The Mindy Project

[shallowness]

I caught up on the two episodes I missed...while the latest episode was being aired. And no, I wasn’t going to wait for the +1 channel.

2.3 Music Festival

Mindy’s hair is better, yay! Shoulder length, occasional red streak.

And finally, the use of ‘babe’ on this show will be reduced a kajillion times. I liked how and over what the break-up eventually happened, that Danny talked Mindy into supporting Casey and that she had a legitimate reason for breaking up – having failed to see how incompatible they were for months and months – having her dump him because she couldn’t deal with festivals would have been a tad too narcissistic, even though it looked like that was where they were going for a while.

Again, Jeremy sort of failed at being British in odd ways.

2.4 Magic Morgan

Heh to the use of a musical number to denote sadness, not really feeling the attorney (so if they go there, as Danny says, she dates creeps), but amused at Morgan. And disturbed. And maybe a little touched, which is par for the course, as yet another cliché is disinterred and shaken about for occasional laughs.

Why didn’t Mindy say she broke up with Casey?

PS Legally Blonde was adapted from a novel. There was no novelisation. FACT.

So far, I’m not laughing very much at this second series, and many of the problems – the length of it, the tone of some of the humour and the fact they don’t know what to do with most of the staff at the practice – are still there. This year, I’ve enjoyed Brooklyn Nine-Nine, let alone Parks and Recreation so much more. I’m getting more out of the Arrested Development season 4 DVDs even.

Comments

[purple_cube]

I've been really disappointed with this season too, and couldn't pinpoint the reason. But I think you're right - there's serious issues with pacing and tone, characters like Betsy seem to have only had a couple of lines of dialogue per episode.

[shallowness]

Good to know I'm not the only one.

I do think that they haven't got the balance between Mindy and everyone else right. There's a second tier that includes Danny (yay!), Morgan and Jeremy (understandable) and random new doctors and guest stars, and everyone else is in the background except when they're wheeled out to make the same punchline.

It feels like they haven't quite worked out how much plot should be in these twentysomething minute episodes, which isn't great, given that it's the second season.

[purple_cube]

I think that what also bothers me is that the love interest is also in the second tier, and although this was also the case in the first season, with recent episodes it seems like this has pushed every other character except Danny down the pecking order. Like we had occasional episodes or arcs dedicated to Betsy, Morgan, even the brothers upstairs (I've forgotten their names, and yes, one of them was the love interest at one point) all at the same time as dedicating time to Mindy's love life. Now, there doesn't seem to be any secondary plot. It's solely about Mindy, and there's nothing to offset her - I know it's her show, but there needs to be secondary characters with their own stories too. Which, like you say, is odd given that it's the second season and not the first.

[shallowness]

It is odd that they seem to have taken a step backward. I've been trying to compare this with what other sitcoms I watch/have watched, but they are mostly more ensembles even if they do have a main characte. The only show I can compare it with is Miranda, which obviously revolves around the titular character and in the second tier are all the other regulars, but there's only three to four of them and they all get a fair whack of time, if not in each episode, in the whole run.