Mindy Lahiri: Why The ‘Project’ In ‘The Mindy Project’ Wasn’t Ever About Her Quest To Find The Love Of Her Life – And What Exactly Her Ending Up With Danny Told Us About Her As A Woman

My previous two blog entries, which had Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton as the honorary subject matters reminded me of Mindy Kailing. She was mentioned in the blog entry on Meghan Markle, or as she’d like to call herself, Meghan Sussex. Kailing appeared in an episode of Markle’s new Netflix show, ‘With Love, Meghan’. The cameo was… interesting. But I already wrote about it, so you can check that blog entry after you read this one. And without further ado, let’s finally talk about the great Mindy Kailing, though my husband wouldn’t agree with that testament.

I was first introduced to Mindy Kailing when she came on my screen in 2020 while I binge-watched ‘The Mindy Project’. My husband hated me for it. It was during the pandemic when the entire world shut down. He was working from home, and he could hear Mindy and everything revolving her while he was working. Let’s just say… he couldn’t wait for me to finish the series. It took me a while to do so, but I did. He and Mindy’s quirky sense of humour simply didn’t mesh. But then again, we’re now watching ‘Running Point’ together, which was co-created by Mindy, so maybe his sense of humour changed since then.

The show followed Mindy Lahiri, played by Kailing. She’s an Indian-American doctor. She’s delusionally confident, unapologetically selfish, and romantic, and has a wild love and appreciation for fashion, gossip, and romantic comedies. She’s well known for her strong sense of self and unwavering belief in her own choices, even when they’re questionable. A romantic at heart and a seeker for love, she’s a firm believer in happily ever afters, often seeking them out in her personal life. Mindy’s character is often portrayed as self-centered and focused on her own desires, sometimes to the detriment of others. But she’s also a giver when she wants to be. She has a lot of flaw in her, and nevertheless, she’s generally portrayed as a warm and friendly person, capable of forming strong relationships. She has a lively and energetic personality. Her friends love her for it.

Mindy thought she finally got her happily-ever-after when she married Ben, played by Bryan Greenberg. Ben was great on paper. He was intelligent, genuine man who could’ve made Mindy happy and given her the life that she wanted. There was just one tiny problem – Mindy just didn’t feel ‘it’ with him. When I initially watched the show, I felt Mindy realized that she made a mistake marrying Ben the very moment she got married to him. She wasn’t feeling what she was supposed to be feeling; or what she thought she was supposed to feel after getting married. She wasn’t happy, and made every excuse in the world not to spend time with him. Just Ben told her when he broke up with her, Mindy didn’t love him; she loved the idea of him. In hindsight, Mindy only got married to Ben because he greed, unlike Danny. Ben gave her what Danny wouldn’t. She thought she could grow to love him eventually, but it wasn’t meant to be. And even when Ben finally told her he wanted a divorce, she quickly, and without hesitation, agreed.

One good thing that came out of Mindy’s marriage to Ben was her finally making the realization that she didn’t need a man to be happy or to live a fulfilling life. She already did it on her own. She didn’t need to be rescued by a man or be swept off her feet. It was her marriage, and eventual divorce, to Ben that made her see herself for exactly who she is and nothing less: a strong, independent doctor who just happened to be a single mom. When we first met Mindy, we saw her working as an OB/GYN. This was a central part of her life, and the show often highlighted her skills and accomplishments in that field. By season 4, Mindy opened her own fertility clinic. And she did so with much hesitation from others. The person that was doubting her the most was the person she thought she’d end up with at the time. No, it wasn’t Ben. It was Danny.

During the show’s very beginnings, Mindy and Danny were just colleagues who disliked each other, but their dynamic evolved over time. They eventually became friends, and as the show progressed, romantic feelings became true. Danny was the one who first initiated a romantic relationship, but broke it off with Mindy soon after because she was more important to him to lose as a friend. But in a true Mindy fashion, the two got back together after Danny realized it was best to risk it all than to lose her completely. They fell in love, had a child together, and, after a few hiccups and much hesitancy from Danny, got engaged. As their relationship progressed, Danny somehow became more and more unlikable. The longer they were together, the more unsure I became as to why Mindy was with him to begin with. She was worth more than Danny gave her credit to, and I really wish she saw what I, as a viewer, saw in her – the strong, fun, quirky, independent, bada** woman that she is. Danny was surely handsome, but very unsure of himself, and with that, he took all of his insecurities out on Mindy. He wasn’t kind to her. Even before they started dating, he wasn’t kind to her. He was rude and condescending, and he made crude comments at Mindy’s expense every chance he got.

