The Mindy Project – It Had To Be You

Hello and welcome to the last ever The Mindy Project episode review, thank you for joining me here today to watch me cry over the show that consumed my life for 6 years.

This final episode called back to the Pilot in many ways that were both great for the story and a nice nod to the die-hard fans who can quote the pilot line by line. A friend and I even watched the pilot while waiting for the finale, making the callbacks even fresher in our minds. Hey Aly, do you read these? I’m not sure…anyway, great idea you had!

The whole finale centres around Annette’s surgery and Morgan and Tamra’s wedding, intercut with Mindy trying to find a new partner for the Lahiri Fertility Clinic. She gets over her pain and sadness at the thought of losing her business, gets up off the floor, puts away the sour straws and is seen interviewing potential candidates for a business partnership, including EP & Showrunner Matt Warburton and EP & Director Michael Spiller. They both play creeps though and Mindy is pretty sure she’s going to have to shut the business down.

In other news, Jeremy and Anna are back from England where they attended his father’s funeral and Jeremy is a brand new man. He has frosted tips, a cockney-esque accent, uses way more slang, and dresses like an early 2000s teenager. Anna is completely baffled by this change – enough to scream at a scary loud level – and on the verge of dumping him because he isn’t who she fell in love with anymore. Thankfully, Jer comes to his senses, goes back to his tight suits and his perfectly styled hair though, right in time for the Tamorgan wedding.

One day Danny is at Lahiri Fertility and he’s admiring her wall of babies and all the hard work she’s put into her business. For the first time, there’s a glimpse of old Danny in there, the one who wasn’t a sexist misogynist, the one who supported his partner. He tells her it’s a shame she has to shut down and ends up actually investing in LFC as a silent partner. Giving her the cash infusion that she needs but promising that he wants to let her do as she wishes with the business because clearly she knows what she’s doing.

Mindy learns of this donation while she’s at Morgan & Tamra’s wedding & Danny is in the hospital’s waiting room. She actually interrupts the ceremony to take the phone call from Melville the accountant. Irregardless of all that, Tamra and Morgan wed, the bride wearing a gorgeous dress and looking fantastic and the groom adoring her with everything he has. They asked Mindy to give a speech at their wedding and so we have another nod to the pilot, where Mindy is giving a speech at someone else’s wedding. Morgan also hypes the speech to death, like he did in Josh & Mindy’s Christmas Party. The speech is sweet and full of love, and it makes Morgan realize that he FORGOT TO INVITE HIS GRANDMOTHER!

As Mindy is talking about people changing and it happening slowly and hitting you all at once, she realizes that she’s talking about Danny and herself. That she’d be okay on her own, but also that he isn’t who she though he was and that she loves him and wants to make it work with him. This time though, as Mindy runs off she doesn’t steal champagne, and she doesn’t fall in the pool as she rides a bike through the streets of New York to make it to Danny. She takes multiple modes of transportation to get to him, like how Danny took a car and the subway and ran to get to Mindy in the episode where he found out she was pregnant.

Yup, Mindy makes the grand gesture (inspired by Dot, a bracelet that Danny gave her, and her own growth) and shows up at the hospital. She gets into Annette’s recovery room (she is thankfully doing perfectly well) and doesn’t have a speech prepared to end her grand gesture so the whole thing is a little awkward and Danny is entirely oblivious to it all so Mindy leaves. Annette then calls Danny a dumb-dumb and he realizes that he also loves her so he chases after her. He runs after her like he did at the end of season 2. He gets in the elevator (THEIR SPOT) and then the Doctors’ Lounge, where so many of their ship moments have happened, to find Mindy on the floor.

Simultaneously, Morgan is giving a beautiful speech, full of prison metaphors that are surprisingly touching to tell Tamra how much he loves her and how excited he is to have found a new cell-mate for life. The speech ends with the entire office joining in on a perfectly choreographed dance routine, which is a perfect way to say goodbye to the Shulman gang, while they’re all dancing together.

Danny goes to Mindy, whose on the floor because her hand was stuck in the vending machine (the one whose contents he read to her in The One That Got Away). He helps her up and asks if she wanted to say anything to him. Mindy asks what he thought she was going to say and he’s like “that you loved me again and you want to try to make it work” and she says that she didn’t say that, that rather she never stopped loving him and never will. He walks in for the kiss and Dandy are reunited. A couple of times he breaks off the kiss to bicker about something random and finally Mindy says “can we just watch TV? We have the rest of our lives to argue.”

THEN THEY SIT TOGETHER, IN LOVE, AND THE CAMERA PANS OUT THE WINDOW AS IT HAS DONE IN SO MANY OTHER ICONIC TMP MOMENTS.

LOOK AT THEEEEMMMMMMMMM UP THERE. UGH.

Series finales are hard, few have hit the nail on the head in terms of execution (cough cough HIMYM trash) but this one, this one was the perfect balance of “fan service” and storytelling. The perfect balance of closure and open-endedness. We got to relive so many wonderful moments, and a cover of a Springsteen song, while feeling like the character we had been with for 6 years really had grown and come to a place where she was happy and stable and no longer going through the motions of a romantic comedy – which is the most romantic comedy move of all.

Random adorable note, this episode is full of puppies! Morgan has to get rid of his dogs so he’s paired them up ~perfectly~ with his friends Oprah style, you get a dog, you get a dog, everyone gets a dog.

Also, to Tamra’s single sad loser friends, please hit me up anytime!

A brand new The Mindy Project is now streaming on Hulu  Every episode of The Mindy Project ever made is now streaming on Hulu (& on Netflix in Canada where season 6 is hopefully uploaded soon).

If you want to own a little piece of the magic, you can bid on items from the show at Screenbid.com – with proceeds from sales going to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. Just please don’t bid on Mindy’s dress from Danny In Real Life and her sweater from Be Cool, those are mine.

Also, as a random side note, promise me that the next time you do a TMP rewatch or try to get someone else to watch the show, you’ll use the following order for season 1. I have carefully crafted this episode sequence to make the most sense & it might be my greatest accomplishment.

1. Pilot
2. Hiring & Firing
3. In The Club
4. Danny Castellano Is My Gynecologist
5. Halloween
6. Bunk Bed
7. Thanksgiving
8. Two To One
9. Teen Patient
10. Josh & Mindy’s Christmas Party
11. Hooking Up Is Hard
12. Mindy’s Brother
13. Harry & Sally
14. Harry & Mindy
15. Mindy’s Birthday
16. Mindy’s Minute
17. The One That Got Away
18. Danny’s Friend
19. Pretty Man
20. My Cool Christian Boyfriend
21. Santa Fey
22. Triathlon
23. Frat Party
24. Take Me With You

Thank you for your time guys, the Mindy fandom truly was a special one, see you on the interwebs!