The Mindy Project
I was pretty excited for the Mindy Project. I like Mindy Kaling a lot and giving her a show seemed like a really fantastic idea. The show has always had some structural problems (too many completely undeveloped characters, not enough time) but this season, I've got a grump.
As the last season progressed, it tried to fix the too many characters problem by slowly bleeding out some of the extraneous ones. For example, Mindy's best friend Gwen (Anna Camp) who gradually went away in favor of oh I guess Mindy doesn't have any female friends anymore or the uncommented on exit of the other administrative assistant Shauna (Amanda Setton). Okay, fine. It's not so bad, there's still Betsy and Beverly and they added Tamra to sort of take Shauna's place, but funnier.
Then this season, they decided they needed another male doctor on top of the two who had always been there and Morgan, the nurse. Also, all of the female characters who aren't Mindy? You'd be lucky to notice more than one of them in the background. Suddenly, the show became Mindy and a bunch of dudes. And then the last episode was basically about how Mindy needs to just learn to deal with the fact that there are a bunch of dudebros around her, constantly giving her crap about being female, and you know what, they're just guys, let them be guys who cares.
So I'm grump there.
But then
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
I'm not so grump! New show from the creators of Parks and Recreation, starring another SNL alum, Andy Samberg. In general, I don't like Samberg. His comedy is too big and too obnoxious, like so many SNL performers before him (Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, etc.) but he's been expertly constraned to "big enough to be funny" in this show. Then there's the rest of the cast: it actually looks like what you'd expect from a New York police precinct in terms of diversity. It's legitimately an entire sitcom cast without a single WASP member in casting or in character and the show doesn't even play it off as a big deal. The requisite no-nonsense police captain is that way because he spent 20 years being pushed around as an openly gay man in the NYPD and now that he's been given a command, he refuses to let anyone screw it up. Loving it.
Which is almost secondary to the fact that it's actually really enjoyable from the word go. P&R took a while to reach its stride, but B99 is pretty funny to begin with, with tons of obvious potential moving forward. The characters are immediately identifiable and memorable and they play off each other so well that literally any combination is fun to watch. Easily my favorite new show of the season.
Which means it will be cancelled.
TVTVTV
1. This would be a popular post on Tumblr.
ReplyDelete2. Sorry I haven't been keeping up over here on Blogspot.
3. I feel you on the lack of women in the Mindy Project. I haven't looked at the writing staff; are they mostly white male dudes?
4. I don't *love* Brooklyn Nine Nine. I've seen about half of the first season and am not super crazy about the humor-- it seems strangely formulaic for such a diverse cast to portray. I especially do not like Rosa. However, appropriately, Chelsea Peretti is the best thing on that show!