From Grey's Anatomy to Scrubs and General Hospital, workplace romance amongst doctors, nurses, surgeons, and even patients is to be expected. Heck, you don't even need to stick to medical programs — coworkers shack up on television when they work at a paper company, in a dive bar, at a police precinct, or at the White House. That being said, it was refreshing that Anna shut down office romances on The Mindy Project and assured her coworkers that they need not rush to ask her out just because she was going through a divorce. In fact, while I do think that she and Jeremy would ultimately be good together, the thing Anna needs most right now is space.
Granted, I've been in a workplace environment or two where folks have started dating and even gotten married. Proximity and shared passions will do that to you. However, it's not as commonplace as TV would have you believe, and especially not as much of a revolving door as TV would have you believe.
Tuesday's episode of The Mindy Project had both Jeremy and Jody courting Anna. She announced the office towards the end of the episode that she was not interested in either men, nor anyone in the office just because they were there. Remember, both of these men have been in or pursued a relationship with Mindy at some point as well. Jeremy's ex-girlfriend Lauren is now married to his ex-coworker Peter. That's a lot, and doesn't even include Morgan and Tamra, Mindy's other workplace romances with Brenden Deslaurier and Danny Castellano!
Anna is an outsider at the practice in many ways. She's there to take the role of the audience and comment on the unusual. This was a fun, meta way to poke fun at televised relationships while also addressing the reality of what going through a divorce is like.
However, while it is a nice sentiment that needed to be said, I have a feeling that The Mindy Project is going to pull a He's Just Not That Into You and make Jeremy the exception to Anna's rule. At the end of the episode, she was happily working on the puzzle of Rochester that Jeremy had left at the apartment. I'm still rooting for them, but I appreciated her laying down the law nonetheless.
