YMMV / The Mindy Project

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Danny Castellano – a sympathetic, well-meaning guy who has bad luck with romance, or a creepy obsessive with outdated views on relationships and gender? The latter interpretation gets some extra fuel at the end of season 2, where Danny first offers the apartment next to his (which he also owns) to Mindy so he can keep an eye on her, and then creates a fake internet persona to woo Mindy.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • "Mindy Lahiri is a White Man" is exactly what it sound like, Mindy after being passed over by the hospital by a White Male Doctor, one day wakes up in the body of a white man played by Ryan Hansen.
  • Another episode sees her trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop while trying to win back Ben.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Tamra. She's a sassy black woman who speaks like a caricature with No Indoor Voice, never listens to her superiors, doesn't treat her boyfriend well, and is all around annoying. Early episodes made it seem like being annoyed was the intended reaction, but later episodes attempted to make her sympathetic without changing her irritating tendencies.
• Fridge Brilliance: It's possible that Jeremy's promiscuity during the early seasons was due to the influence of his old friend Jody.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Mindy is frequently referred to as "chubby" or BBW (!), but she's about a size 10-12 (US) so about medium by average standards. This is zigzagged all over the place, though, because much of the comedy seems to come from Mindy not being overweight, and her response to the comments.
• Moe: Betsy. So naive and cute, it's hard not to want to protect her. In-Universe, plenty of characters try to do just that.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Nurse Beverley was much funnier when she returned, actually becoming somewhat of a fan favorite.
• The Scrappy:
  • Morgan. He started out as annoying, then was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap into funny, then went straight back to hellishly annoying in season 2.
  • Tamra, who has shades of an Ethnic Scrappy as well as Replacement Scrappy (the latter both in and out of universe). Interestingly, the two get together forming a Scrappy Supergroup.
• Squick: Mindy's offhand comment about how she medically lost her virginity in a trampolining accident.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Smug Snake or not, it's easy to side with Dr. Paul Leotard since Mindy's attitude at trying to get her office back was incredibly rude, and realistically he was in no condition to give consent to Christina. And when he confesses what he did to Danny (in order to save Mindy some face), he gets punched for it.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Tamra in "Mindy Lahiri is a Racist" accuses Mindy of judging Rayron for being lower-class. That rings a bit hollow when, low-class or not he's pretty rude when Mindy meets him, and when he was The Ghost Tamra never painted him in a terribly flattering light (talking about how she'd cheat on him if she could, blaming him for some of her problems).
• Unpopular Popular Character: Mindy Lahiri is a favorite of many people, but she is treated quite callously and disrespectfully by a lot of characters in the series.

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