I could also somewhat empathize with Danny. His father abandoned him when he was a kid, and his ex-wife cheated on him. Nevertheless, I think he could’ve, and should’ve, found a healthier way to unpack and manage his negative emotions, rather than setting out to be the world’s biggest grump and treating everyone in his life like garbage. Despite him being somewhat of a decent person, he was a walking red flag right from the start. He was a toxic, emotionally abusive man. Certainly. He wasn’t someone that should ever be romanticized and thought of as ‘the one’.

Danny never liked women. The only good woman in his life was his mother. That was the only woman he thought of as being worthy of his love and devotion. He saw them beings that could only hurt him. He felt superior to women, yet felt threatened by their independence and success. And it should come as no surprise that his views on masculinity were remarkably antiquated as well. After all, he called ‘When Harry Met Sally’, Mindy’s favourite movie, ‘a fantasy that undermines the dignity of men’. Mindy described Danny as the best man she ever dated. That was up to debate. I think Ben was the best man she ever dated. He treated her just as a real man should. She also knew exactly who Danny was. As she said herself, Danny was ‘a bitter divorcee … stewing over a lifetime of rage and regret’.

At some point in season 2, Mindy gave Danny a reality check after, once again, she’d endured another day of his bullsh*t. She said to him, ‘When I first met you I thought, ‘Wow that guy is so handsome and smart. How could he be single? He’s such a catch.’ Then I got to know you better, and I realized, you’re mean. You’re mean and you are selfish. You’re just like your dad. No you know what you’re worse than your dad. Cause your dad changed.’ She eventually apologized for her brutal words, but I personally questioned why she even had to do that. From the very first day at her new job at Shulman & Associates, Danny had done nothing but shame her and belittle her. He called her fat, and he even went as far as calling her a joke. And yet, he never even felt the need to apologize for anything he’d ever done or said to her. The double standard was something out of the ordinary and impossible to even fathom. Each and every time Danny questioned her, Mindy always stood up for herself. We always saw that he felt bad and questioned his motives each and every take, but never apologized for any of his wrongdoings. He showcased the typical ‘he’s mean to you because he likes your syndrome that so many women like Mindy believe to be true and of the essence because they see it in…rom-coms. It’s toxic. It teaches women to accept abuse, and it teaches men to express themselves through violence and abuse. And let’s not forget that violence and abuse don’t have to be physical. They can also be emotional, financial, mental. In this case, Mindy suffered emotional abuse at the hands of Danny.

Danny became much nicer to Mindy over time, and we’d glimpses of Danny displaying empathy and real care for Mindy, but it was only because he developed real feelings for her. Even when he showed his kindness, though, he tried to sabotage her happiness with other potential boyfriends for his own benefit; so that she’d see him in a different light, and so that there’d be a chance for them to be together. There was always some type of an anterior motive to Danny’s kindness towards Mindy, and Mindy was too in love with him to see that about him. She was blind to see that the man she loved was actually a narcissistic self-involved man who had no interest whatsoever in the woman that stood to be. Danny was a misogynistic man who believed women had a certain role in a man’s world. He yearned to have a woman for himself that would take care of him.

Mindy was a hopeless romantic. Everyone knew that about her. She wanted her happily-ever-after just like she saw in every rom-com possible since the 1980’s. Danny gave her the happily-ever-after that she so desired when he gave her the ‘Harry Met Sally’ romantic gesture at the Empire State Building even though he couldn’t even hide the fact that he hated this classic movie. She had a certain expectation when it came to finding true love, and Danny gave her that when he intended to win her back. Danny did showed Mindy his vulnerability in the quieter moments. Those were very good moments; ones that made her fall in love with him so deeply. That side of him made her forget a rom-com happily-ever-after is, in actuality, just the beginning of a love story.

