Entertainment

'The Mindy Project' Is Addicted to Guest Stars

by Alanna Bennett

The Mindy Project focuses itself around the tropes of romantic comedy, but that's not the only thing it's obsessed with: It's also completely head-over-heels obsessed with guest stars. The most recent of these is Jenna Elfman, who will guest star on Mindy Project as Danny Castellano's next love interest. Now, we're personally very excited about the inclusion of Elfman in this season — we kind of still love Dharma & Greg, and we generally miss her presence in our sitcom lives. She's tall and bawdy and we're psyched to see her maybe interact with Mindy Lahiri's short-and-bawdy self.

But seriously, Mindy Project, what's with all the guest stars? James Franco, Adam Pally (who might not count anymore since he's been upped to series regular), Kris Humphries (?!), Seth Meyers, Josh Meyers, Seth Rogen... the list goes on and on. And on. And on. And will probably continue to go on for quite a while. But why?

Listen, we know that guest stars are fun. They offer a nice centerpiece or just thrown-in accent for an episode, and it means the cast and crew get to interact with a lot of cool people. But once a show starts to get so reliant on them, it starts to bring up a lot of questions.

The Mindy Project is in its second season now, and with that, it has to go through a lot of growing, maturing, etc., both in terms of comedy and in terms of character. But can a show really settle on its identity when there are constant distractions from or rearrangements of the core cast? This is a show that's got a lot of talented people already — I will continue to say that Mindy Kaling is one of the centerpieces of the near-future of comedy.

So why not focus on the show's real stars? I'm all for the occasional guest star, and this is a show built a lot of people dating a lot of people. But I'm also interested to see The Mindy Project grow from its core and really establish itself. And it might be hard for that to happen if I have to think about such a heavy rotation of faces every episode. It makes it a little hard to get attached.