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The Mindy Project

Mindy’s no stranger to being called a nut, but a coconut? It’s a new one that gets dropped on her in this week’s episode of The Mindy Project, “Bernardo and Anita”. Plus, Morgan and Jody fight over Maggie from The Walking Dead and little baby Leo gets a haircut!
The show opens with Mindy (Mindy Kaling) on a date, which is always a homerun. In this case, mostly because the pasta they were each having looked so damn delicious. Was that linguini? Anyway, it’s a typical Mindy date, with her revealing her armpit botox, past involvement with a steel drum band, oh, and the fact that she doesn’t know many other Indian people. Hence, her date Neel decides not to “catch her with his lips” and introduces her to the phrase “coconut: brown on the outside and white on the inside.”

The next day, Danny (Chris Messina) tells Mindy he wants to take Leo to meet his Parmesan-making cousins in Italy for a week, which didn’t seem to shock her nearly as much as Jody (Garret Dillahunt) telling her he thinks of her as a “white man, largely because of your entitlement.” He moves along, hitting on Ashley (Lauren Cohan) after Morgan (Ike Barinholtz) already complimented her left eye, quoted Taken, and promised her a 10-minute date. Jody swoops right in, clearly having more success with her than his co-worker.

Mindy’s brother Rishi (Utkarsh Ambudkar) returns to this episode to let her know he thinks he’s black and she thinks she’s white, sooo the Indian culture was never really a thing for either of them. But don’t worry because bear claws still very much are. Mindy begins her mission to make Indian friends, first with a stop to what is clearly Bed, Bath and Beyond with Neel. Things go relatively well; Neel gets his humidifier, a white lady tells them they would make a beautiful family, and Mindy manages to score an invite to his friends’ dinner party, with all Indian people, “Like AP Calculus.”
Things are looking less steamy for Jody when he learns that Ashley is saving herself for marriage. He literally RUNS down her hallway to get out of there. Boy, bye. To be fair, Cohan does look very pretty when she is not all bloody in tattered clothing running from zombies. Jody advises trash-eating Morgan to stay away from her, because that’s the point if there’s no sex!? But it doesn’t discourage Morgan who has some “pretty hot, one-on-one abstinence” with her.

Mindy asks Jody to come with her to the Indian dinner party so she’s not the whitest person there, and he proves that to a fault, declaring her life choices shameful and busting out an impression of his dry cleaner so inappropriate Mindy has to shut it down. The dinner party host encourages Mindy to have a Mundan, a traditional Indian ceremony for Leo and she leaves feeling empowered…only to return home to find Morgan and Chelsea (Eliza Coupe) having disturbing-in-many-ways sex on her couch. Jody earns back a point or two by telling Morgan, “It’s true all men are animals but some can be gentlemen,” and that he has to come clean to Ashley.
At Mindy’s apartment, the Mundan ceremony goes…less great than Mindy looks, because she looks beautiful in the traditional Indian garb. Leo cries through the entire thing, and ends up with one strip of shaved hair, as the guests look on just as uncomfortably. Her family reassures her that it was not nearly as big of a disaster as when they had one for both Mindy and her brother, and that she is not, after all, a coconut.
The episode ends with many more reassurances: Jody tells Mindy he now thinks of her as an Indian man. Ashley texts Jody and offers to give him both another chance and a trip to third base. Danny tells Mindy he appreciates Leo’s Indian heritage. And Mindy declares her love for all penises. Here’s one more reassurance: they love you too, Min.
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