with them. That doesn't explain what happened to Betsy though...

i just think you should realize that with the "feminine" and "like her" addendums to "woman" you're suggesting a) that there is a type of woman you could imagining having no female friends and b) that you'd consider that person more "masculine" than mindy. again, unadvised.

without engaging in "fanwank," she is pretty centered on work and her relationship right now, so subplots about girlfriends outside the already chock-full-of-clowns office would be a little gratuitous.

let's not forget most of her subplots about her friend in season 1 involved them being mad at her and her resenting their evolving lives

great show v good enjoying much