Another week, another bunch of lessons learned through a series of Mindy (Mindy Kaling) defying Danny's (Chris Messina) uptight, overprotective orders. First-time parents are always in for an adjustment when they finally take their baby home, and Mindy and Danny are no different. The fact that they're OB/GYNs hasn't prepared them at all for actually raising a baby — their job ends the moment a woman gives birth. Now that baby Leo is safely home, they're as green as any first-time parent, and since this is a sitcom, even more prone to hijinks.
Of course, they respond in ways completely typical of their characters. Danny goes overboard baby-proofing the house for Leo's arrival. He read somewhere that kids shouldn't look at screens until they're age 18 (um, wait til Leo starts using an iPad in nursery school, Danny — they start them young these days), so he removed anything that could qualify as such from the apartment. He also disabled the Wi-Fi so that he and Mindy could be 100% focused on the baby. It's unclear where he read that bringing home a new baby equals torture for the mom and dad, because that seems to be Danny's method of parenting thus far.
It's all fine for Danny, though, because he's not taking paternity leave. Mindy's stuck at home with nothing to do but breast-feed and read the books Danny left for her in a care package (like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Mindy notes features the n-word "as many times as a Kanye song," but — to her dismay — also contains "a message, like a Common song"). Danny has forbidden her from taking Leo outside before he's been vaccinated. We all know that forbidding Mindy from doing something basically means she'll do that exact thing, and to the nth degree. So outside she goes, to Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's cookbook (Jake & Maggie Gyllenhaal's Grillin' Haul) signing because "What are the chances that Jake Gyllenhaal has rubella?" Great question, Mindy.
There's no way that Mindy is going to get away with this scheme without Danny finding out, and she doesn't, of course. She gets locked out of the apartment, and has to rely on the help of her neighbor (played by Eliza Coupe, miss you so much now that Happy Endings is off the air, girl), who she asked to stop having such loud sex the other night, to get back in. They end up bonding, and Mindy sets her neighbor up with Morgan.
Cut to the neighbor having loud sex with Morgan, and the whole sneaking-out-to-meet-the-Gyllenhaals subterfuge coming to light through the wall. During this conversation it's also revealed that Danny has been spying on Leo and Mindy with a nanny cam. Hijinks and subterfuge...hijinksterfuge! That sounds like it should be German.
Danny's upset with Mindy because she left the apartment, and it involved seeing Jake Gyllenhaal. "But you liked Southpaw," Mindy insists. "Not Brokeback Mountain, though," Danny replies. Intolerant much, Danny?
Mindy is upset because Danny felt the need to spy on her and didn't trust her to take care of Leo on her own. We've reached our usual emotional climax of every Mindy Project episode where Danny and Mindy fight about their differences in emotional intelligence, trust, and how they approach life.
Mindy storms out of the apartment, goes to a bar, runs into some dudes bonding over how great it feels to get some time away from their wives and babies, and realizes how happy she should be to have a husband (Mindy and Danny repeatedly refer to each other and husband and wife throughout this episode; are we supposed to infer that they got married? Surely The Mindy Project wouldn't deprive us of a big wedding episode) who wants to be at home with her. They have a happy reunion, as per usual. Yawn.
Elsewhere in the b-story, Tamra (Xosha Roquemore) really wants #TLCTuesdays, which means "no scrubs" — a.k.a. they don't have to wear scrubs. I'm unclear as to how anyone would hate wearing scrubs to work. They're basically sweatpants, which are my preferred form of apparel. Different strokes, I suppose.
Tamra spends the episode texting her friend (Laverne Cox) who works in the White House about her quest to make #TLCTuesdays a thing. She also suspects Jeremy's (Ed Weeks) new girlfriend Whitney (Cristin Milioti) is cheating on him, but she's wrong. Whitney just has a raging coke addiction. As long as her character doesn't die after Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) spends nine seasons telling his kids how he met her, though, I think we'll all be okay, emotionally. Except for Jeremy. He's going to lose another girlfriend. Sorry, Jeremy.
And Jake Gyllenhall, if you're reading this, do you have rubella?