The Mindy Project has been hugely advertised as Fox’s most successful new comedy show. This week E4 premiered the show’s pilot episode featuring Mindy Kaling, already well known to the audience from “The Office”. The series tells the story of romance – obsessed gynecologist Mindy Lahiri.
The protagonist is a young, successful and outspoken single woman. She is desperately trying to find Mr. Right meanwhile she is having a non – strings attached relationship with her attractive colleague with an unbearably sexy British accent. Sounds cliché? Good. Because that’s exactly what it is.
Opening with a scene in which we see the protagonist as a fascinated with romantic movies kid, my first thought was “That’s so (500) Days of Summer! Bring it on!”. Having seen the trailer beforehand, I was already having an Ally McBeal expectation and then I was even happier to discover that she works in a hospital – you can never go wrong with a Scrubs formula but as the pilot episode hardly developed, I realized I’m about to be put through the same as Mindy in her search for men – disappointment.
The secondary characters were underdeveloped and were there merely as a crutch to Mindy. The dialogue was stiff and terribly unfunny. I even found it offensive when she bluntly requested “more white patients” because of her career. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a sense of humor but if the producers thought lines like that could be funny then the joke is on them. Oh wait, did I mention that one of the producers is Mindy herself?
If producing and writing a show about yourself, starring yourself sounds self – centered and vain, wait till you hear Mindy’s self – reflecting monologues. They are supposed to be funny and self sarcastic but somehow fail to convince me to like her. Mindy is desperately seeking for love, or so she says. Yet, in the whole episode the men in her life were given not more than a sentence each and were reduced to the sexy, not-so-bright doctor, the grumpy doctor, the ex and the too good to be true date.
None of them had any distinctive traits. Yet, being a pilot episode, just briefly outlining the secondary characters is understandable and forgivable. Hopefully, as the series continue, the characters will start looking more human and Mindy will become less vain.
All in all, The Mindy Project suits its name – it still looks like a project and there is much space for improvement. I don’t expect a revelation from a romcom movie, neither a cure for cancer nor a brave political statement and that is fine because this is not the idea of the genre. Yet, there is a difference between a Meg Ryan comedy and a Katerine Heigl one. Let’s just hope The Mindy Project chooses the right direction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiiGamPGa8Q
2 stars ★★✰✰✰
