Okay, technically, I probably had something to do with my lack of sleep. I have a fully-functioning brain that controls my fully-functioning hands that could have simply reached for the remote and turned the TV off, but my my hands didn’t want to listen to my brain, especially not at 4 AM when my brain was screaming that I needed to go to sleep immediately because I had work to do, and papers to write, and finals to prepare for. But my hands and eyes refused to be torn away from my newest obsession: The Mindy Project.
Confession: I’ve been avoiding this show. After a two season, multi-day gorge fest, it’s almost hard to remember why, but once upon a time, a million people I knew insisted that I had to start watching The Mindy Project because I would absolutely love it.
Which is exactly why I had been avoiding it.
This might make no sense, but hear me out: Last summer, everyone I knew told me to watch HBO’s Girls because for whatever reason, it struck them as the kind of thing that I would love. The only problem is that I absolutely hated it. Upon confessing that I couldn’t watch more than 15 minutes of the show, I was subject to cries of disbelief and insistence that I give it another try. People were constantly trying to explain characters and plot lines to me and defending their favorite episodes until eventually, I had no choice but to lie and say it was great just so everyone would leave me alone.
It was exhausting.
And because I had loved Kaling on The Office and respected her as a writer, I couldn’t bring myself to watch her show, lest I be disappointed and have to endure the Girls fiasco all over again.
But I was wrong. So very, very wrong.
The show is brilliant. It’s well-written and hilarious and everything I have been missing on TV since 30 Rock wrapped it’s final episode. The show centers around Kaling’s character Mindy Lahiri, a smart, successful private practice OB/GYN with a laughably disastrous personal life and a slew of co-workers who seem to be set on making her life harder rather than easier.
The best part of the show is that it’s refreshingly honest. Lahiri is an honest representation of an intelligent woman who is set in her ways and can be difficult and maybe a little immature, but in the best of ways, who just wants to have it all. Who can’t relate to that?
So while I may not recommend watching every episode of both seasons (that have been made so far) of the show in one sitting, I would definitely recommend watching them at a more normal, non-obsessive pace. You won’t be disappointed.
And if you are, don’t worry. Just tell me that you feel the same way about Mindy as I feel about Girls, and we’ll never speak of it again.
Deal?
