2012 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Autumn De Wilde/FOXAnother female-driven comedy to add to a male-dominated TV world? Created and run by a female? And that female is Mindy Kaling? Yes, yes and oh hell yes!
Fox's new comedy The Mindy Project is being promoted like a certain show they premiered last year, starring a certain Zooey Deschanel. Obviously, New Girl was a runaway success. Will The Mindy Project take off the same way?
Premieres: Tuesday, Sept. 25, 9:30 p.m.
Time-Slot Competition: NCIS: LA (CBS), The New Normal (NBC), Emily Owens, M.D. (CW), Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 (ABC)
Cast: Mindy Kaling, Chris Messina, Ed Weeks, Anna Camp, Zoe Jarman, Amanda Setton, Stephen Tobolowsky
Status: We've seen the pilot episode
Much like New Girl last year, a lot is riding on how the audience takes to the leading lady. Obviously, people fell in love hard with Zooey Deschanel. Remember how many times you heard "adorkable" this time last season? Yeah, we had to invent a drinking game just to get through the fall TV season. But that's neither here nor beer.
It'd be hard to not fall in love with Mindy Kaling's character, who's a little more rough around the edges and snarky than Jess on New Girl, but still just as likable. And the material? Instantly relatable.
The pilot revolves around Mindy, an OB/GYN, telling the story about how she grew up being obsessed with romantic comedies, and how she met and fell in love with Tom (Bill Hader) in the most rom-com-y fashion. That was all yanked from her in the worst way possible: He dumped her, then immediately married someone younger than she. Mindy, of coursem is telling this story to a police officer, because she gets arrested after getting wasted at Tom's wedding and riding her bike headfirst into a pool. That's the first five minutes, which are entertaining as hell, by the way.
The romantic-comedy theme keeps rollin' on as we meet the supporting cast: her fellow doctors/sure to be love triangle Danny and Jeremy, her best friend Gwen, and her crazy but earnest receptionist Betsy. When everyone is together in the workplace, it's magical comedy chemistry. And when we interviewed Kaling at Fox TCAs, she revealed that after the pilot the show will take on more of a workplace-comedy character. We are definitely onboard with that idea, so we are optimistic about the strength of the season.
By the end of the pilot, we get the gist that smooth-talking, charming Jeremy (Weeks) is bad for Mindy (she's sleeping with him often), and tell-it-like-it-is Danny (Messina) is probably who she should be dating. Of course, it'll take awhile for any of that to develop, so we'll just sit back and enjoy Mindy making bad decisions and working her way through her early 30s in the most entertaining way possible.
Our Review in GIF Form:
Verdict: DVR. Combine it with New Girl so you can have a commercial-free hour of awesomely funny females on your TiVo.