The Mindy/Tamra Project Is Back

After a two-week World Series hiatus ending in a championship win by the San Francisco Giants, The Mindy Project returned back to its regularly scheduled programming just in time for hibernation season.

“I’m in a cab,” Mindy texts Danny, who is waiting all by his lonesome outside of a movie theater that looks like it’s set in not-Manhattan. This is a lie we know well, considering it’s the go-to text we send with our mouths hung open in mascara application concentration.

She’s late, he’s mad, and that’s the theme of this week’s couple fight.

Their episode-long argument is, like most couples’ tiffs, fairly boring as it doesn’t really effect us, but it did send an important plot line into motion: in a juvenile attempt to make Danny late for once, Mindy messes with his watch. Mid-run he realizes what she’s done, flips out, refuses to be late and runs into work like a sweaty, gym-clothed mess. Danny somehow still makes it on time, then celebrates with a vaguely psychotic victory dance which involves the same finger BB gun “pew pews!” that a 6-year-old does when he’s sitting in the back of station waging facing out towards the highway.

You know who catches him, right?

Doctor Cop.

Dr. Jean Fishman already thinks Danny’s unstable from the last episode, and this is the final straw. She sends him to counseling for his dang emotions, and the workshop is led by none other than Professor Snape/whatever that holistic witch doctor’s name is. We’re supposed to care about this because Danny gets to the root of why lateness annoys him (his father issues), but here’s why I/you/we/us care:

1) The random creepy dude in chic safari scrubs who was sentenced to said workshop for stealing blood. I love a good non sequitur sidebar.

2) Morgan’s there too because his “female boss is in love with him,” and also because he’s addicted to cookies.

Let’s wrap up what you don’t care about and get to the good stuff: Mindy spends the day running errands with Danny’s mom while he’s chatting feelings with True Blood and co. Turns out Danny’s mom is even worse about punctuality than Mindy, and suddenly Dr. Lahiri feels compassion for her boyfriend who’s had to deal with this his whole life. They make up at the end in a truce of understanding and miraculously, there’s only a hint at the foreplay that’s about to ensue.

The real hero of the episode is Tamra.

Wrong Tamra. This one:

Tamra sets Peter up on a blind date with her friend Abby. Long story short, Peter ditches Abby with a “baby emergency” excuse that he stole from a Hugh Grant movie (btw, where is Jeremy?) because he’s not attracted to her. Tamra gets mad and makes him apologize, facilitating more Tamra-time than we’ve had all season while resulting in such lines to Peter as:

“You need to go apologize to Abby tomorrow. She’ll be at the bookstore. What will you be doing? Eating pretzels off the floor? Yea, I saw it.”

And, “What do you think? Natalie Portman’s sitting in her castle like, ‘Oh, I wonder if there are any schlubs out there who wear a bathing suit as underwear?'”

To which Morgan added, “Natalie would throw up if she saw you.”

Peter listens to Tamra, goes to the bookstore to apologize (Abby writes historical romance novels; she was having a book signing that day) and gets a crush both on her book and also, Abby. He woos her by writing his own weird fan faction, which reminds me — have you submitted yours yet?

That’s all folk, see you next week.