Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We opened the episode with the guys in the office playing some
kind of nerf gun game that looksreally fun.
I was never a young single professional in a workplace, so
I don't know if this is what. It's like, but man, when I see
stuff like this I'm always like,did I miss out so.
To all of you out there, is thatwhat it's like?
Did I miss out on the workplace fun?
Yeah, buddy, you did. Welcome back to another episode
(00:39):
of The Rank. I'm John and today we're going
to be ranking the next episode in The Mindy Project.
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(01:01):
Now today we're ranking the 6th episode of the second season of
The Mindy Project called Bro Club for Duds, written by Jeremy
Bronson and directed by David Rogers.
And now, just so you know, thereare going to be spoilers ahead.
You know, it's a it's a, it's anolder sitcom.
So assume you've seen it if you're watching this.
Now, the whole goal of this thing here is, you know, for
those of the uninitiated is we're trying to figure out what
(01:22):
are the best sitcoms of all time.
And best way to do that for me, in my opinion, is to rank every
single episode and then average the rankings of all the
episodes. And that gives you a series
ranking. So today The Mindy Project.
So let's dive in here, starting with The Potent Notables.
So the 6th episode of the secondseason aired Tuesday, October
(01:43):
22nd, 2013. The Mindy Project stayed the
exact same with 2.7 million viewers, and once again, it was
the least watched of Fox's Tuesday lineup, losing 1,000,000
viewers from its lead in New Girl.
Interestingly, Brooklyn 99, the new show on Fox's Tuesday lineup
and in the 8:30 time slot, actually had the most viewers
for the Fox shows that night with 3.8 million.
(02:03):
So we'll definitely be doing both New Girl and Brooklyn 9/9
at some point, assuming we get aenough engagement from our
listener slash viewers and they want me to keep going.
Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.
As for competition, it just barely beat Supernatural in CW
which had 2.3 million viewers and Ravenswood on ABC Family
which had 2.12 million viewers. It handily beat I Dream of Nene
(02:26):
the wedding on Bravo which had 1.39 million viewers.
Now As for the ones that lost toTrophy Wife on ABC which had 4
million viewers, which isn't actually a ton really.
And then NCIS lost Los Angeles on CBS with 14.9 million viewers
and The Voice on NBC, which had 13.1 million viewers.
Anybody who's listened to this previously, you'll be so
surprised to hear that the original NCIS on CBS won the
(02:50):
night with 19,000,000 viewers. Now, in this episode, Peter
tries to get Mindy to recite thePledge of Allegiance with him
and she can't do it. Now, if you recall, on the
previous episode, she confesses to Jason that she doesn't know
the Pledge of Allegiance. Just a fun little throwback
there to the previous episode. All right, And on our final pull
notable just do on an actor highlight here, Ben Feldman was
introduced on the airplane in the last episode and he
(03:12):
continues as a love interest forMindy in this one.
And at the time this came out, if you were wondering what have
I seen him in, it would have been Mad Men where he played
Michael Ginsburg. Of course, now you'd likely
recognize him from Superstore. He also played Ron Laflamme on
Silicon Valley, where you may have seen him play guitar.
Now, According to him quote, I could definitely play chords and
sound like a toddler with a guitar.
(03:33):
But on The Mindy Project, we seehim playing ukulele at the end
of the previous episode. Quote Well, I had to learn the
ukulele for that. I played guitar enough that the
ukulele I could figure out for aweek.
I just sat in my house and played Katy Perry's Teenage
Dream on the ukulele, which drove my wife insane.
She was like, in order to deal with this, you're going to learn
some songs I like. So I guess the Katy Perry hate
(03:53):
started early in that household.Of course, three years later, he
did another interview where he said he can't play the ukulele
anymore. Quote I don't remember any of
it. Just yesterday I was on the
Harry Connick Junior show and they told me beforehand, Harry
wants you to play the ukulele. And I had to say, I can't.
I'll make a fool of myself. It's like algebra.
