The Mindy Project Flashes Back To The Past While Questioning Danny And Mindy's Future

Like all sensible people, I was somewhat incredulous when The Mindy Project's titular GYNECOLOGIST got surprise-pregnant last season, and concerned when the pregnancy continued up to and including the successful delivery of a baby. Babies ruin everything, generally, and they certainly ruin sitcoms, unless the shows they're born into take the affirmative decision to sideline them. The Mindy Project, as a romantic comedy, might have had a hard time pulling that one off...or so I would have said until most of what we've seen thus far of Season 4 removed the male half of its central romance to another state, other than for extremely perfunctory text narration. But no, since the arrival of Leo, the show has gone full baby, making ALL the stops on the Stations Of The Sitcom-Trope Cross. Baby Locked In Inconvenient, Potentially Dangerous Location! Baby Must Get Admitted To Fancy School! Who Will Take Care Of Baby?! I had thought the last of these would have been dispensed with between both "Stay At Home MILF" and "Mindy And Nanny," the latter of which established that Annette would provide supplementary child care while Mindy worked during Danny's visit with his ailing father. But now that Danny's returned, it's become clear not only that the matter of Leo's day-to-day care is more complex than even two episodes of this sitcom can address...and is actually not that sitcommy after all.

"When Mindy Met Danny," the show's midseason finale, is a real ballsy move for the show -- not for the flashback format, which takes us back to 2007 and Mindy's first days at Shulman & Associates; that she and Danny didn't hit it off right away isn't surprising, given that when the show actually premiered not long after that, they still weren't especially fond of each other, and that what ultimately brought him around on her was her competence in handling a delivery for him isn't that surprising either since the show decides Mindy's great at her job at various turning points for her character/when it's convenient to the plot. What's ballsy about it is that it's a Christmas episode that doesn't just strongly imply that the couple at the centre of all this romance and comedy is about to break up: it makes this eventuality seem like it's going to be a great thing for our protagonist.

For all the time we've known him, Danny's been defined as a crotchety young-old man, who only ever alters his opinions when he's forced to, usually by Mindy. One such opinion was...that he and Mindy should be a couple despite their many, many differences in background and temperament. So, as frustrating as it has been for this viewer to watch Danny's more caveman-ish tendencies become more pronounced with his new fatherhood, it's very true to his character. Of course the Danny we have come to know would expect the mother of his child to give up her career to raise their child; he still hasn't healed from his own latchkey-childhood. Of course he wants Mindy to get pregnant again right away when their first child is still an infant; no older brother born that close to his next sibling would be expected to serve as a paternal stand-in, the way Danny himself was after his father left.

Danny has spent a lot of time being unhappy, and not being able to express that unhappiness; instead, he's using his new family as his chance for a do-over on his own messy past. The problem with this, for him, is that he's doing it with a partner who has no such pain she needs to make up for now. From what we've heard of Mindy's own description -- and, now, seen, since we've met her parents this season -- is that Mindy had a very comfortable youth, sharing a home with parents who weren't merely present and active in her life but who apparently never disapproved of anything she did. This is, surely, part of the reason Mindy is so selfish and heedless now, and that's not great? But at least she knows when she's making choices based on status, or laziness, or to avoid awkward conversations. Danny has convinced himself that when it comes to his family, he knows the one right answer to every question; as Mindy told him last week in "The Parent Trap," "Every time that you disagree with something that I do, it's a referendum on my character....Whenever you decide to do something, it's selfless. And whenever I decide to do something, it's selfish." Danny can't understand that his inflexible certitude with regard to the parenting decisions he wants to impose on Mindy is just as selfish, because on some level he's still the boy that wished so desperately someone had forced those same decisions on his mother. (The image of Leo playing patty-cake against a wall, for instance, seems pretty specific.)

In addition to the fight about Mindy giving up her various jobs outside the home to stay home with Leo full-time, the last few episodes have dealt with the fight about Mindy's old apartment, which she still hasn't sold. And after the flashback to the fated armoire fitting in her office at Shulman & Associates all those years ago, we see Mindy also checking to see whether Leo's crib could fit into her old walk-in closet after a little remodeling and, of course, it can. For now, she returns from this secret mission to get back into bed with Danny; she still loves him, and moving out with Leo is not a course she wants to undertake immediately. But it is, now, a course she knows is available if she decides to take 2007 Danny at his word: "Don't ever let anyone stop you from doing what you want -- not even me." Mindy will certainly have to make compromises if she pursues obstetrics, a fertility practice, and single parenthood. But I love that while this episode leaves us on kind of a cliffhanger, there's no question that letting 2015 Danny dictate her future to her is an unacceptable option.