Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Her TV character is fond of hyperbole and flights of fancy, but Mindy Project creator and star Mindy Kaling gave last night’s episode a completely honest title: “Mindy Lahiri Is a White Man.” To trade her Indian heritage for white privilege without borrowing from Eddie Murphy‘s “White Like Me” playbook, Kaling cast Party Down actor Ryan Hansen as her less diverse counterpart.
Dr. Lahiri makes a bedtime wish that she’ll wake up a white man after she does not receive a second interview to oversee the obstetrics department at her hospital (although gloating Southern “gentleman” Dr. Jody Kimball-Kinney (Garret Dillahunt) does, correctly guessing that the selection committee—composed of six white men—would “pick the right fella”). The next morning, she’s shocked to see she has fair skin and a circumcised penis. A peek in her wallet reveals that she is now Michael Lancaster, whose life comes with a new show opening sequence, leather apartment trappings, and lumberjack-worthy threads. “All of culture is designed to entertain and delight me!” swoons the female voice in Lancaster’s head, a la What Women Want. The perks don’t end there: Lancaster can masturbate for hours before work and still arrive on time because getting ready’s a cinch, his co-workers value even his smallest conversation contribution, his patients automatically heed his advice, and every cab driver in the city stops at his feet.
In addition, he’s invited to “Lads Night” and free to get wasted, because Dr. Irene Lee (Ellen D. Williams) will cover his early C-section. Catching the last minutes of that surgery, Lahiri/Lancaster realizes that Dr. Lee deserves the plum gig most of all. Enlisting Tamra (Xosha Roquemore), they give Dr. Lee a makeover and encourage her to demand a second interview (which works since, “Every white person’s greatest fear is being called racist,” per Tamra). But instead of being impressed by Dr. Lee’s credentials, the committee heaps praise—and the job offer—upon Dr. Lancaster, champion of diversity (“I can tell you’re a good leader just by looking at you”). Lancaster declines, yet another white man gets the position (Dr. Robert Ledreau, played by Fred Gandy, father of Mindy Project executive producer Charlie Grandy), and our protagonist reverses the spell that night. This funny, well-played critique of systemic racism and sexism wrapped in a sitcom-snappy 24 minutes.
