Retooled too much? - The Mindy Project (2012) Discussion

[–] hilaryjrp 10 years ago

I disliked Season 3--and I love this show. I went along for the change in tone because, hey, the writing is brilliant, funny or serious. But the series grabbed me because of its humor. The only change I can compare it to is out of left field: PBS' "Sherlock" (which started off as dead-serious but became funny).

Genre-bending is almost *never* successful; and the series depended much more on Adam Pally than perhaps Pally was ever given credit for. Losing him was--for those old enough to remember--like losing Diane Chambers on "Cheers." Some characters are lynch pins for comedy, and Pally absolutely became the series' go-to guy for that. Even Morgan lost his funny, but Peter never did.

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[–] verucasalt23-1 10 years ago

It's funny because I don't think I'll miss Peter at all. But then, I also preferred Kirstie Alley to Shelley Long -- though Frasier and Woody were my favorites -- so obviously our tastes differ (though, considering Alley was there for six seasons, amounting to a full season more in episodes than Long, I don't think it's a truth universally acknowledged that Long's departure ruined the show).

I do hope cost-cutting or something results in the exit of Dr. Bergdahl. I like the actor, but I don't think he fits with the show. I think the show would be fine with the main cast just being Mindy, Danny, Jeremy, Morgan, Tamra, and Beverly, but if they wanted to make Jean more regular, I wouldn't complain about that at all. I like her run-ins with both Mindy and Danny.

"Arguing with trolls is like playing chess with a pigeon . . . ."

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[–] ehaas-3 10 years ago

I like it being multifaceted; showing different aspects of Mindy's life.

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[–] irehawk 10 years ago

It was retooled too much in a bad way, but the worst things about the way they retooled this show are:

1.) It is supposed to be an all-young-adult-project type of show, but they got rid of Betsy, Gwen and Shauna characters first in a hurry and brought back that Beverly character in a hurry as a permanent replacement, which started the fight between all ages and genders.

2.) Mindy is not a dangerous person of because of her entire looks are not severe nor negative and her looks are not supposed to be over-interrogated.

3.) It was classified as part of current FOX teen entertainment marketing (along with American Idol, New Girl, Glee and So You Think You Can Dance), besides being made by NBC Universal. But now it has been revealed that NBC Universal was kind of panicky and this current FOX teen entertainment marketing was exposed and blamed for its bad imbalanced buildup motion.

Yeah, I'm glad they are moving that show to Hulu to prove it is no longer a teen type of show because this current FOX teen entertainment marketing is reducing to a small size from too much bad exposed publicity.

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[–] Live_Dream 9 years ago

A little retooling is fine, I think. I like a show to move and not be too settled in, or it gets predictable. But I also agree they hit a nice stride and then slowly slid into this typical, run-of-the-mill, ridiculous string of hi jinks that most sitcoms fall into, which made their attempts to deliver poignant moments stand out more - and not in a good way.

Before, this show could have you laughing and then crying a second later, but it got so ridiculous, it's hard to get invested in the serious parts because you can't really buy into them.

I blame this mainly on the shift away from Mindy as an individual to Mindy/Danny (Dandy?) the couple. This resulted in almost all Mindy's friendships being severed and the show's focus moving onto Danny's family and Danny's life. Suddenly, most of Mindy's scenes became about Danny, even her scenes with people other than Danny. Meanwhile, Danny's scenes generally stayed being about Danny. So the Mindy of it all, which made the show so great, kind of faded.

We still see Mindy, but it's a very Danny show now, which is the biggest retool that is tarnishing the quality of TMP.

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[–] terminaltrip421 9 years ago

nice observations, LD. I would say both danny and mindy lost a part of their appeal in the coupling process.

and beyond that there is very little jeremy, a lot of morgan which can be too much and more tamra than I care for.

I would agree with the person who said peter had been the go-to funny guy as of late and losing him is a fairly big loss.

I also find myself not invested in mindy or danny the way you'd think they'd want their audience to be. I find the show neither particularly funny or meaningful anymore. just fairly bland.

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[–] irehawk 9 years ago

It's not Mindy Kaling's fault for making the Mindy-Danny connection bad. It's probably her public critics' order to make that connection bad and unfortunately, this should be good time to bring this up that the public critics may have went too far on this, by being too greedy.

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[–] hilaryjrp 9 years ago

more tamra than I care for.

I'd really like to know why they dumped the Shauna character after Season 1's Christmas party. Tamra is written to be a female Morgan, every word out of her mouth ironic or unintentionally funny. It doesn't work. She's like the new doctor (always keep forgetting his cumberbatch-style name) who just isn't meant for comedy.

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[–] irehawk 9 years ago

At least Tamra isn't worse as Beverly, IMO.

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[–] kendrah66 9 years ago

Mindy Kaling said in an interview last week that Fox made her cut down the cast in season 1.

I like Tamra, though. There are those who will say Tamra is a stereotypical character, but Shauna was no less so. I think they both represented the same thing, a character who was/is actually young and hip, in contrast to Mindy, who merely thinks she is when she's actually left that part of her life behind her and didn't really live it in the first place because she was too busy studying. Tamra serves this purpose better than Shauna did with her lines about celebrities falling in love with her and similar. I don't really see her as similar to Morgan.

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[–] Commiebabe 9 years ago

I'm almost positive that the actress who played Shauna left TMP because she got a bigger part in that Robin Williams ad agency show........

