A quick review of tonight's “The Mindy Project” season finale coming up just as soon as I find out what your second email address is…
When “Mindy” returned to the schedule back in April, I was really pleased with the first two episodes, both of which dealt heavily with Mindy and Danny as a couple. I'd been agnostic on that pairing when it was just something the show was strongly hinting at, but in practice Mindy Kaling and Chris Messina were very funny as an opposites attract romantic duo, and in a way that didn't wind up rewriting or damaging either character. (As opposed to what unfortunately happened when Jess and Nick hooked up on “New Girl.”) Then, of course, the show quickly had Danny call it off before the relationship had even really started, only for them to finally get together for real at the end of “Danny and Mindy.”
And at this point, I think I'm much more excited about the prospect of them being together than I was at the many starts and stops along the way to making that happen – up to and including the events of this episode. I know that Kaling and company are only toying with the tropes that so many other romantic comedies (in movies and on television) have used before them, but even self-aware use of annoying clichés can be annoying, even if they're accompanied by a lot of pretty New York scenery evoking Harry and Sally, Alvy and Annie, etc.
This is a show with too many characters (both regular and recurring, and that'll be the case even after Zoe Jarman leaves following this episode) and too many things going on at once. Mindy and Danny give the show something to focus on, and we've gotten evidence this season that they're the rare sitcom male/female pairing to be more interesting/entertaining/funny when they're together than when they're in the will-they-or-won't-they stage. The best part of the finale (other than maybe the use of a Danny-revered Bruce Springsteen track for the familiar “running to declare your love” sequence) was the last couple of minutes with the two of them lying down on the Empire State Building observation deck, because it wasn't about contriving another obstacle for the sake of another obstacle, but dealing with the two of them as characters and how they interact with each other.
I've run hot and cold on this show, but I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like now that the Boyfriend of the Week structure's being ditched in favor of this.
What did everybody else think, of both the finale and season 2 as a whole?