Mindy Kaling for the Win
Long before The Mindy Project secured itself a valiant fourth season, I want to say on Hulu, it kind of felt like Mindy Kaling was phoning it in a little. This Indian-American comedienne lit up all her scenes in the US translation of The Office, making the sorts of superficial remarks and observations so often reserved for prototypical blondes. She then secured a book deal. Every blossoming comedienne secured a book deal in the Obama years. It was woman season, for once, and maybe pop culture would even let some brown ones in.
The Mindy Project captured and conveyed Ms. Kaling’s obvious charm. She was every bit as American as Alicia Silverstone was in Clueless, the cinematic shorthand within which many collegiate and scholastic love stories are told even today. But the project, pardon, over-congratulated itself for getting a brown woman through the door. Mindy was a doctor who ran a practice surprisingly well for someone who routinely made a public display of her love life, often as a result of dating and bedding attractive colleagues. I remember lots of awkward scenes in closets and out of bathrooms. I remember a love triangle making me think the key benefit of being a TV auteur was you could write yourself into a relationship with Chris Messina, whose subsequent career as a supporting actor warrants honorable mention. It’s been a while, and if you’d asked me a year ago the trickiest place for Ms. Kaling to take her talents next I might have said, “High school comedy,” easy. “Don’t get anywhere near that, baby doll,” because this is of course how agents close.
The traps set themselves in high school content, and then a curmudgeon like me watches and waits to see which ones ensnare the writer’s foot; love triangles, Very Important House Parties, previously concealed acts of selfishness coming to the fore roundabouts the start of act 3. Kaling’s done her homework, so every now and then she and her writing partner Lang Fisher allow absurdity to take the wheel of Never Have I Ever: in which an Indian-American student looks to break free of tradition, and “so many” Hindu gods, to lose her virginity.
Popping your cherry, of course, is how you escape the infirmary of teen life. Leave the geek brigade for a spin with the cool kids. When you’re brown-skinned, however, there are other concerns – family, faith, and impossible grades to keep high. But Never/Ever refuses to confine Devi Vishwakumar ( Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) to any of these familiar cells. She’s prone to fits of wild, destructive rage, especially towards a mother who’s had to raise her alone. Devi’s not afraid to punch above her weight romantically, and to initiate action if absolutely necessary. Her modest disdain for her culture is an important and also constant reminder that neither she nor this show owes anyone anything actually, in the way of representation. It’s a beautiful conflict to behold, especially since Devi’s flanked (moreover) by two BFFs of colour.
Devi’s life story is narrated by none other than John McEnroe. If you’ve ever seen the tennis legend volley abuse at an umpire, you will agree with me that this must be the most intriguing storytelling device deployed anywhere on television this year. But all around our heroine there are lunging leaps for identity not at all steeped in racial identity. Her cousin Kamala wants to escape an arranged marriage so she can keep dating an American lad. One of Devi’s ride-or-dies, Fabiola, struggles with accepting and then sharing a transition in her sexuality. Eleanor, another, can’t help but perform. Acknowledging that her mother will always flee her parental responsibilities, for exactly the same reason … There’s an emotional complexity to that, and a couple decent gags in it too.
But where would we be if this show left out the boys, and denied them plausible vulnerability? Square one, that’s where, or season 3 all over again of (God bless it) The Mindy Project. Paxton Hall-Yoshida is our resident smouldering hunk, and his Japanese heritage isn’t the biggest deal; it’s what lengths he goes to hide a sister with Down Syndrome from the world. Devi’s relationship with Ben, her scholastic nemesis, is tinged with enough cultural ballistics to seem credible, even retweetable; but not so much as to starve the young man of our compassion. An entire episode compacts and dissects his hours of rich kid solitude, and proves this show is prepared to go places in search of its life lessons. I ploughed right through it over the course of an afternoon, because I was able to make an immediate and meaningful connection with all these people.
Madams Kaling and Fisher seem in full control of when to drop a punchline and walk away from it, without trying to perhaps milk a lesser laugh from the mess. They keep their eye on the story, and look to mine narrative gold from every last offbeat detour.
