The Mindy Project Recap: Season 4, Episode 16

 

“So You Think You Can Finance” was technically a totally solid episode of The Mindy Project, but I have some serious quibbles. Let’s recap first and get to those later.

In one of Schulman & Associates 100 staff meetings amidst extremely loud construction, we find out Jeremy is bringing by his new girlfriend Juliet to meet everyone.

“Treat Juliet with the same respect you treat Tamra,” is the best request Jeremy can possibly make of his coworkers. If we treated everyone with the same respect we treat Tamra, the world would be a much better place.

The meeting gets interrupted by the upstairs construction making a hole in the ceiling, so Mindy, Jeremy, and Jody head upstairs to tell their new building neighbors to keep it down. Surprise! It’s Whitney, Jeremy’s ex who cheated on him with Jody.

She’s still sassy and amazing, having started her own hedge fund, you know those things that chase the dirty artists out of New York. She acts totally uninterested in both Jeremy and Jody while Mindy fan girls over her business and her leather brochures. They essentially agree construction noises now won’t be as bad as baby noises forever and part ways.

Back downstairs, Juliet arrives and turns out to be much older than Jeremy. Unsure what to say, Jody asks, “How did everyone else react to that?” which is the wisest way to test the waters before stating your opinion (must steal for later).

Everyone else is fine with the age difference, but Jody just can’t believe it’s okay. After all, ideal relationships are always between blushing young girls and leathery old men.

It turns out that the completely baffled Jody is actually right. Tamra pieces together that Jeremy is just dating Juliet to convince all the hot nurses that he’s not a creep to get them to sleep with him. No wait, not even that. He’s PAYING Juliet to pretend date him to convince all the nurses he’s not a creep.

Okay, what? This is absurd and feels so anti-Jeremy. I’ll get to that complaining later though.

Meanwhile, we come back to Whitney because it turns out that Mindy has no idea how to take care of her finances. Jody discovers this when he stops by to make plans with Mindy to buy a grandfather clock for the office. Her desk is covered with paychecks and hello, has no one heard of automatic deposits? Anyways, Mindy starts to freak out about her finances because she’s never handled them before- first her dad did, then Danny did.

After getting freaked out by the totally financially prepared nurses staff (Collette gets a big fat check as long as she takes her grandmother’s ashes to Niagara Falls every year), Mindy buys a Suze Orman book. She gets thoroughly confused by the book and gives up rather quickly.

Onto Mindy’s next solution, asking Whitney to handle her finances. Mindy walks straight into the shiny glass wall in Whitney’s office and asks for her help, totally clueless about what a hedge fund actually is.

Whitney is not initially down to help Mindy do the things most normal humans do on their own until Mindy offers to be her friend to help keep her sober and away from her cocaine-fueled coworkers. They make plans to hang out and Mindy bails on Jody.

Poor Jody is already in the tinker’s district! He’s pretty disappointed and assumes Mindy is on a date, so yeah, this guy is way digging her.

Mindy and her new friend Whitney (yay friends for Mindy!) hang out basically nonstop until Mindy needs a break. Her break leads Whitney to go out with her coworkers to McBarfigans, which is the perfect name for all of the douche bag pub bars that finance people go to.

Mindy thinks she’s caught Whitney breaking her sobriety in the bathroom, but instead she’s hiding out playing Sudoku. They have their first friend fight and Whitney has the best, truest burn (and also, hi, a real problem for most women): “You’re the one who came to me with a shoe box asking me to take care of your finances because you’ve run out of men to do it for you.” EEK.

Mindy admits she’s scared to look at her bank account because she’s reminded that every decision she makes, she makes as a single mom and it’s not what she planned. That’s real and it’s nice to see Mindy be vulnerable about her independence. But also, girl, get your bear claw- you’re a doctor for crying out loud!

While this is happening, Jody is getting more and more mad at Mindy. His anger culminates in him yelling at her pre-hysterectomy that she never takes anything seriously. Boy, Mindy does not need any more lectures from traditional old men.

Jody starts to understand his strong emotional reaction to being stood up by Mindy when he bumps into Juliet on the subway. Jody approaches her to try to figure out why she and Jeremy are dating when she gives him just the advice he needed to hear- maybe his problem is that the person that makes him happy is the opposite of what he’s used to.

Hearing the push he needed to pursue Mindy, Jody writes her a perfectly adorable letter and puts it in the mail. I swear if a man had ever asked me out via a letter, I would have married him on the spot.

The next day, Jody apologizes to Jeremy only to learn Jeremy is acting like human garbage. Jody immediately regrets his decision to send the letter (because if Jeremy can’t make it work with someone older, he can’t make it work with someone like Mindy?), but it’s too late.

Cliffhanger!  Now on to my quibbles.

Y’all know I really love The Mindy Project and hate to say anything bad about it, but this episode was problematic for me in two main ways.

First of all, what is Jeremy’s shtick? He starts out as the suave asshole who sleeps with everyone. He becomes someone who can’t get any women to care for him in the way he wants. No one pays attention to this Jeremy, he has a sad back story, and is a little like an Eeyore who is still pretty earnest. But now he’s back to the Jeremy that is a sleaze ball? He’s the type of guy that would pay an older woman to be his girlfriend to scam younger women into sleeping with him? What? How is this the same person that was always doing Whitney’s laundry last year?

I get that real people a multifaceted and someone could totally be all of these things in some weird way, but I don’t think that’s what they’re trying to do? It feels a little like they change him around to get the story line they want and nah, that ain’t cool.

My second issue is with Jody as a Danny 2.0. I really like Jody! I really like Jody and Mindy’s chemistry! I’m down for some will they/won’t they between them! But I’m not sure I’m down with him and Mindy having the exact same fights that Mindy had with Danny. Danny was always nagging Mindy to be more responsible and now Jody is doing the exact same.

Jody seems to be much more willing to change and at his base level, he gives Mindy more credit and respect than Danny ever did. Did we ever see Danny apologize? And here Jody is doing it right away, and of course, in a very old-fashioned and romantic way. I mean letter writing, come on.

There is promise here! I think? But I just don’t want to see the same fights all over again.

I know that Mindy is Mindy and these type of men are drawn to her, but we’ve seen her have totally different relationship dynamics and they’ve worked (hello, Pastor Casey forever), so we know it’s possible.

Anyways, I still love TMP dearly but color me worried.

Some important weekly things:

Outfit of the Episode:

  • Honestly, nothing stood out for me, but I’ll give it to this one:

*Image source: Hulu

 Favorite Jokes I Almost Missed:

  • Morgan reads Tamra’s fashion section of the office newsletter and he’s always a don’t!
  • Tamra: “It’s gross when a younger man dates an older woman, but when Robert De Niro takes me to dinner, everyone’s fine?”
  • Tamra reacting to Jeremy’s claim that he’s giving Juliet a good role, something women of her age never get, “Oh please! Helen Mirren be everywhere.”

*Feature Image source: Originally seen on Vulture; Hulu

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