The finale of season two of The Mindy Project, which aired last night, was chock full of so many references and reinterpretations of three of Nora Ephron’s most famous movies they were hard to keep track of.
The episode, appropriately titled, “Danny and Mindy” was an entire complicated homage to and mash-up of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. It was also the ultimate expression of Mindy Kaling’s (and therefore Mindy Lahiri’s) long-held love for Nora Ephron/Meg Ryan movies. A warning: do not read this if you don’t want last night’s Mindy Project and/or some of the best romantic comedies of our time thoroughly ruined for you.
You’ve Got Mail
The bulk of this episode was a modern interpretation of You’ve Got Mail, which was itself a modern retelling of the movie The Shop Around the Corner.
In You’ve Got Mail, Kathleen and Joe start an email relationship without knowing that they hate each other in real life (and ignoring the fact that they’re each in a relationship). In Mindy, Mindy sees a Missed Connections posting from a man she saw on the subway and decides to contact him – even though she’s still dating hunky detective man Charlie, played by Tim Daly. She’s warned by Danny that she’s going to end up in the New York Post because Andy is secretly a serial killer – just like Kathleen’s coworkers worried her mystery man could be the “Rooftop Killer.”
Subway dude is named Andy and was played by Joan’s rapist on Mad Men. (Sorry actor Samuel Page. I just can’t think of you any other way.)
Mindy and Andy email back and forth and their emails are read out in voiceovers, in tones and phrasings strikingly similar to those used by Kathleen and Joe. Andy tells Mindy about his morning coffee ritual, just as Joe talked to Kathleen about Starbucks:
The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.
Very quickly, however, we find out that Andy is actually…Danny!
Joe in You’ve Got Mail: “Oh, how I wish you would.” Danny in Mindy: “Oh how I hope that you are.”
Mindy doesn’t know this yet, however, just as Kathleen doesn’t know Joe is her mystery man. In You’ve Got Mail, Joe figures this out after he and Kathleen agree to meet and he stands her up (or so she thinks). Since Danny already knows he’s Mindy’s mystery man, this part of the plot gets complicated on Mindy: Mindy has plans to meet up with Joe at the top of the Empire State Building (ala Sleepless in Seattle, which we’ll get to later) but she gets gum in her hair and calls Danny to help her get it out.