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The Mindy Project’s journey has been almost as dramatic as the rom-coms it emulates. As a longtime fan of the show, who complained to FOX about the messed up episode order in season 1, who participated in various hashtag campaigns to keep the show afloat, & who lobbied Hulu to come in & save the day; I am so proud of everything it has gotten to be & also relieved that my efforts were not in vain. I can only imagine the happiness and pride that anyone who actually worked on the show felt as they reached this huge television milestone. Through heartbreak, a baby, more heartbreak, a new business, many reinventions and more cast changes than I can count; it has all led to this. Let’s get into Revenge of The Nurse & where it leaves us going into season 5B in 2017.
photos courtesy of NBCU
Okay, you’re real.
This episode starts off with a sweet moment, where Mindy is watching Ben sleep and realizing that he’s just a normal guy, and a much better man than all of her exes. She even pokes his face to make sure he’s real. You can see it on Mindy’s face (kudos to Kaling here on that stellar acting) when the realization hits her, she’s thrilled about this “honest-to-goodness normo.“
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Both a weirdo & a loser [imho].
Cut to Mindy talking to Morgan on the subway and sharing this revelation she had regarding Ben. As they’re naming off some of her terrible exes, the wierdos and the losers, one of them taps her on the shoulder. It’s Jamie you guys…yaaaay…okay let’s stop pretending, I hate B.J. Novak and you all should know this about me, I’m convinced he conned Mindy into letting him come back just so he could make out with her – more on that later. Anyway he’s all humblebraggy about this book he was inspired to write (after Lucy realized he was trash and dumped him) that’s now on the NYT Bestsellers list. They talk about Mindy a little, she reveals that she’s dating Ben & when Jamie asks what he does Mindy is reluctant to say he’s a nurse, choosing to just say that they work at the hospital together. Blablabla yadda yadda yadda he invites Mindy, Ben & “everyone” to a book party.
photos courtesy of NBCU
The Sicily Parachute.
After they get off the subway and make it to the office, Morgan & Mindy are super excited to invite everyone to this fancy book party. Jeremy immediately fanboys and goes to get the perfect red cape that he, of course, keeps in the office. When Jeremy leaves Anna is revealed to have been standing behind him the whole time. She tries to name drop some famous Times critic but the gang is like “who dat?”
Tamra: “You can’t take your new boyfriend to your old boyfriend’s party!
Mindy: What? Why?
Tamra: Because Jamie’s being feted by the publishing elite & basic-ass Ben is gonna be uncomfortable. It’ll be like when I took RayRon to my ex’s inauguration, it wasn’t cute”
DID TAMRA USED TO DATE BARACK OBAMA?! OMG!
ALSO! Morgan says rhetorical in the BEST way, by pronouncing the H so hard
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I think I captured the characters a little bit better than you did.
Mindy doesn’t listen to Tamra and brings Ben to the book reading where Jamie is being his usual pretentious self. Ben AND Gillian Flynn are both unimpressed with the novel, tbh so am I by that chapter Jamie read. For whatever reason, Mindy abandons Ben with Jamie and goes to talk to Gillian Flynn about her Gone Girl fan-fiction that’s basically just a Gone Girl rip off. Flynn can not get away fast enough & I can’t blame her. Anna comes in next, asking Mindy to engage in small talk because her husband told her to chat with work colleagues. Then she basically gives a backhanded compliment to Ben about all the free time he has, adding water to the seeds of doubts that Tamra planted earlier about Ben not fitting into Mindy’s world.
photos courtesy of NBCU
@TrowelSlut.
We check in on Ben, who is talking to Jamie with Jeremy & Morgan. The ex-boyfriend starts asking the new boyfriend about being a doctor when Ben has to correct him and say that he’s a nurse. Jamie then gets weird and starts asking him where someone would have sex with a nurse, to research for his new book. It’s totally weird and uncomfortable for everyone so let’s move on.
I don’t want my first Emmy to be a Daytime one, ew.
Tamra & Colette are talking to a fake Today show anchor who I totally thought was real until I looked him up. He mentions that he needs a nurse for a segment they’re doing because their usual nurse crossed a line with Kathy Lee &/or Hoda. Colette is super down, but this dude is only interested in Tamra & she doesn’t respond to thirst.
photos courtesy of NBCU
Now send me one of his face…
At the office the next day, Tamra tells Mindy about Cameron & his on-air nurse debacle, leading her to jump for joy and IMMEDIATELY call Cameron directly to offer Ben’s services. Because Ben is hot and the show is in a bind, they agree to have him on & ask that he be at the hospital at 4am.
Bring another woman into our bedroom? Sure.
That night, Mindy tells her bae the good news but he is less than thrilled. Contrary to Mindy herself (y’all remember the Mindy’s Minute episode from season 1?!), he doesn’t want to be on TV. He’s not flashy, his only suit is from Costco! After apologizing for slapping him, Mindy finally convinces him to go, and he asks her to accompany him.
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Guggenheim bathrooms don’t even open until 10.
It’s the day of the show y’all! Ben slays as the on-air nurse. Seriously he blows everyone away with his hotness and tips for not coughing on other people. Mindy wants to get champagne and have sex in the Guggenheim bathroom (I guess they lifted her ban) but it’s 7:30 and Ben is a normo with a day job.
It’s quite a journey.
