The Mindy Project, “The Devil Wears Lands’ End” (3.5) - TV Review

The Mindy Project, Season 3, Episode 5, “The Devil Wears Lands’ End”

October 14, 2014, 9:30pm, FOX

Rob Huebel! Peter in his natural bro habitat! Mindy and Danny in an elaborate lie together! What Mindy Project lacked last week, it gets back on track, with a solid episode featuring some of the best one-liner’s the show has come up with yet.

Mindy and the associates head out to meet the new department chief, Jean, at the hospital, and she’s a hard ass. It’s just what the group needs since they’ve turned the entire practice into an absolute farce. I sort of miss the days where Mindy was lauded for her talents as a doctor. She sticks the partners with the graveyard shift at the hospital after they show up late to the meeting, and Mindy’s cell phone (ringtone Fancy) goes off in the meeting. Mindy’s solution is to take her for a night on the town, since girls “love her”. She fails to win her over with a cactus, and asks her out for a night of fun. Jean agrees, she spends all of her nights at the Statue of Liberty since moving to town, because she assumes that’s what people do. What Mindy doesn’t realize is Jean has interpreted this as a date, and kisses her at the end of the night. I love this plot, courting new friends of either gender as an adult, can feel like an awkward first date.

When Mindy admits what happened to the office, everyone wants her to continue for the benefit of the practice except for Danny. Danny gives Mindy the talk, just like with Cliff, she needs to not lie, little white lies that she enjoys are fine, but the bigger stuff that could damage someone’s heart isn’t allowed. Mindy agrees, and comes clean, just as Jean’s wife walks in. This time, Danny’s honesty policy backfires, as Jean promises they will be stuck on the graveyard shift forever. Mindy escalates her lie and says that Danny is contemplating suicide since he found out that she cheated, and commissions him to be a part of the lie, which ends up working, and Danny manages to get Mindy to help him build his adirondack chairs, and cook dinner for him every day for a month.

The secondary plot-line this week is just as strong as the main story as Peter is heading to Dartmouth for the beer pong tournament. Shonda Rhimes, the creator of Private Practice, Greys Anatomy and many other rom-com-y type shows and films, guest stars as herself, the reigning beer-pong champ Peter is trying to win against. The best part about Shonda Rhimes’s guest slot, she actually attended Dartmouth (according to Wikipedia). Jeremy admits how good he is at beer pong, since he had to toss ice into his father’s liquor from a distance at a young age and ends up helping to repair the rift between him and Peter. Ed Weeks puts on a fantastic “bro” accent, and dons the Dartmouth gear perfectly. Rob Huebel makes an appearance again, first featured in Mindy’s sex-tape episode, as the owner of the online porn site. Jeremy learns that Peter has been given the nickname Lefty, because all of his girlfriends leave him for his friends. Jeremy encourages Peter to take back his name and dominate in the beer-pong tourny which they do.

The Round Up

• SO many good lines tonight.. here they go:
• “Just give me a ticket, I can’t have a baby.”
• “That’s the best wedding I’ve ever been to. The bride was older than me, and she weighed more than me.”
• “I told Jeremy if he ever wants me to go anywhere, he has to trick me by saying Pharrell WIlliams is showing up to do a meet and greet.”
• “This is Al Bundy. This is Ted Bundy.”
• “I’m never coming clean about my looting during Sandy.”
• “I wrote a TV pilot about him once, the network said it was too sad.”
• “I just threw a dirty dish out the window because I didn’t want to deal with it.”
• “I’m basically a frat guy, I love drinking, and I hate nerds.”