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The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Monday, January 28, 2013 - 7A

The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Monday, January 28, 2013 - 7A

The many
problems with
Project'

'Movie 43' makes a mess

H ere's the thing,"
my housemate
Harrison said
nervously, perched on our living-
room sofa. "I don't actually like
'The Mindy
Project."'
To his sur-
prise, I was
relieved.
We
bonded over
our secret
distaste for KAYLA
the Mindy UPADHYAYA
Kaling-
created sit-
com. Harrison had been scared
to confess, certain that I - like
all our other housemates - was
loving it.
Because what's not to love?
One of my fave comedy hero-
ines finally has her own show,
on which she plays a not-white,
not-stick-thin OB/GYN. Plus, it
stars Ike Barinholtz, a Chicago-
improv vet, and Chris Messina,
who became one of my favorite
TV actors with his multi-season
performance on "Damages." In
other words, when I first heard
of "The Mindy Project" 's devel-
opment, I immediately broke into
a chorus of "These Are a Few of
My Favorite Things."
After the underwhelming
pilot aired, I adamantly defended
the show. The first several epi-
sodes of a sitcom are often the
throwaway batch of too-brown
pancakes. Even some of the best
comedies out there take a while
to find their voice - "Parks and
Recreation" didn't hit its stride
until season two, and "New Girl"
had one of the most dramatic
turnarounds I've ever seen.
And yet, here we are, i2 epi-
sodes into "Mindy" 'a first sea-
son, and I'm struggling to come
up with anything the show does
particularly well, and I'm done
defending it.
A lot of the dysfunction comes
down to the shaky character
dynamics - all of the friendships
seem forced, especially Mindy's
pointless best friend Gwen,
played by Anna Camp, who's
given little more to do than rock
Lands End clothing and talk on
the phone (Camp, thankfully, has
asked to be reduced from regular
to recurring and will hopefully
take her talents someplace where
they're more appreciated).
But it's the relationship
between Mindy (Kaling) and
Danny (Messina), the show's
archetypal will-they-won't-they
pairing, that troubles me the
most. The friendship between
these constantly clashing
coworkers soars past tension-
ridden into downright nasty ter-
ritory. In the pilot, a one-upping
insult session ends with Danny
telling Mindy she should lose
15 pounds. His words just hang
there, and neither the show nor
the characters ever deal with
what has just happened.
"Mindy" doesn't seem at all
concerned with repercussions;
it touches on controversial and
complex topics, only to bar-
rel right past them. Danny and
Jeremy (Ed Weeks) unilaterally
shut Mindy out of the decision-
making process when the three
take over the practice, but the
show is too stuck in its own myo-
pia to touch on workplace gender
dynamics. In fact, all that really
amounts from this is further

establishing Danny as a disre-
spectful jerk. But then the show
turns right around and tries to
make him a lovable, heartbro-
ken jerk. He can't call Mindy fat
one second and then build her a
beautiful gingerbread house the
next... it just doesn't click.
Beyond the stellar cast and
stacked writers room, what had
me most excited about "Mindy"
at the outset was its focus on
women's healthcare providers.
While there's no dearth of medi-
cal programming, TV has been
noticeably silent about the world
of obstetrics and gynecology.
But "Mindy" isn't really break-
ing that silence; patient-doctor
interactions have been minimal,
and the show has yet to engage in
any kind of discourse or even sat-
ire about the highly politicized

world of healthcare. As a sitcom,
it doesn't need to be an all-out
soapbox for political discourse,
but "30 Rock" and "Parks and
Recreation" have proven it's pos-
sible - and quite effective - to
tie national events and senti-
ments into their humor.
And the statements "Mindy"
does make are confusing, like
when Mindy - an intelligent,
supposedly progressive OB/GYN
- tries to stop her teenage neigh-
bor from having sex instead of
providing her with resources
for protection. In the end, she
distributes condoms to all the
girls in her gym class, but it's an
unconvincing change of heart for
someone who was just lecturing
a teen about waiting and refusing
to give her birth control.
In an episode that finds Mindy
asking Danny to be her gynecolo-
gist - again, a character choice
that makes zero damn sense -
Mindy explains how "condom
etiquette" is hard for women.
She implies there's a stigma
against women who have too
many condoms too readily avail-
able, but the characters again fail
to even come close to touching
on why that is or how society's
sexist double standards impact
women's sexual health.
I wouldn't quite say "Mindy"
is sex-negative, but that's
because its attitude toward sex
is so all-over-the-place that
I can't keep up. In the pilot,
Mindy decides that maybe real
relationships really are too dif-
ficult to balance at the moment,
instead opting for a more casual
arrangement with her coworker
in a scene awesomely scored by
M.I.A's "Bad Girls."
So naturally, the title for the
twelfth episode, "HookingUp is
Hard," puzzled me. Sure enough,
Mindy ends up forgetting every-
thing she once thought about
casual sex, as she awkwardly
attempts to hook up with her
midwife enemy Brendan (Mark
Duplass), only to be thwarted
by Morgan, who insists she's
too respectable of a woman to
be dragged into the depths of
hook-up-culture hell. Because
eventhough Mindy is a grown
woman, she needs a man to tell
her what's best for her.
This show is
as messy as its
lead's love life.
And it's for that very reason
that Mindy also just doesn't
quite click asa character.
Unlikeable sitcom leads can
work wonderfully (would you
ever actually want to work for
Michael Scott?), but her emo-
tional immaturity and delu-
sions (before hooking up with
Brendan, she records a video of
herself, outliningwho should
star in the Lifetime movie about
her should she be murdered)
push her so far away from the
empowering vision I initially
had of the character.
She's an awesome female doc-
tor who owns a practice, and yet
her goal in life is to marry rich
and quit her job or marry an old
guy and collect his inheritance
when he dies. She's a gynecolo-