At the office, Mindy is super excited to show everyone that Ben has been turned into a meme! As they all know, it’s her dream to date a meme (she got so close with “Damn Daniel!” While everyone is gathered and impressed by Ben, Anna walks by. Her husband told her to accept a slice of cake at office gatherings as if she were going to eat it. Damn I wish there were cake in front of me right now, but I digress. Anna is weirded out by the fact that all the attention isn’t on her so she brags about the house she has on Notting Hill that just sits empty and leaves again.
photos courtesy of NBCU edit by Hasti
If you’re getting your medical information from a TV show, you deserve to die.
Ben and Mindy are just chilling and having dinner but poor Ben is suuuper sleepy and can’t keep his eyes open while Mindy babbles on about how cool he is now. She needs him to stay awake because she only got that table by saying she was with a celebrity! She even has him take a picture of her and her COKE that happens to match her shirt totally coincidentally and not because they sponsored this episode. In the middle of all this, she tells him that he has another segment to do the next day about moisturizing. He reluctantly agrees to do it, mostly because Lindsay & her friends thought it was cool that he was on TV.
Then guess what! ANOTHER MINDY EX shows up! This time it’s Casey, popping by their table to say hey. I want to believe Ben knew about their history before that night because if that was his first introduction to the whole “we were engaged and we lived together in Haiti” thing, that was a lot to process and he handled it well. Casey does some humblebragging about his life and when he asks what Ben does, Mindy cuts him off to say that he’s a television personality. Casey says how cool that is and then leaves, but Mindy keeps talking about him and how important it was that Casey was impressed with Ben. As the scene goes by you can just see him getting more and more uncomfortable and more and more annoyed and you keep yelling at Mindy to stop but she won’t *cries*
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Did you mix up 2 babies AGAIN?!
GUESS WHO DOESN’T SHOW UP FOR HIS SEGMENT?! That’s right! Ben! She’s left him 7 voicemails and he hasn’t picked up any of them of shown any sign of life. While panicking, Mindy sees Morgan coming out of an on-call room. He slept at the hospital because Colette brought a girl home (yas girl slay). Since he’s a nurse & Cameron Winters is freaking the fuck out, they get Morgan into hair and makeup and ready for air. OBVIOUSLY, Morgan messes it up big time, first being totall frozen and then putting way too much lotion on his hands and banging his head against the table and slipping into the cameras.
We see Mindy frantically call Ben again, filling him in on the details of the segment and how she was banned from the Today Show again and basically begging for a sign of life from him.
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Good on you Morgan, for contributing to the rapid descent of straight white men in our society!
The staff is watching Morgan’s fail video for the millionth time and still laughing when Ben comes in looking for Mindy. They inform him that she’s out of the office and invite him to the party their having later to celebrate Morgan being a national laughingstock. They’re surprised Mindy didn’t tell him about the party and he backtracks like no duh she told me we’ll see you there. I do not know why he couldn’t just call her back to fix this before the party ugghhhhh.
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I cut off my fingertip chopping the cilantro
This is the most stressful party this show has ever thrown! Morgan is being a klutz all over the place & Mindy is in the kitchen drinking waaay too much hard liquor. She’s upset because she thinks Ben has ghosted her. That’s when Jamie finds her talking to the dogs and starts drinking & flirting with her. Honestly how dare he. This is riiiiight around the time that Ben shows up and starts chatting with some peeps. Jamie is super trying to get into Mindy’s pants, he even tells her that in Latin but he tells her it means she has pretty eyes and he leans in and kisses her and ugh I hate it so much get off of her you weirdo. Just as they break from the kiss; Ben looks into the kitchen and sees them. Furious, he walks out and to her credit, Mindy immediately runs after him.
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Kind of a lot, I guess, & I guess it depends on your definition of dating, and men.
Min finally catches up to Ben and they just start fighting in the middle of the sidewalk. She apologizes and blames the kiss on being drunk but obviously that’s a shit excuse. He says they just had a small fight but she thought they were done because she hadn’t heard from him in 2 days. Then they start really getting into it; he asks why she never introduces him as a nurse and she’s trying to defend herself when JOSH WALKS BY!
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He stops and they have another awkward and confusing encounter that lasts way too long. After he leaves, Mindy apologizes for pushing The Today Show on Ben and says she was trying to help. Ben comes back with “I don’t need your help.” He’s happy with who he is and doesn’t want her to turn him into whatever she thinks her boyfriend needs to be. Mindy really puts her foot in her mouth when she says “but you could be” the person she thinks he should be. He realizes that she doesn’t think he’s good enough for her and stands up for himself, telling her that she’s not good enough for him and walking away. A dope ass song plays as he walks away and Mindy is left looking dejected on the sidewalk.
photos courtesy of NBCU
Y’all know I’m usually #TeamMindy whenever there’s conflict but I gotta say this time she was so in the wrong and elitist. It’s great how Ben didn’t stand for her shit but what’s even better is that they both vocalized their feelings instead of letting them eat at the relationship cough Castellamo cough. I think they can come back from this, especially given the BTS pics we saw throughout filming that included both Bryan & Mindy together. I guess we’ll just have to wait for 5B to find out.
Speaking of 5B; a Hulu press release announced that the show is coming back on February 14th for the remaining 7 episodes. Mindy K revealed that the original 16 episode order was brought down to 14 to accommodate her new movie star schedule (Ocean’s Eight, A Wrinkle In Time, Untitled Late Night Comedy).
photos courtesy of NBCU
