While Mindy’s mercenary pursuit of the rom-com ideal has done a lot to fill out her own character, it often feels to me like she’s romping through one of those shooting ranges where cardboard cut-outs of people keep popping up from behind bushes to surprise you. Too often, though, the players in the real world have conformed to the archetypes Mindy Kapoor has assigned them. Mindy Project is conceptually a show about the difference between rom-com life and real life, about the Quixotic travails of a woman modeling her existence on a fictional construct. Did Jeremy really need to so fully and self-consciously articulate his character’s shallowness to Danny? Moreover, would he have?Īnother way of phrasing that question is this: is Jeremy a character or the idea of a character? This is a question Mindy is very interested in pursuing at a meta level, but strangely less so in practice, and it’s something that came up on both shows this week. There are basic outlines for each character - Mindy is a self-obsessed romantic, Danny is a surprisingly deep douche, Jeremy is an emotionally unavailable lothario, Morgan is a quirkily warm-hearted doofus - but the detail work on these characters has been superficial, and, occasionally, incongruous. But I think maybe Mindy is just still working out the details. I’ve criticized Mindy in the past for portraying unlikable characters that the show didn’t seem to realize were unlikable. The construction of Mindy Kapoor as a character was subordinated to the construction of an effective narrative.
Her ignorance of that text enables the episode to function the way it does, and, as Lili points out, it provides a neat “meta statement” about the show, but it’s also way out of character. If Mindy Kapoor had ever heard of Peanuts, the phone-call would not have had the same resonance, and the episode’s structure would have faltered. It’s a miniscule point, and exactly the kind of thing that could leave our blog vulnerable to charges of obsessive over-analysis of trivial television programs, but I think it’s also a really emblematic flub.
Lili, I completely agree that the extended Peanuts allusion brilliantly structures the episode, which, not coincidentally, was written by Chris McKenna, the screenwriter of last year’s most notable piece of pop pastiche, Community’s “Remedial Chaos Theory.” That said, how on earth is it possible that a 30-year-old woman, growing up in America with an encyclopedic knowledge of romantic comedies and a television addiction - Mindy Kaling, in other words, who just executive produced an episode of television based around the message of It's a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - has never heard of Peanuts? Who is Mindy Lahiri? Who are any of these people? If New Girl is strong on character and weak on plot, though, I often find Mindy to have the opposite problem. What’s more, it’s building up Robbie as a swell guy we’ll all be sad to see leave when Cece starts splitting rails again with Young Abe Lincoln. Schmidt’s irresistible douchebaggery, Nick’s charming cowardliness, Jess’s inability to be casual, etc. (Specifically, I’m thinking about the tentative gazes post high-five in the hallway and post-punch on the couch.) So, despite the overload, and the fact that the writers seem to have a grudge against Lamorne Morris (why can’t Winston have a good Woody Allen impersonation?), this episode was heavy on what New Girl does best: character work.
#The mindy project halloween costume plus
Sam, plus all those make-out fake-outs between Nick and Jess. The episode was all about servicing relationships: Winston/Shelby, Schmidt/Cece/Robbie, Jess/Dr. That said, a lot of chickens - plot threads - came home to roost this episode, and it felt a bit like a clearing house. As we spoke about last week, New Girl is floundering a bit structurally, dropping plotlines inexplicably, and refusing to fully commit to a seriality that would make it more like Arrested Development than the Big Bang Theory-meets-performance art it kind of currently is. Scoring these episodes on points earned, I’d say it’s a little more of a draw. In this week’s battle of the Thirtysomething Lady Sitcoms, I am willing to concede that Mindy Project is the winner, but it’s the winner by an improbable knockout - the aforementioned jaw-droppingly well-written and well-performed phone call between Mindy and a first-grader. I'M AFRAID I MIGHT have to be the Grinch this Halloween.
"Dance, Monkey, Dance," from Phil Maciak."Peanuts and the Perils of the Perfect Costume," from Lili Loofbourow.
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