Don't freak out “Mindy Project” fans, but the low-rated and [in some small circles] adored comedy will not be back on FOX for a fourth season.
I say “don't freak out,” because although “The Mindy Project” has been cancelled by its original network, I'm hearing that conversations are taking place with Hulu about a multi-season renewal.
How deep are the conversations? No clue.
How many seasons does “multi-season” mean? Joe Adalian at Vulture says two, but nothing is signed or set in stone yet.
This is the way many observers expected things to go down for “The Mindy Project.” FOX floated the comedy, which was never a hit, for three years, but even by the standards of FOX's increasingly low-rated Tuesday night, it was getting harder and harder to justify giving a time period to a comedy with drew roughly 2 million viewers and a 0.8 rating among adults 18-49 in its finale. [“New Girl,” already renewed, also drew only 2.2 million viewers in its finale, but the difference between a 0.8 and a 1.1 is not insignificant.]
While “The Mindy Project” has a solid reservoir of critical support, it lost one of its biggest cheerleaders with Kevin Reilly left FOX and as a Universal TV production, it was always going to be an outlier at the network.
However, thanks to an extended order for this season, “The Mindy Project” has reached 67 episodes and while FOX has no particular impetus to float a low-rated comedy long enough to build a syndication inventory, Universal TV has ample impetus to get more inventory and with NBC Universal Television Group one of the core owners of Hulu, the streaming service is nothing if not a logical home.
So stay tuned on this one… I remain confident that we're gonna get to see what happened with Danny in India and what'll become of Momma Mindy…
Take deep breaths.