Mindy Kaling Tears Apart The TV Industry With An Insider’s Wrath
Mindy Kaling has seen and heard it all. She’s now a seasoned TV vet with an imperceptibly disparaging sense of humor. She destroys all aspiring TV wannabees. When Mindy Kaling isn’t busy filming The Mindy Project, she’s writing. And sometimes that writing is full of all the truth that sarcasm provides.
Mindy Kaling is gearing up for the fall TV season just like all of us. The difference between us and her is that she has the inside scoop. She’s not just going to give a light overview of the upcoming fall lineup of shows that all the studios are preparing for anxious TV viewers across the nation. Mindy is going to put that insightful, unique, and relatable mind to work in her analysis of what’s to come.
The Mindy Project will head into its fourth season this fall. Mindy is ready. She’ll begin next season like this: pregnant, cancelled on Fox, and only viewable via Hulu. In a recent article for the New Yorker, Kaling had this to say about every TV viewers’ favorite time of year.
“Each fall, the trade papers publish loglines of the upcoming TV pilots. As a seasoned pro, I can see certain tropes getting recycled. Not just familiar characters (‘boozy mother-in-law,’ ‘hyper-articulate child of dumb-dumbs,’ ‘incomprehensible foreigner’) but also basic premises. Here are some of the kinds of shows the networks seem to be clamoring for lately.”
In the article, she goes on to explain the types of overdone show concepts we are likely to get for yet another turn. At the end of the piece, she mentions a potential origin of the ideas presented on her own show.
“A sexually unapologetic fashionista tries to find love in the big city. Wait, that sounds like the premise of The Mindy Project. Not many people know this, but The Mindy Project is actually based on a famous Venezuelan show called P*ta Gordita, or The Chubby Sl*t.”
As for whether there is such a show in Venezuela, I could not track it down with an initial Google search. In any case, this comes from a series of essays Mindy is publishing in September called Why Not Me? It’s her second book after 2011’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).
Things are looking good for Mindy. She’s got a new book, a new season, and a new home for her TV show with Hulu. The only other thing Mindy Kaling needs is a boyfriend who doesn’t expect her to be the woman she portrays on television.
[Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images]