Mindy and Danny’s different takes on where their relationship would be headed began just when Mindy found out she was pregnant with Leo. Not knowing that she was already pregnant, Danny said to her, as well as his family, that he was unsure whether or not he’d ever wanted to have kids. She was delighted, as well as relieved when Danny showed enlightenment and called them a family when he found out about her pregnancy. Troubles arose again for the couple when Danny told Mindy that he didn’t know whether or not he ever wanted to get married again. Mindy was always clear that she wanted to get married eventually. That was always the end-goal for her, and she was clear about that. Danny, on the other hand, didn’t know if he could give her that; if he even wanted to give her that. He was still reeling from his divorce; and he was too by his ex-wife’s And so while he knew that marriage was the end-goal for Mindy, even before they ever got together and even before they became friends, he still decided to string her along and give her false hope. It wasn’t until he met her parents that he had a change of heart and finally proposed to Mindy.

Mindy’s future with Danny seemed bright. She was having his baby. They were engaged to be married. And they finally moved in together. But then, the baby arrived, and Danny’s true motives started to show. He vocalized his expectations of her as a woman and a mom. He expected her to quit her job and stay home with the baby. He also expected her to have another child with him. Mindy, in contrast, didn’t want all that. She wanted to work. She wanted to be a one-and-done mom. She didn’t want to make any more sacrifices than she already had since she had the baby. They just couldn’t agree on anything from that moment on. Danny saw this as Mindy’s bad decision. He thought he could change her mind, and when it didn’t work, he began tricking her into getting pregnant again. He was secretly tracking her cycle, and when it was her ovulation period, he’d do romantic gestures for her so that they’d have sex. She thought he was just being romantic, when in reality, it was him having ulterior motives. When she figured it out, she started taking her birth control pills behind his back.

When I watched that saga unfold, I felt absolutely disgusted. That fact alone should’ve been the end of the relationship, and Mindy should’ve moved on from Danny entirely without ever looking back. It was a complete invasion of privacy, and yet another case of a man deciding what a woman should do with her body without her consent. This is something that just simply wouldn’t fly in my own personal life. My husband and I have had conversations on whether or not we want a second child, and I always continue making it abundantly clear that it’s my body, my choice. Even as I got pregnant with our son after deciding for myself that I’d be more than okay to live a child free life, I reminded him that it was my decision in the end whether or not I’d keep the baby. He had no say, and I didn’t care if and how disappointed he’d be in my decision.

The two eventually broke up, and rightfully so. That was how it should’ve been. Danny never treated her right. When Leo was just a newborn, Danny’s father had a heart attack. Mindy encouraged Danny to go see him, but with this decision came complications. Mindy was a new mom left alone to juggle life as it was. Danny didn’t even think to do something like hire a nurse or make sure that his family was there to help her. Now that I’m a mom myself and had gone through the newborn phase, I have to say that I applaud Mindy. I have no idea how she did it. I probably wouldn’t have survived if I didn’t have so much help around me at the time. And I know women who didn’t survive. Mindy, on the other hand, did. As annoying as she sometimes might be, one cannot deny that she’s a strong, bada** woman who could find solutions to anything; even when her hormones are running high. In a world where society tells women they can’t have children and work at the same time, she did just that.

I guess the storyline between Mindy and Ben was meant to show the drastic differences between Mindy’s domestic life with both men. Mindy didn’t seem to need Ben at all. In fact, she would’ve much rather have him not be there. Unlike Danny, Ben had zero alterior motives in his positive treatment towards Mindy. He just truly wanted to be there for her. But every time he tried to be there for her, she came up with every single excuse not to allow him in. She even used the excuse of working out, something she’d never do, as an excuse. Ben tried to make the marriage work, and had Mindy go to marriage counseling. Though Mindy agreed to go, she obviously didn’t take any of the sessions seriously. In fact, she questioned why she was even there to begin with. This was contradictory to how she tried to make her relationship with Danny work. She was the one who was taking counseling seriously, whereas Danny bailed on her. Ben then pretended he had a job interview in Philadelphia as a test to see whether Mindy would even notice or care that he was gone. She didn’t, and that was the final straw for him. That was when he ended the marriage and asked Mindy for a divorce. Mindy not noticing that Danny wasn’t there with her, on the other hand, would be unimaginable.