gist who doesn't seem to have
much concern for women's
sexual health. And none of these
contradictions have any comedic
weight to them.
As an Indian-American
woman, I can't stress enough
how significant it is that Kaling
is the only Indian-American
lead on television and the first
Indian-American female lead
ever. It's a huge deal and earns
"Mindy" a spot in television his-
tory.
But that doesn't make it criti-
cism-proof, and it certainly isn't
enough to make me forget about
all the problems I'm having with
the show. So if "The Mindy Proj-
ect" doesn't figure its shit out
soon, can we just replace it with
a "Kelly Kapoor: Business Bitch"
spinoff?

Barely a silver
lining in this
cinematic disaster
By ANDREW MCCLURE
Daily Arts Writer
Seldom does a movie precede
itself with solely B-movie trail-
ers. Seldom does a movie leave
viewers with a
mute car ride D+
home, devoid of
any reflective Movie 43
discourse. Par-
allel with this At Quality16
trend, seldom and Rave
does a movie 'Relativity
equate itself to
"SuperBabies:
Baby Geniuses 2" in terms of cog-
nitive effort. Seldom should we -
or any other species - witness the
self-laughing, entirely unfunny
cinematic mistake that is "Movie
43." It doesn't even qualify for the
"Let's sneak into another flick for
free" list. Yikes.
Turns out, the framework
of "43" had more laugh-factory
potential than its constituent
parts. It's episodic: Picture an
egregious "SNL," full of 10-min-
ute bits, each more irrelevant
than the next. But it's not just any
"SNL"; it's one with multiple star
hosts. Except they're all having a
"tough crowd" sort of night. Den-
nis Quaid ("The Big Easy"), Greg
Kinnear ("Little Miss Sunshine"),
Common ("American Gangster"),
Emma Stone ("Zombieland"),
among other somewhat esteemed
Hollywood regulars, take a col-
lective shit on the chest of their
unlucky viewers - funny, because
shitting on one's chest captures
the miniature storyline of one
episode. And it was actually less

Next week on 'Catfish'...
pitiful than most of its surround-
ing players.
A plot synopsis attempt \would
be futile, but here's the gist: Hugh
Jackman ("Les Miserables")
has bulging balls hanging from
his neck like a pendulum swing,
Naomi Watts ("The Impossible")
plays a homeschooling mom who
insists on giving her son his first
kiss, Richard Gere ("Arbitrage")
innovates the iBabe (life-size nude
broad for randy adolescents), and
Jason Sudeikis ("Horrible Boss-
es") and Justin Long ("Drag Me to
Hell") speed-date as Batman and
Robin. "43" succeeds in interesting
ways, like alternately sucking then
taking a breather from sucking.
Liars will claim they never
laughed. Bigger liars will claim
they laughed more than 12 times.
And the biggest liars will claim
less than 75 percent of said laughs
stemmed from Jackman's tes-
ticular wattle. It was funny, but
the cheapest breed of funny, like

something found in "Dumb and
Dumber" or "Happy Gilmore,"
when cartoonish sound effects
and slapsticks to the face domi-
nate the screen.
Don't get me wrong; it's not
nearly as good as described above.
Absurdity in farce can really
work - just look at "Scary Movie"
and "Not Another Teen Movie" as
semi-recent examples. But farce
still requires something essential:
a scripted film to work with. Rath-
er, "43" is an overdosed marathon
of the arbitrary, from tits and
blood to uncoolvulgarity and livid
leprechauns. It just never feels
right, or funny or rightly funny.
Seldom do critics and genre
junkies share a wavelength.
With "43," unlike other justifi-
able bad films, it's actually both
hip and indie to hate this. Not
even audacious pundits exist for
"43" - you know, the guys who
fight tooth and nail to defend
genuinely bad movies. Why,

because people work in sec-
onds. And this shitshow wastes
approximately 5,400 of them.
Dumb going in, dumber coming
out. Like meth - without the
high.
The best question to ask is
a profound one: How do these
nightmares get green-lit? Who-
ever green-lights must wipe his
ass with green kryptonite.
A final scene, a highlight in
an attempt to a humor-void try,
stages Terrence Howard as he
inspires his high-school hoops
team in the locker room pre-
game. "You're black! They're
white! Dribble up the court with
that foot-and-a-half long dick!"
That's precisely what "43"
is: something that has all the
makings to satisfy a blue whale.
Unfortunately for the creators,
humans aren't blue whales, and
most prefer a. more modest cod-
piece. See Dr. 90210 and we'll
chat later. Or not.

