This show, which started out so promising, and Kaling so irreverent, ended up running out of gas already by this, the late third season. Why? the writers and Kaling (who was the big boss, hence the show's NAME -- HER project, not the characters or subject!) had to hook up Mindy with one of her co-characters. This assortive mating stuff in TV series is super-boring and predictable -- where most of the characters end up with their co-workers or best friends. It's lazy writing. BTW:when this was first prodcast in January 2015, Kaling herself (hence her character) was only 34! what's the big rush?
Anyways, I've been rewatching the show on DVD -- remembering it as all looser and funnier than it comes across on a second viewing. Think of the Seinfield show -- now 25 years old or more! -- I can watch an old episode and every bit of is still hilarious and point-on. The Mindy Project already feels dated, slow, DESPERATE and unfunny. The characters on Seinfeld were in this age range -- mid-30s+ -- but cool with it. Mindy always feels desperate.
I comment on this particular episode only because it was the last one before I pulled the plug and said "OK, I'm done" and it was actually a bit better than the rest, because Kaling snagged Lee Pace as the guest star -- and cast him basically as his character from "Halt and Catch Fire", which was running simultaneously on the air as this broadcast. That's a very funny IDEA that goes nowhere, which is a shame. The premise is he is now a rich & famous tech guru and still crushing on Mindy for the last 12 years....Kaling has an astonishing ego, to even imagine this. Supposedly they lost their virginity to one another, at age 24 (!!!). Not impossible, but good grief, it would have been 2003 in real time. Her character -- boy crazy and desperate -- waited until her third year in MEDICAL SCHOOL to get laid? It did make me think that H&CF would have been better reimagined as a movie comedy instead of a dead serious cable series that went on for six interminable years.
Anyways, any real attempt at funny here is crushed dead by Kaling's ego and inability to step things back. I hope she is not this obsessive and shallow in real life. It's way less funny than she thinks it is. This series has no legs; it will never be the kind of show people want to see in 20 years as it is neither universal nor does it capture the "zeitgeist" of the 2010s.
Anyways, I've been rewatching the show on DVD -- remembering it as all looser and funnier than it comes across on a second viewing. Think of the Seinfield show -- now 25 years old or more! -- I can watch an old episode and every bit of is still hilarious and point-on. The Mindy Project already feels dated, slow, DESPERATE and unfunny. The characters on Seinfeld were in this age range -- mid-30s+ -- but cool with it. Mindy always feels desperate.
I comment on this particular episode only because it was the last one before I pulled the plug and said "OK, I'm done" and it was actually a bit better than the rest, because Kaling snagged Lee Pace as the guest star -- and cast him basically as his character from "Halt and Catch Fire", which was running simultaneously on the air as this broadcast. That's a very funny IDEA that goes nowhere, which is a shame. The premise is he is now a rich & famous tech guru and still crushing on Mindy for the last 12 years....Kaling has an astonishing ego, to even imagine this. Supposedly they lost their virginity to one another, at age 24 (!!!). Not impossible, but good grief, it would have been 2003 in real time. Her character -- boy crazy and desperate -- waited until her third year in MEDICAL SCHOOL to get laid? It did make me think that H&CF would have been better reimagined as a movie comedy instead of a dead serious cable series that went on for six interminable years.
Anyways, any real attempt at funny here is crushed dead by Kaling's ego and inability to step things back. I hope she is not this obsessive and shallow in real life. It's way less funny than she thinks it is. This series has no legs; it will never be the kind of show people want to see in 20 years as it is neither universal nor does it capture the "zeitgeist" of the 2010s.
