The Mindy Project: "Pretty Man"

Logically, Mindy should annoy the hell out of me. She's irrational, needy, overbearing, and often gives feminism a bad name. But she's also really funny. But funny can only take you so far. At some point, her character will need some growth and will need to stop obsessing about finding the right man. Until then, we will have episodes like the last one.

We start off with Mindy bringing herself to a bar. All her friends have someone now, so she decides to go man-hunting on her own. She sees a cute guy, brings him to her apartment and is at the brink of making love, when the guy asks her how much. It turns out she brought home a male prostitute.

Somewhere along the way (by now, you should have realized that we don't do recaps. This is more of s sharing our opinions on things that we like/hate to watch), she ends up bringing the male prostitute to Danny's party at his apartment. Mindy felt she could do a Pretty Woman on the manwhore, when she heard him sing, so she buys him some new clothes and introduces him to everyone at the party, leaving out one critical detail about his work, of course.  At the party, she makes him play the piano.  Everyone is enamored by him - until he starts singing about 911 in New York, and Mindy comes to stop him.  The manwhore breaks down and announces to everyone that he is indeed a prostitute and that he enjoys being one.

Don't get me wrong, this is one of the funnier episodes. It has a lot of nice, little moments. Towards the end, Morgan comforts Mindy by doing impressions of Danny.

BUT every episode so far has focused on Mindy looking for a man, dating a man, and finding something wrong with that man. This makes it seem like nothing else is going on in her life. The message we get is that a woman, no matter how rich or successful she is, is never complete without a man. Looking for the right guy is not necessarily wrong or disdainful, but when it has become the sole focus and drive of your character, then you might want to re-examine the direction your show is taking.

It might also be useful to give some more camera time to some of the other characters, such as Jeremy and Morgan. You can be sure, therefore, that if next episode is another Mindy-dates-a-guy-with-a-horrible-deficiency, you'll hear from me.