A Lively Marriage
by DICK CHENEY
The Mindy Project
creator Mindy Kaling
I miss Cliff. Ever since Mindy finally consummated the mediocre sexual attraction between her fellow gynecologist Daniel (Chris Messina), The Mindy Project has turned into a show about a relationship.
In a recent episode of The Mindy Project, a major plot point concerned Mindy's boyfriend's talents at cunnilingus, and her telling all the other characters about it. Not only does this make me look bad in my relationship, but I am pretty tired of some asshole being redeemable simply because he is good at giving head (I'm looking at you Michael Caine).
It's so important to emphasize how good the sex is, because the chemistry that Mindy and Daniel share is largely based on how good his dancing is. He does a short dance in every episode, and usually punctuates it by thrusting his pelvis in a lewd manner. Eventually people had to tell Fred Astaire to stop doing this, and Fred Astaire was a lot better dancer than Mindy's boyfriend.
Many shows torpedoed once their long-single protagonists found love, since it is never actually interesting for other people to hear how satisfied you are by your partner. An emotional time was had by all when Ross made love to Rachel in that planetarium; however I once had the job of cleaning a planetarium at a Wyoming-based history museum and it is nowhere you would want to spread a blanket on.
Ross (David Schwimmer) had a much better thing going with this British woman, Emily. Emily (I'm assuming her last name was Bronte?) was very needy and suspicious of Rachel, but considering the situation I guess she had a right to be. Once Rachel and Ross became a very boring couple they moved into an apartment together. I hated the color scheme of this apartment, and all my memories are of Ross complaining there. Eventually they started doing a Joey and Rachel storyline which did not make much sense, and Pheobe married Paul Rudd, which made all the sense in the world for everyone except Paul Rudd.
At least Friends had a variety of eligible men that Rachel could potentially end of the rainbow with. It must be weird to have a baby on a TV show but not in real life.
The men in Mindy's life are all extremely terrible. Danny let his mother disrespect Mindy at an excessively long brunch, and even briefly let his mother think that Ms. Kaling was his cleaning lady. He is constantly looking for things to complain about when he comes to his girlfriend, and should he even suffer the slightest indignity, he tells Mindy, "You better start thinking of ways to make it up to me." She accepts this for some reason.
Mindy's other colleagues regularly cheat on their girlfriends, sometimes even with each other. There should be a lot of options for an attractive single gynecologist, but instead she has to get with a police officer who is twenty years older than her (Tim Daly)? Despite his offensive accent, Tim Daly was by far the most handsome of these men; Danny's lips look like they are permanently sealed in a frown.
I'm still mad about what they did to Cliff, though. He was a suave lawyer one second, the next he was singing a Sarah McLachlan song for an entire episode, and projecting a creepy vibe never present in the original Cliff.
It's not even like you can bring another man into Mindy's life at this point to complicate things. She will just look flightly after lusting after Castellano for so long and bragging about how good he is at oral, and Daniel would never tolerate an actual competition for the love of a good woman. I'm starting to worry if it is going to be another year of romanticizing a union that never should have happened.
It really chars my balls that Ryan Reynolds was taken, and even now has a baby on the way with that blonde older woman he's been seeing. If it weren't for Blake Lively, he would be getting all of Matthew McConaughey's roles, but who can stand to hear him relating tales about how Blake is absolutely "hangry as all get out when she's on a cleanse" or his innocent general questions about her, like, "Do you guys think it's common for a grown woman to say 'chomp chomp' when she bites into a carrot?"?
I'm sorry, but Danny Castellano is an asshole for not giving Mindy space in his closet, or telling her that she can't tell her friends about his proficency with his mouth. A relationship is only actually fun for the people in it.
Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.
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