Some might label Mindy as a bad wife. Jody, Mindy’s co-worker and later business partner, explained, ‘I think women these days have forgotten the importance of femininity in relationships’. I know I previously said that Ben made Mindy realize that she didn’t need a man, but that’s actually not true. In actuality, Mindy realized that she didn’t actually need a man when she became a new mother to Leo and took care of him all on her own when Danny left her to be there for his father without any help whatsoever. Mindy never needed a man. She WANTED a man. She was always a hopeless romantic and hopeful for her ‘happily-ever-after’, but she also would never settle just for the sake of having a man. As hard as it was for her to do, she didn’t settle for Danny either. She ended the relationship because she wouldn’t sacrifice her own definition of womanhood and femininity for his.

Ben was a good guy. He treated Mindy right, and she herself knew that. He was also good to her son. This factor is also important, even more so than someone being good to the woman herself, in a relationship where there are children from previous relationships involved. She also loved Ben’s daughter, and it was actually after having a talk with her that Mindy proposed to Ben. She seemed to have wanted to be Ben’s daughter’s stepmom more than she wanted to be Ben’s wife. Mindy’s biggest mistake in the marriage was…that she got married in the first place. She married Ben for the absolutely the wrong reasons. She married him because, even after her relationship with Danny crumbled, she still believed in the fairytale ending that she’d see in romantic comedies. The issue was, however, that she married the wrong person. She married him because he was a good guy and she believed that she could force herself to love him.

Ben was right when he said that Mindy didn’t love him. She liked him, and thought that she could grow to love him. As we all know, simply liking someone and thinking that you could grow to love them isn’t enough to make a marriage work. She tried to tell herself, as well as Ben, that she did everything she did, like engage Ben to take a job in Philadelphia that would have them be in a long-distance relationship because she didn’t want to hold him back like Danny held her back. But this, in fact wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t even that she was so independent. It was that she simply didn’t love Ben, and didn’t even care whether he was there right beside her or not. In fact, she preferred him not to be there at all. She wanted a man, but not the man that she had as her husband.

Ben represented everything that Danny wasn’t to Mindy. Even their breakup wasn’t anything that Mindy was used to. They ended their marriage on such a civil note. There were no insults thrown around, no name-calling, no raised voices. They spoke to each other calmly and reasonably, which allowed them to come to a mutual conclusion. We didn’t see much of Danny throughout Mindy’s relationship with Ben; mostly through mere mentions when Leo was with him. This was due to the fact that the actor behind Danny, Chris Messina, left the series to concentrate on his film career. We saw more and more of him after Mindy’s marriage crumbled as we saw them co-parenting their son. We saw him defend Mindy as a mother for the first time ever when she was called an absent mother by Leo’s school principal. It was something out of the ordinary for him, as in his relationship with Mindy, he’d consistently judge her for wanting to work instead of being a mom, and called her selfish for doing so. He couldn’t believe that she could do both. He didn’t believe in her. This act was so out of the ordinary for Danny that even Mindy seemed shocked by his actions defending her.

Judging by the title of the series, one might think that Mindy’s ‘project’ was to find a man. But it wasn’t. Contradictory to this notion, Mindy’s actual ‘project’ was to find herself and to finally realize that she didn’t need a man to live a happy, and fulfilled life. Following her divorce from Ben, she was totally okay to be on her own. She wasn’t on a mission to find her ‘happily-ever-after’ anymore because she knew she was just fine without a man by her side. That was the time where Mindy was truly at her best. That glow that she had following her divorce never came from a relationship, but rather during the moments that related to her on an individual, personal level. She was finally happy and at peace with herself. She was happy being a working mom and knew that she could successfully manage on her own. The show started as a homage to all the classical rom-coms out there, with Mindy on a quest to find the love of her life, but in the end, it became a romance between Mindy Lahiri and Mindy Lahiri herself. And it was Mindy’s divorce from Ben that forced the character’s growth and development in her.

