The Mindy Project Ep. 2 Recap

Mindy has good luck getting dates with some very funny guest stars. Last week, her blind date was played by Ed Helms; this week, she meets a character played by Seth Meyers in a bookstore. After an afternoon of buying and discarding unwanted flavors of frozen yogurt (you don’t want to know, it was absurd), the two decide to go to dinner. I assume this at least a two-episode arc, because the date hasn’t happened yet.

Back at the office, Beverly the nurse has become so incompetent, unprofessional, and unsanitary that no one can ignore it. She’s so bad that one has to wonder how she made it through a grueling nursing program in the first place, or how she got hired at the practice. Did she have massive brain trauma or a stroke that made her forget all training and decency? It’s pretty absurd. Dr. Schulman, who heads the practice, asks Jeremy to fire Beverly. His efforts don’t work, and he spends the day talking to her but never actually firing her.

In the meantime, Mindy offers to hire the new nurse, something Danny opposes but Dr. Schulman supports (it’s a recurring theme). She’s clearly awful at interviewing because she starts discussing romantic comedies (her obsession, if you remember last week) and ends up hugging the applicant. Danny sees the problem and tries to supervise the hiring process. I don’t know if we’re supposed to think that Danny is a jerk for this, but it seems perfectly valid. Mindy seems too senseless to hire a skilled worker over someone who can quote movies.

Schulman tells them to work together to hire someone, so they agree they can both veto anyone for any reason during interviews. Danny asks candidates their thoughts on celebrating birthdays at work (which seems a little harsh), but Mindy asks candidates to name the Jolie-Pitt kids (which is so awful that I don’t see how Mindy is a doctor; that question would only be valid if the interview were at an entertainment magazine). Danny and Mindy end up fighting so much that a qualified candidate walks out and Schulman said he’d consider firing them both and replacing them with associates who get along, so they pretend to be friends as they interview the last candidate.

The last candidate is a man named Morgan (played by Ike Barinholtz) who would like to be known as Ransom. He starts off lying in the interview and sweats a lot, but eventually admits that he was in prison, has a tattoo that reads “No More Stealing Cars” to show that he cleaned up, and that he lives with his grandmother. He’s clearly not a good candidate and they send him on his way, but he returns to use the restroom and never actually leaves the office, it seems.

After the failed interview, Mindy realizes that Jeremy hasn’t fired Beverly and does it herself. Beverly punches her in the face, causing everyone in the office to run over and scream at her broken nose and the blood on her face.

Did everyone forget that this is a medical office? I can understand the unprofessional receptionists freaking out, but there are three doctors losing their cool, too. Morgan, who never left the office, walks in, takes charge of the situation, calms Mindy, resets her nose, and advises her on how to care for it. Mindy hires him on the spot. Danny complains, but Schulman takes Mindy’s side, so Morgan is the new “dumb but competent” nurse.

On the subway ride home with her nose bandaged, Mindy’s main concern is how she looks. When Danny asks her to keep it down, Mindy raises her voice and makes it sound as if Danny is her abusive husband and he broke her nose, all to embarrass him. I don’t know about everyone else, but fake allegations of abuse don’t really tickle my funny bone.

If real doctors are this ridiculous, I think I’ll try my luck with WebMD and a first aid kit for my next medical issue. All throughout the episode, especially at the beginning when Mindy was narrating all of the examples of love on the subway car, out loud, to Danny and when she couldn’t decide on a frozen yogurt flavor, I couldn’t believe that someone who could make it through medical school and be employed as an associate at a medical practice could be so dumb. That’s not even getting started on Beverly, the incompetent nurse who mislabels blood samples before storing them between couch cushions and is completely useless. How did she get hired? While we’ve all worked with an incompetent person in our careers, Beverly was such an extreme case that the storyline became absurd.

This recap isn’t completely negative. I do enjoy the pop culture references and how Mindy is spot-on in describing real-life quirks like going to a bookstore to look at books before ordering them online, or how we all collect tote bags. How can Mindy be so spot-on with noticing people’s behaviors, but so clueless about her own? I just hope that the show is growing and will eventually rely less on Mindy being completely oblivious to her strange behavior and the ridiculous things she says.