There's no use for it in my life.
And so my brain has dumped it. Really.
You don't use algebra in your everyday life?
(04:14):
Who does that? I don't know.
Come on. About his arc on The Mindy
Project. He said, quote.
Mindy was fun. Other than Superstore, it was
the other time I played an elitist, obnoxious idiot.
Actually, they're now our neighbors, too.
We shoot Superstore. Our Cloud 9 was the name of the
store. And Superstore is literally as
far away as I am from the other side of this room.
So we see a bunch of them. A lot, actually.
(04:35):
I ran into Mindy two nights ago.End Quote.
You can't tell. That's an excerpt from an
interview that he did about Superstore back when Superstore
was still on the air. I just thought it was kind of
fun that, you know, they sort ofstayed in touch.
Those are the potent notables. Let's go to the episode
overview. So Mindy seems to have settled
into a more workplace comedy as opposed to love life comedy
motif with this episode. What was even more shocking is
(04:56):
that none of the four leading men, Peter, Danny, Jeremy and
Morgan, were really seen as loveinterests for Mindy in this
episode either. Obviously there were some nice
moments between her and Danny, but they seemed like legitimate
friendship. I found their friendship
actually pretty touching when they happen in, you know, those
moments of friendship in the episode when they happen, I was
like, oh, that's nice, they're friends.
I suspect, though, that it will become something more fairly
(05:19):
soon. I've jumped ahead a little bit
here, though. We open the episode with the
guys in the office playing some kind of Nerf gun game that looks
really fun. I was never a young single
professional in a workplace, so I don't know if this is what
it's. Like but man, when I see stuff
like this I'm always like, did Imiss out so.
To all of you out there, is thatwhat it's like?
Did I miss out in the workplace fun?
Yeah, buddy, you did. Anyway, we definitely get the
(05:41):
sense that Peter coming into theoffice has made things very
brilly with the Nerf gun battlesand MMA wrestling with Morgan.
But it strangely doesn't seem out of left field because it
really suits his personality, the personality of his
character. Naturally, Mindy is fighting
testosterone with estrogen and pushing for more seemingly
feminine things. Like she wants a nice gazebo in
the weird outdoor area. She takes Peter out to lunch at
(06:04):
a Doll Cafe. Of course the guys want, like, a
sports hangout or whatever in the gazebo area.
Now, what I find really fascinating about this, though,
is that it seemingly takes the guy's sides.
Like, it's proof that she's selfish because she took Peter
to the Doll Cafe. And I mean, yeah, but also,
isn't it also selfish to want a BBQ grill with a basketball hoop
in the weird outdoor area when your practice is for pregnant
(06:25):
women? Also, she's outnumbered here.
I don't know that it should be about her conforming to them as
much as they should be a little more accommodating to her.
Like, she's the odd one out. Then why not be a little more
welcoming? I don't know.
It sounds odd because Mindy is kind of wild it.
It just felt a little backwards to me.
What really surprised me in thisepisode was the crush Morgan
seems to have on Tamra Now. Maybe it's just been too long
(06:47):
between episodes for me, but I don't remember Morgan expressing
a crush on Tamra's previously and now he's like head over
heels for. We get a bit of storytelling to
let us know that Morgan is actually a really good guy.
How they do that is they he theyhave him help Ray Ron, which is
Tamra's long term boyfriend. It was their 20th anniversary.
She looks like she's 20, so I guess they've been dating since
(07:08):
the womb. I don't know.
Anyway, he helps Ray Ron do better for Tamara because he
cares about Tamara. Now I will say it was fun to
finally meet Ray Ron. But he's.
Not at all what I was expecting.And he's very goofy.
So let's go back to Mindy for a second, because after Peter
tells her how selfish she is in the Doll Cafe, she's determined
to make it work with them. And how does she do this?
She blows off her would be boyfriend Jason and goes to see
(07:31):
Peter get his ass kicked at an amateur MMA event.
