The Mindy Project Recap: Hasta la Vista, Haiti
“Well, I guess all my problems have been solved forever,” Mindy declares at the very beginning of The Mindy Project‘s Season 2 premiere. (C’mon, Min — you have seen your show before, right?)
We catch up with the still-short-haired doc in Haiti, treating patients at the hospital she built and having a goofy good time with Pastor Casey. The trip seems to have strengthened the pair’s relationship – so much so that Casey proposes one morning at sunrise.
Her response: “Are you kidding me?!” and “I wanna Vine this” and finally “Yes!”… then they fall from the tree during some celebratory kissing. Both seem fine, until she experiences abdominal pain and passes out. She wakes with Morgan hovering over her – which (naturally) causes a screaming fit.
As Tookers stands by her hospital bed, he explains that she was airlifted to New York for emergency gallbladder surgery. Wanna know what everyone in the practice has been up to in her absence? Well:
• Dr. Paul Leotard — an OB/GYN, sex therapist and nutritionist played by an appropriately smarmy James Franco – is filling Mindy’s spot at Shulman & Associates. (Though she’s at first taken with the handsome former model, these two end the episode as rivals-in-the-making.)
• Danny and Christina have moved to New Jersey, where their love life has slowed more than summer shore traffic on the southbound Garden State Parkway. Sex therapy sessions with Dr. Leotard aren’t helping much – asking Danny to name five things he finds beautiful about his little Castellano probably isn’t the best tack, New Dr. L – and when Christina finds porn in Danny’s browser history, she splits his laptop in two (!) and leaves.
• Jeremy’s new role of managing partner at the practice is causing him to stress-eat.
Casey has made the emergency trip with his beloved, and the news of their engagement hits Danny hard. The pastor later suggests that he and his future missus have a no-frills wedding before returning to Haiti, and though Mindy always envisioned a huge affair, she agrees. “Since going to Haiti, I don’t need the things I used to need,” she says, sweetly adding that Casey is all that’s important to her now. The sentiment is cute (and, as Mindy devotees know, blatantly untrue).
Danny’s not a fan of Mindy getting hitched right away. Mindy’s not a fan of Danny proposing to Christina just so she won’t desert him. (“Who’s gonna explain Colbert to me? I mean, is he a real guy?” Danny cries in a moment of panic.) The two docs get a moment alone on Mindy’s fire escape, where Danny lets her know he and Christina are done (he couldn’t bring himself to pop the question) and Mindy contemplates a life with the guy who just peed on her wedding dress (yet another moment of hilarity, thanks to Casey’s clumsy junk!).
“I don’t wanna go back to Haiti,” she confesses, but asserts that her love for Casey is the real deal and she definitely wants to get hitched, right now, in her apartment. If only her dress didn’t smell like a urinal… “You know what I always thought you looked nice in?” Danny says.
Cut to Mindy walking down the aisle in green scrubs to Flaming Lips’ (With Stardeath and White Dwarfs) cover of Madonna’s “Borderline.” But Casey looks troubled, and we find out why when he stops the ceremony: The apartment wedding isn’t what she really wants, and he knows it. So yes, he wants to be her husband, but no, she shouldn’t come back to Haiti with him – she should stay there and earn the money that their lavish, future nuptials are bound to cost.
Mindy’s relief is plain to see, but that doesn’t mean the lovers’ airport parting isn’t a sad one. (Anders Holm breaks my heart when he mimes a broken heart on the escalator.) Back in the hospital lounge, Drs. Lahiri and Leotard realize that they both want to stick around the practice. OB-GYN game on!
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