In an interview with The New York Times, Kailing called Mindy’s relationship with Ben ‘a marriage so short that it would rival a Liza Minnelli-Kim Kardashian marriage’. She said, ‘The cool thing is Mindy abandoning what she thinks is a childish pose of ‘my life can be a romantic comedy,’ and having a sad, weary, cynical take. That’s how we kick off the season, and by the end I want the audience to be rooting for her to take that back.’ Ben was perfect for Mindy on paper. He was the perfect man for her, and he was the type of man she was looking for. It was Mindy finally getting together and marrying Ben that made her realize that her happy ending illusion was just that; an illusion. There was no such thing as a happy ending, and she was perfectly fine with it.

It was in the aftermath of Mindy’s divorce from Ben that made Danny see his views of womanhood and femininity be challenged. He and Mindy broke up because he didn’t think she, or any other woman for that matter, could be a mother while being in the workforce. But Mindy proved to him that she could do it all, and do so with little to no help. He was astounded, but it made him see Mindy in a different way. It made him actually start believing in her and her capabilities. So much so that when Mindy’s fertility business was on the verge of closing down, Danny was the one who invested in her, and he told her that he’d support her business financially without interfering in her business operations.

Mindy was shocked by Danny’s kind gesture, especially because she knew of his very outdated view of women and femininity. It was this kind gesture that had Mindy see Danny as a different man than the one she was with years prior. It was actually her speech at Morgan’s wedding, that made her have the epiphany that she wanted to be with Danny. The speech was a full-circle moment from the pilot episode where she gave a speech at her ex-boyfriend’s wedding, but this time she was more mature and positive, symbolizing her growth and finding her future with Danny. The show began with Mindy, a somewhat immature character, giving a drunken speech at her ex-boyfriend’s wedding. The finale mirrored the pilot, with Mindy giving a speech at Morgan’s wedding, but this time she was much more composed and positive. This mirrored the character’s growth and maturity throughout the series, as she moved towards a more stable and fulfilling future with Danny. Just like in the pilot, we saw Mindy riding a bike in the finale, but this time, it was towards a future with the man of her dreams; not away from it. Mindy’s behavior in the finale, compared to the pilot, showcased the writers’ desire to see characters change and mature, which they believed the audience also wanted to see.

There was just one problem, though. Danny was the same old Danny just as soon as they both revealed their true feelings for each other. Yes, he didn’t fat shame her this time when she was trying get food out of the hospital vending machine, like he did in the pilot episode. He even helped her get the food she wanted. But just as soon as they kissed and made things official again, Danny started making plans for them; with Mindy, like years prior, having to sacrifice her life to please Danny. Though her future with Danny seemed somewhat promising in the build up of them getting back together, all that was tarnished by his speech following their kiss at the hospital. Mindy stopped him and asked if they could watch TV instead of fighting as they had their entire lives to do so, and Danny sighed and smiled at Mindy agreeing to do just that. This was a sign of growth on Danny’s part, because the old Danny wouldn’t even listen to Mindy in the first place. He’d just continue fighting with her until she agreed to do as he told her.

I wasn’t too fond of Mindy going back to Danny at first. I would’ve much rather preferred her to stay single as she navigated motherhood and entrepreneurial endeavours while also realizing she was totally fine with being alone. I would’ve much preferred that we saw Mindy work on herself before she got into a new relationship. But alas, every TV show needs a happy ending, just like a rom-com. If there’s anything I could take away from Mindy and Danny getting back together was that the future was still unclear from them. By going back to Danny, it somehow felt like Mindy was coming back to her past rather than shift Ming her focus towards her future.

Her future with Danny following the series finale was left uncertain. But there was hope that they’d be much better at communicating with one another than in their initial relationship. No matter what happens to Mindy, we just want the best for her. We want Mindy to get her rom-com-esque happy ending. Just not too quickly. Their courtship is definitely a work in progress. Hopefully, that rant about their future following their kiss was a one-off, because we did see promise in him in the moments leading up to them getting back together. Danny became noticeably not the same unlikeable, judgmental monster he became in season 4, which was the version of Danny Mindy fell madly and deeply in love with years prior. This change in him was what proved to Mindy that he was worthy of her. And that was exactly why it made perfect sense. She previously tried so hard to be seen as worthy in Danny. But now, he needed to be worthy of her. That was the main point of Mindy’s growth in her journey to finding love.