When it started, The Mindy Project was a warm, witty ode to romantic comedies – and a gentle critique of the unrealistic expectations they promote. Writer and creator Mindy Kaling starred as Mindy Lahiri, a gifted obstetrician-gynaecologist in her early 30s who grew up on Nora Ephron movies but can’t make a long-term relationship work. (“Maybe I’ll do one of those Eat, Pray, Love things,” she muses. “Ugh, no, I don’t wanna pray. Forget it, I’ll just die alone.”)
The pilot was close to perfection, featuring a sequence where Mindy made a bitter, drunken speech at her ex-boyfriend’s wedding, stole a bike and cycled into the night, slurring: “I’m Sandra Bullock!” before falling into a swimming pool. Back on dry land, we met her romantic prospects: fellow doctors Jeremy (Ed Weeks), a posh Brit, and Danny (Chris Messina), with whom she traded sarcastic insults and shared off-the-charts chemistry. Mindy then sprang into work mode and dashed to deliver a baby, like the renaissance woman she is.
Sadly, though, after this confident beginning, the show became less and less sure of itself. The supporting characters constantly changed, with only the most annoying sticking around – including Ike Barinholtz as eccentric ex-convict nurse Morgan and a pair of obsequious midwives played by actor-director brothers Mark and Jay Duplass, who long outstayed their welcome. The tone was as inconsistent as the cast, so it was impossible to predict from one episode to the next whether you’d be watching a workplace comedy, a dramedy or a farce.
It looked as if the show had course-corrected at the end of season two when, after 46 episodes worth of will-they-won’t-they flirting, Mindy and Danny finally got together in a last-minute rush to the Empire State Building that included the kind of real-world complications romantic comedies usually leave out – a traffic jam, a lift breakdown, Mindy’s extreme lack of physical fitness – yet still managed to be so heart-meltingly sweet that Nora Ephron herself could scarcely have scripted it better. But then came season three and a surprise pregnancy plotline that tore the lovebirds apart and turned them into characters it was difficult to like – or even recognise.
We were expected to believe that, despite seeing pregnant women daily, Mindy was lax about using contraception, while the formerly family-centric Danny suddenly questioned whether marriage and children were what he wanted after all. Once he decided they were, he became a controlling, chauvinist pig, trying to dissuade Mindy from starting her own practice in case she became a negligent mother.
Their relationship fell apart but the show lumbered on, revived by streaming service Hulu for another three seasons after original broadcaster Fox pulled the plug. Chris Messina took a time out, more characters it was hard to care about came and went, and Mindy and Danny reconciled in the final few minutes, which felt like too little, too late. The show’s working title was It’s Messy. It would have been more honest to have kept it.
