'The Mindy Project' finale react: Definitely, Mindy!

Wow! What a finale! Mindy Kaling has had a place in my heart ever since this moment and Mindy Lahiri ever since she gave up going to a party with a bunch of basketball players to stay with her friends (and footed the bill). Over the season, we’ve grown to understand Mindy and admire her love of all things rom com. Tonight, she got to do her very own big gesture.

We begin the finale with Mindy and Casey failing miserable at Skype (or Skype-equivalent) sex. Has computer sex ever worked out on a TV show? And not to be too nit-picky, but if they are making it out like he’s going to be living in a tent for a year, why would he have wireless access? Anyway, Mindy’s idea of “dirty talk” is discussing her breasts being between an A and B cup. Casey responds “Indecisive boobs are like my thing now, you know.” Just as things start heating up, Casey’s screen freezes and Morgan’s face pops up on her computer.

Casey comes to comfort Mindy (this was just a practice run so he’s in the other room). In the heat of the moment, Mindy casually throws out that maybe she just needs to go to Haiti with Casey to solve their distance problem. They need doctors, Mindy and Casey almost love each other (they just need the “e”), so maybe she just needs to take the leap.

At the office, Mindy, Danny, and Dr. Reed tell an expectant mother that they will all work together to help deliver her triplets. Mindy assures the mom-to-be that her baby will be the best.

Next, Mindy and Danny areshopping for home decorations. “Is she more owl or field mouse?” Mindy asks Danny about his ex-wife/current gilfriend Christina. This scene ends with Mindy saying she called 911 when a butterfly got into her house because she thought it was a “colorful bat.” The line alone is funny, but Kaling’s delivery is absolutely perfect.

Danny and Mindy return to the office– everything in this scene is made better by that birdcage that Danny is holding– to find the other employees betting in a “Mindy Pool” — how long Mindy will be able to stay in Haiti. Is Tamara quickly becoming my second-favorite character (after Mindy, of course)? Definitely. Mindy wants to prove she could make it in Haiti, so she tells Danny to pick her up at 9 (well, by the end 11) with her preferred breakfast sandwich: the gangs a’going camping.

On the car ride up, Morgan tries really hard to convince Mindy not to go to Haiti. Mindy’s set though, she’s got all the hair products she needs. Casey comments that she should just cut her hair, which does not go over well with Mindy.

At the campfire, Morgan tells a scary story and fully freaks out Danny and Mindy. Morgan makes fun of Mindy, with a terrible impression reminiscent of this PaleyFest moment. Morgan lights on fire in this scene, but Mindy saves him by jumping on him with a blanket.

In the tent, Mindy’s wearing some banging pajamas and Casey is flossing (gross), reading and laughing really loudly (“It’s David Sedaris. I bought it for my sister, but there’s no way she’s gonna get it”), and flinging his penis everywhere (well really, it’s just a small tent and he’s walking, but still). Mindy starts to worry that she won’t be able to stay sane for a year stuck in a tent with him.

In Danny and Christina’s tent, we learn that Danny’s pretty nervous about tics, but also pretty certain he wants to commit to Christina. “Do you think it would be fun if we camped out full time, in my apartment?” That’s some romance… too bad a lonely Morgan is outside the tent (why’d he come again?).

“Dear God, I hate to put you in this position, because I know that Casey works for you, but I am so screwed. I’m not going to Haiti,” Mindy prays at her and Casey’s Bon Voyage party. The best part of this scene is that we learn that Mindy’s drink of choice is a Shirley Temple with vodka. That’s a hundred percent a drink I have ordered (also, it’s not so great, just get it without the vodka).

“Haiti only has five letter and three are vowels” or “how to write a hilariously simple transition line.” Oh, and look, a bunch of Mindy’s old flames seem to be at this party! Brendan was in the previous scene and Jamie’s (B.J. Novak) there too! Mindy tries to show Jamie that she’s in a great relationship, but Casey takes it a little too far in the second bit of gross-out humor of the night when he feeds Mindy his gum.

Throughout the party we see some pretty great pictures of Chris Messina that any members of his fan club would probably spend thousands on. Christina’s a photographer and Danny, well, he does his best to fake his knowledge of art. He nervously goes to smoke in his room, and finds Mindy eating her Bon Voyage cake. Both are trying to fake how happy they feel about their life trajectories. “It’s a fun adventure for me as a mature adult to go to an AIDS-ravaged country with my boyfriend of three months.” Danny says that most guys freak out when they are pushed to commit too much too fast– um, didn’t he ask Christina to move in?�� which gives Mindy an idea.

(Everyone check out Danny’s shower picture if you didn’t already.) Mindy tells Casey she can’t go to Haiti with him unless she’s engaged to him. She thinks it will get her off the hook, but, obviously, Casey just proposes to her in front of everyone. Mindy didn’t think it would come to this — “Because I kinda suck. And no guy has ever wanted to commit to me before” — and we in general want to remind her that we all read her blog and want her to update it more (JK, that’s just the woman who plays her). Casey asks her who made her feel this way and Danny points around the room– “There’s him, him, sometimes this guy…” Even though she likes Casey, its not enough to stay in a tent for a year in Haiti. He leaves. “White people problems,” Tamara says without missing a beat (for real, I’m so excited for her next season).

And then, the story we probably all forgot, the doctors get the news that the triplets are coming. Now, I loved this whole episode, but this moment made me sentimental. When I watched the pilot episode (oh so many months ago), there were bumps, there were some sort of harsh jokes, there was some definite (intentional) desperation from Mindy. But the moment in the pilot where I realized this might be a character who could maintain a series was when she left a date to deliver a baby. She was confident, she was professional, she got the job done. So when we had a flash of that again this episode, to the same song, it was a good reminder to this audience that, yes, Mindy may be sort of awkward at relationships, but she’s damn good at her job.

Well, except for the part where she stresses to the new mom that all the new babies are going to be so overwhelming. But the mom is fine. She and her husband really wanted a baby, life threw this at them, sometimes you just have to say yes.

So Mindy gets her big rom-com moment. Also, the look on Danny’s face as she runs out of the room is the BEST! She runs down the street to the man she loves (well, almost loves) and bangs on his door. Sure, he doesn’t answer, but that just means she has to yell at his window that she’s pregnant, waking up most of the building. “Seriously, I knew it. The steady weight gain, the irritability, the acne,” Casey says, coming to the window. Well, obviously she’s not, but that got his attention at least. He’s not interested at first. However, Mindy made the big gesture. She cut her hair. “Who will have me now?” Of course, Casey comes down.

Sidenote: One, did anyone else feel like this haircut thing was sort of a nod to Lena Dunham? Also Tracey Wigfield, Mindy Project writer and producer, gets to say “It was a boy the whole time” in one of the apartment windows (and throw some hangers). She also wrote the “Queen of Jordan” episodes of 30 Rock, so she’s basically fantastic. Also Jack Burditt, executive producer, is in one of the windows for a hot second too.

In the last scene of the season, Mindy and Danny are in the hospital break room. Danny is shocked by Mindy’s hair. “Oh I hate it so much!” he says with like, the greatest conviction in the world and no sense of trying to be nice. Then he softens and jokes, “We both have the same haircut now.” He told Christina he wanted to slow things down. As he grabs Mindy’s glasses to clean them off, we get a steamy steamy moment where Danny looks at Mindy likes he wants to be with her forever. I was dying. But she’s back together with Casey and going to Haiti… and that’s the season.

So what did everybody think?

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