Fox Has No Taste, Or: "Mindy Kaling Is My Role Model"
A terrible thing happened Wednesday night. Right around the time most of us West Coast day-workers got home, Entertainment Weekly dropped a bombshell on our Facebook newsfeeds: Fox cancelled The Mindy Project. Way to make hump day that much worse, Fox.
I clutched my chest in horror and, without realizing, started whispering “Oh no” in a way that made the people around me believe someone I love dearly had perished in an untimely fashion. Furtive glances alerted me to my drama-dom. “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice sounding rather like a five-year old whose scoop of chocolate chip ice cream fell off her waffle cone. “My favorite TV show has been cancelled.”
I quickly moved on to the anger phase of the stages of grief. “How could they??” I shouted to my cat as I angrily commented on various Facebook threads. “They let New Girl’s plot and character development absolutely go to hell for at least two seasons, but they’ll cancel Mindy??” Unamused at the decibel level of my voice, my cat gave me a seething look reminiscent of my face when I find out no one left me any coffee at work.
One Facebook commenter agreed but indicated Mindy Kaling’s decision to get the main character of the show (played by, and named for, Mindy) pregnant this season was questionable – a nail in the coffin, perhaps. True, it was risky. Shows where characters get together too soon usually jump the gun on character development and cause all the delightful tension the show thrives on to totally fizzle. If that's the case, imagine how getting a character pregnant too fast could put the kibosh on a show. Oh wait... isn't there that little show called Jane The Virgin?
But after Mindy and Danny got together, that didn’t happen. After Mindy got pregnant, that didn’t happen. We were just all waiting for it to happen because we aren’t used to sitcoms breaking out of the Shakespearean comedic arc that we have all become so accustomed to: start with lots of drama, end with a wedding. And apparently Fox wanted to bite the bullet before it happened rather than trusting in Mindy Kaling.
And they should have trusted in her. While the show pays homage to the greatest romantic comedies of our time – When Harry Met Sally, anyone? – it diverges from the norm. The protagonist is a successful, career-driven OBGYN. She has actual fat on her body, like most humans. She wears loud clothes with outrageous pattern combinations and doesn’t give a shit if anyone thinks it’s weird. She is unabashaedly narcissistic even though she doubts herself just as much as anybody else. Most importantly, she has learned over the course of three seasons that she is pretty freakin’ badass, that she's fine just the way she is, and she is totally satisfied being independent and single (but some lovin' couldn't hurt). And she’s got a sexy boyfriend who absolutely adores each and every one of these traits.
Oh, and the writing and supporting cast are so funny that the show makes me laugh more than anything else I’ve ever seen on TV. If you’re near me when The Mindy Project is on, prepare to learn what my snort sounds like.
For its creativity, its diversion from the norm, its feminism, its reality, this show is my favorite on television. And the fact that it is written and produced by a young woman who also stars in it makes me love it even more. Mindy Kaling’s talents truly seem endless to me, and her drive is incredibly admirable.
How she’s handled the media frenzy has been both witty and classy as hell. A short time after the internet exploded with the news of the cancellation, she a brief video of herself in the woods with the description: "Hey guys, I'm in Montana, is anything happening in LA? #themindyproject."
Today, she posted this photo on her social media accounts:
Poor Fox. Those network execs have no idea they just shot themselves in the foot.