TV NOT E B OK
Californication becomes stale

By MOLLY WEBER
Daily Arts Writer
I'm disappointed in Hank
Moody. Like all of the other
women on his show, I've grown
sick of the bullshit. And I didn't
even need to sleep with him to
find that out.
Season six of "Californication"
returned to the Sunday night
lineup two weeks ago, and to
even higher ratings than its for-
mer season. The show focuses on
the famous misanthropic writer
Hank Moody (star and executive
producer David Duchovny); when
he's not serving up charming,
irreverent quips in the wake of the
newest self-destructive decision,
Hank is having sex with every
beautiful extra or sexy guest star
the show can manage to snag
(Carla Gugino, Meagan Good and
Maggie Grace). And that's just
scrapingthe tip of the iceberg.
But the newest viewers to tune
in will witness Hank's character
slipping away. A character that
was defined by both his similarity
to the actor that played him and,
more importantly, their subtle dif-
ferences.
The problem with "Califor-
nication" isn't the proliferate of
sex, the incessant drug use, nor
the lack of meaningful relation-
ships. That's actually the best part
of "Californication" - it can suc-
cessfully promote lewd vice and
excess as both fun and hilarious
while maintaining a daring sense
of dignity.
"Californication"'s issue began
to manifest itself toward the end
of last season: Hank began to
seem less and less silly, and more
and more stupid. His clearly
insane ex-girlfriend from New
York, Carrie, tracks him down in
California at the close of the last
season. On the cusp of romanti-
cally reuniting with Karen, both
his on-and-off-girlfriend and baby
mama, Hank encounters Carrie
waiting for him in his home. What
turned into a quick stop becomes
a confrontation that Hank allows
to go too far. Though the object of
his pining pursuit for five seasons
is in his grasp, he stops to have a
drink with Carrie.
But Carrie has the drink
drugged; it is intended to kill both
Hank and herself. The success is
only with the latter.
So, season six opens with both
Hank waking up in the hospi-

tal room after the ordeal, along
with my own desperate hopes
that Hank would soon be getting
back to what he does best: loving
women, weed and writing while
seeking misadventure with his
ridiculous agent Harry Runkel
(Evan Handler). Finally, the char-
acter that men want to be and
women want to be with would
come out swinging.
How terribly wrong Iwas.
Hank goes on a month-long
bender that, well, is shockingly
boring. And since when is "Cali-
fornication" boring? If anyone
has seen the "Monkey Business"
episode of season four, they would
agree with me. But the man feels
guilty for Carrie's death, going
even further to say it's because he
broke her heart. While no one dis-
agrees that this is a sad aspect of
the plot, it's confusing and honest-
ly bizarre that his character is so
upset about it. It's forced, almost
unnatural. How many girls'
hearts have you broken, Hank?
Then, Hank accompanies a
Hank Moody is
the problem.
new female friend to her former
lover's funeral. The next thing
you know, the famous writer is
outside being sexually serviced
by the deceased's widow. Really?
Before, Hank was a 'yes man' -
but a'yes man' with taste. Now,
he just chases whatever he can
get, and it seems to be less and
less of the beautiful Karen. No
one is asking for the storyline
to tie up nicely with the couple
happily ever after. "Californica-
tion" is not a romance. And to be
honest, Karen may be the best
character because she's the only
worian that doesn't want to be
with Hank.
In other words, I think the
problem with "Californication"
is Hank Moody. As the lines
that separate actor and charac-
ter seem to slip away more and
more, I can't help but think that
the Hank Moody I wish new
viewers could see has instead
been replaced with the lazy
David Duchovny, simply play-
ing himself. u t
"Californication" used to be

"Welcome to the O.C., bitch."
the cool, hilarious comedy that
possessed subtle zeitgeist under-
currents of a Bret Easton Ellis
novel. Five seasons later, it seems
amateur. Hank Moody, David
Duchcsvny, the writers - they
cannot continue to expect that
continual use of the same ingredi-

ents will yield them a success.
Anyone can follow a recipe.
What makes a show special is the
ability to use those same ingre-
dients, mutter, Screw the recipe,
let's make it our own and serve up
something fresh. "Californica-
tion" has lost that special touch.

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