Jordan Altnhaus/Universal TelevisionWarning: The following contains spoilers from the season finale of The Mindy Project. If you haven't watched yet, you may want to look away now. Don't say we didn't warn you!
A funny thing happened during The Mindy Project season four. Well, maybe "funny" isn't the right word, all things considered.
In its first full season at its new home, Hulu, the series seemed to lose its grasp on how to write a romantic male lead that doesn't come off as a complete and total lech. Whether it was the complete undoing of everything we'd come to understand of the personality of our beloved Danny Castellano (Chris Messina) or the addition of the off-putting Jody (Garret Dillahunt), Mindy Kaling and her team of writers have fumbled this year—and it's never been more evident than in the just-released season finale.
First, let's examine the sad tale of Dr. C. Whether it was out necessity (thanks to Messina's busy schedule) or design, the way Danny and Mindy's relationship fell apart this season was difficult to watch—and not just because we so loved them together. No, the shift in the way Danny reacted to, well, basically everything this season seemed so out of character that it simply made no sense. First, he abandoned his girlfriend and newborn child to take care of his father across the country—a father he'd had a strained relationship with since the series began thanks to his own abandonment issues. And now he's just leaving his son with little consideration or concern? We didn't buy it then and we still don't buy it. There were other ways Messina could've been given time off without this completely uncharacteristic choice.
But things didn't get any better when he returned. Whether he was railing against Mindy's desire to return to work and, you know, keep her thriving career afloat after giving birth (something he once admired her for) or trying to knock her up again without her knowledge (which is so icky and wrong we don't even know where to begin), this character that Messina was playing that everyone kept referring to Danny was nothing like we'd ever seen in the three seasons prior. And that leads us to his actions in the season finale.
Newly engaged, he can't even find the courage to tell Mindy he's moved on (while still railing about how she should be celibate, no less), puts her invite to the wedding in the mail like a coward, and then sleeps with her and tells her he loves her. Who is this person? No one we want to root for anymore, that's who.
Danny's hardly been the only misstep this season. As we said, the introduction of Dillahunt's odious Jody Kimball-Kinney hasn't been the success Kaling hoped. We're hard-pressed to find anything redeemable about this guy, who first entered the series as a work adversary for Mindy, approaching our hero with the same sort of pigheaded views about women in the workplace that Danny began spouting. He's been shown to be a gross womanizer who slept with his sister-in-law behind his brother's back and sees no issue with rampant unprotected sexual activity—despite being a gynecologist. How that meant he should be the other corner in the love triangle that is Mindy's life is beyond us.
We're supposed to believe she'd really fall for this guy? A guy who knew he had chlamydia and tried to find condom alternatives in Mindy's kitchen before sleeping with her rather than just tell her the truth? A guy who, as he did in the finale, would buy a woman the apartment above her own as a way to win her back? That is not romantic. That's creepy and borderline insane.
The world of The Mindy Project has always been a bit frenetic, with its grasp on any character not named Mindy always a bit loose and malleable, depending on how they need to be worked into a scene, but for a show that prides itself on its knowledge of romantic comedies, it seems to have forgotten one thing: We need a love interest to root for. Mindy doesn't deserve either of these men—and, frankly, neither does her audience.
The Mindy Project returns for season five Tuesday, Oct. 5 on Hulu.