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[–] hilaryjrp 9 years ago

I'm almost positive that the actress who played Shauna left TMP because she got a bigger part in that Robin Williams ad agency show........

Wow, I didn't know that. I could stand only about two episodes of "The Lucky Ones." Anyway, she gave TMP a New York feel because of her accent and policeman boyfriend. And she was sweet.

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[–] irehawk 9 years ago

The reason why some of us think that this type of too much retooling is really bad in this show, is because they probably picked the wrong type velocity (which is increasing) to apply it on this retooling motion type.

I know they all needed money in desperation, but they need to be careful about using the correct type of retooling speed motion along the way.

The actress, who played Shauna, and that actress, who played Gwen, may both not be that great, but they may not be officially axed yet. There might be a chance that they both might return to this show as reduced guest sometime before the series finale, you'll never know.

I liked Tamara, no matter how sweet and sour she is, but I can get along with Tamara, rather than Beverly alone. But as along as they keep on included the other rude old cranky women, Annette and Dot, along, then we can get along with Beverly, Annette and Dot, as a group of three rude cranky women along the way also, IMO!

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[–] kendrah66 9 years ago

I think it is a chicken or egg thing with Shauna. She probably got the Robin Williams show after being let go from TMP.

But I wouldn't be surprised if the reason she got let go in favor of Tamra had something to do with making the show more diverse. With other networks, having one nonwhite cast member (e.g., Raj on Big Bang Theory) or even zero (ABC's The Middle, Modern Family, The Real O'Neals, The Goldbergs) is considered sufficient, Fox clearly holds itself to a higher standard and has actually always been a champion of diversity. They originally broke in as a network by attracting black audiences with shows like In Living Color. Look at the casts of New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Bones, Sleepy Hollow, Rosewood, Grandfathered, not to mention their most popular show of late, Empire. There was even a joke on The Grinder (which, along with Gotham, is Fox's whitest show, but the show is about a family business) about shows only adding non-white cast members if forced to by the network, so I suspect that had something to do with it.

I always think its funny that half the criticism you see about the show is, "Why doesn't she have more actors of color on it?" and the other half is "and why did she fire the pretty, white girls -- was it because she felt threatened? Hmm? Hmm?" Mindy herself has said that it is a source of pride to her that the show has two dark-skinned (as opposed, presumably, to Tracee Ellis Ross or Aishwarya Rai types) actresses on the show.

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[–] irehawk 9 years ago

That Tamara-addition in this show was tolerable, no matter how good or bad she is, and I can get along with Tamara along the way either, which is no problem.

All characters in this show has to be all types of young adults in it (both male and female in all white, black, asian, hispanic and middle-eastern), nothing older and nothing younger than that range. That forced-added-return of Beverley was too dangerous, no matter how funny Beverly is or not, it destroyed the all-young-adult style of this show.

But at least we permanently added Annette and Dot in this show's cast and maybe that young-adult-style of this show got carefully reduced a little bit than just extreme.

It is true that firing pretty white females was extremely dangerous and worse, but timing on the firing has to be careful. I know that verucasalt mentioned that New York is never perfect when changes automatically occur on every member's schedule too randomly. Although, verucasalt may have mentioned this reason too soon and too forward beyond the limit.

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[–] irehawk 9 years ago

It was this show's public criticism that ordered Mindy to make forced changes and broadened the focus on her personality too much in this show.

Although, it looks like the public criticism may have went too far beyond the limited amount of forced changes involved.

The public criticism also appraised too much badness on Danny character and there a danger about getting rid of Danny. When Danny goes, the rest of the Castellano family, including both Annette and Dot will be gone. Then we will return and have a hard time getting along with Beverly, no matter how funny she is or not.

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[–] blondee661 9 years ago

Don't get me wrong I love the show but I think the show retooled too much especially in turns of supporting characters. I mean in Season 1 we had Anna Camp's character, her daughter, Shauna, Betsy, and some other friends like the one in the wheel chair (can't even remember her name), Dr. Schumann. And then we get Beverly and Tamra back who seemed like the same old stereotypes. I feel like I'm one of the few that enjoyed some of the original characters. You get attached to these characters and poof they're gone! I heard it was re-tooled again for season 4 (don't know how much of that is true, I'm too cheap for Hulu). I feel this show tries too hard sometimes, just stick with something!

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[–] irehawk 9 years ago

Mindy's entire personality should be already precise by now and permanently forever. So there's no need to put too much pressurized focus on her anymore and the retooling in this show has to limit its velocity right now.

I have no problem getting along with Tamara, no matter when and how she erratically talks or not. But as long as both rough cranky Annette and Dot characters appear more often as rough cranky Beverley, then we will not have a difficult time getting along Beverley at the same time.

Secondly, I know verucasalt isn't a great fan of Betsy, Gwen and Shauna characters at all, but verucasalt might be impressed on Dr. Schulman character.
But Betsy might return to guest in this show, sometime between the beginning of 2016-2017 season until the series finale because she is not completely boring due to the fact she's a romantic comedy type of cheerleader who became lively in the second season. But her removal from the main cast at the end of second season was too precarious. Although, according to verucasalt, nothing is ever perfect in New York when NYC people were forced to changed positions in erratic timing schedules. Unfortunately, not all NYC people are forced to have their positions changed during their own schedules erratically.

Thirdly, I am not in rush for both Gwen and Shauna to return as a guests ASAP, but I'm glad Dr. Schulman guest appeared in this 2015-2016 season, which should be refreshing.

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