Now it works to get some grudging acceptance from Peter,
but it loses her Jason. So we'll be off to find another
bow from Mindy soon, I'm sure. And I'm wondering when it will
be Cliff. As soon, I suspect.
Now, Morgan and Tamara had builtthat gazebo earlier that Mindy
wanted. This isn't the bee story, but
the next time we see the outdoorarea, which is at the end of the
(07:53):
episode, it's got a basketball hoop for Peter.
I'm curious what happened to thegazebo.
It feels like it should have been acknowledged.
It was like just a cursory acknowledgement.
Anyway, we end the episode with Peter blocking Mindy's shot and
then him smacking her ass and saying good game, which, you
know, is assault. But sure, that's a whole
episode. Let's see how it ranked.
I'll wank. So the rank is where I rank the
(08:16):
episode on five category, story,acting, dialogue, episode
coherence, and character relatability.
I rank it on a scale of one to five, one being the worst, five
being the best. And then I have a laugh counter
where I tally up the amount of times that the episode made me
laugh out loud, one point per laugh out loud, and that gets
added to the score. So the first category is story,
which I gave a 2 1/2. There's really not much of a
story here. I suppose it's that Mindy wants
(08:36):
to get along with her Co workers, which is a pretty broad
story. Then there's AB story where
Morgan has a huge crush on Tamara.
Look, this isn't terrible, but it's not like great
storytelling. It's just it's just a day in the
life type of thing. It's not a story.
Next category is acting, which Igave a 4.25.
Everyone's really good in this. Mindy did really well.
I especially liked Chris Messinabeing nice.
He played it in a way that didn't feel like it was out of
(08:58):
character from what we normally see as a cantankerous Danny.
So I thought it was really well done.
It was a fun episode. So the next category is
dialogue, which I gave a four. So the writing is hilarious and
it's one of the better written episodes as far as jokes are
concerned. As far as structure, it was OK.
It was. Definitely all.
Over the place, which I'll get two more of in the next
category, which is episode coherence.
I gave that a 3 1/2. It's sort of high scoring on the
(09:20):
coherence of the the characters in the series and low score,
lower scoring for the coherence of just an episode in general.
So I like the way they pointed out Mindy's selfishness.
I think this will help her character grow as well.
I love seeing Danny and Mindy seeming to have a genuine
friendship that we as an audience get to see.
You got to see evolve. Like didn't like her at all the
beginning of the first season and now he.
(09:42):
Likes her it's. Nice.
However, everything else about this episode is just kind of all
over the place. This happens a lot with Mindy
where it sometimes just feels like we're doing this, then
we're doing this, now we're doing now we're here and we're
done. It all somehow works, but then
when you reflect, you go, wow, we were all over the place.
Also, the Morgan crush on Tamarafelt a little out of nowhere.
I enjoyed it, but it was definitely like, where did this
(10:02):
come from? So let's go to the last
category, which is character relatability, which I gave a
four. It kind of seemed like in a
battle of the sexes episode the guys won a little bit, which
felt a little odd. I mean, if they get after hours
nerf gun games, why can't Mindy have a gazebo?
Either way, everyone was really relatable.
Other than what I just mentioned, I actually related to
Mindy's doing stuff to maintain membership in her work group
(10:23):
while sort of alienating her would be boyfriend.
I also understood his reasoning for leaving her.
I don't know, it was all good. It was good.
So that puts a grand total up to39.25 for this episode of The
Mindy Project, which puts it in the Holy Grail.
And As for the series average continues its ascent as it goes
to 35.3, keeping it in the Holy Grail.
So thanks for listening and or watching everyone.
(10:45):
If you'd like to see a list of our episode and series rankings,
you can do that on our website at the rankpodcast.com.
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And I'll leave you with this. Why didn't they let Mindy into
the bro club for dudes at first?Oh, why is that too much
charisma, not enough chest hair?Oh, brother.
(11:24):
And the guys want a sports hangout or whatever and and
froze up again.