'The Mindy Project' Review/Recap: "We Need to Talk About Annette"

Rachel Smith ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

This week’s episode of The Mindy Project brought back Danny’s (Chris Messina) Ma, played by the incomparable Rhea Perlman. There were Top Gun references, a black light dance party, and shoplifting. It wasn’t one of the best episodes but it was enjoyable indeed.
Peter’s (Adam Pally) storyline with new love interest Abby progressed this week. She seems like the perfect woman for Peter because she loves to drink, smoke and hates brunch. He thinks he’s pretty much found his soul mate until she invites him to a 24-hour rave. He seems excited until he realizes he has to be on-call at the hospital and has to be sober for the entirety of the night. They had never hung out sober and he didn’t know how to go about the experience.
Though Peter is a frat guy who has a limited idea of what adulthood means, we see him grow up a bit in this episode. He delivers a baby and awes at a loving family. Meanwhile, Abby is texting him about getting back to the party and he decides he’d rather go home. He breaks things off at the end of the episode by saying, “I think I want someone who likes brunch.” Queue fans tweeting about how they’ll have brunch with Peter any day. It’s nice to see a sincere moment from this usually one dimensional character.

The main storyline follows Mindy (Mindy Kaling) and Danny’s Ma, Annette, going out for a day of shopping and bonding. It’s all fun and games until Mindy sees Annette shove a jacket into her purse at the store and later gives it to Danny. It is a bomber jacket like the one Tom Cruise wears in Top Gun. The Top Gun joke rolls throughout the episode and was a nice touch from the writer’s room.
Mindy is trying to hold her tongue about Annette for their relationships sake but when Tamara’s (Xosha Roquemore) bracelet goes missing and she says she was showing it to Annette last, Mindy springs into action. She confronts Annette about the bracelet, which of course, she didn’t take and Tamara finds later on her ankle.
The cat is out of the bag regardless and now Danny is involved. He drags Mindy to his Ma’s house for dinner so they can make up in the best his catholic mother knows how: guilt and passive aggression.

The catholic mother joke is the best of the episode. Annette says grace before they eat, which was basically a verbal attack on Mindy’s accusation about the bracelet. Mindy takes as much as she can and then blurts out that Annette stole the jacket Danny is wearing at dinner. Annette pulls the old woman card and says she got confused that day and went back later and bought the jacket. Danny falls for it until the security tag on the jacket gets ripped off and he’s covered in blue ink and Annette is covered in shame.
Annette wants to kill Mindy for outing her but knows she is in the wrong. All three of them go back to the store and Danny tries to explain that his “old, catholic, moral mother” made a mistake and wants to pay for the jacket however, it ends up being $500 and is a felony offense. The woman goes to call the police and they all panic. Danny wants to follow the rules as usual but Mindy suggests they bail. Seeing Rhea Perlman sprinting out of a department store in a panic is reason enough to love this episode but all the small jokes leading up to that moment made it worth the watch.
Main thing this episode was missing: Morgan (Ike Barinholtz) moments. There were a few jokes from him about how little he gets paid and he makes a weird pass at Danny’s Ma, which was uncharacteristic seeing as he’s with Tamara now. Maybe next week he’ll be utilized better. Stay tuned.