Mindy gets thrown for a loop when she’s offered the opportunity of her dreams – kind of – tonight on The Mindy Project season 3, episode 11, “Christmas.” Find out what happened!
Let’s just get two things out of the way right now: Danny and Mindy are not engaged, and we might be dealing with a time jump when the show starts back up again in 2015.
It all starts with Mindy looking for clues that Danny will be proposing to her. She does find a charge for $20,000 from Forever Stones – but that turns out to be a single burial plot for Danny.
At the hospital, Jean remarks how much Mindy has grown into her teach role for the interns over the past few months. So much, in fact, that she is recommending her for an eight-month program at Stanford. Mindy says she wants to confer with Danny – if she is about to get engaged, she doesn’t want to jet off to California for the majority of the year.
Mindy: “Wow Jean, you believing me? I don’t want that to go to my head.”
Jean impresses the incredible opportunity on her, and she seriously wants to apply for it now. She just needs to submit the application and three letters of recommendation by tomorrow evening, during the office’s holiday party.
When Mindy does tell Danny about the program, he goes to Peter who (seemingly) figures it out immediately: Danny is a proposal trap. She doesn’t really want to go, she just wants Danny to finally propose in the hopes she’ll stay.
Mindy does want to get engaged, but Jean has convinced her to evaluate where she wants her career to go – now is the time to take a chance like this. Unfortunately, Danny sabotages her recommendation from Dr. Ludrow. At the ‘elegant holiday party’ Jeremy throws (more on that below) Danny finds her crying in her office. She confesses that she really did want to go, to prove to herself and her colleagues that she was capable of it. Danny feels terrible.
Secret Santa gifts, as told by ‘The Mindy Project’
Danny agrees to set up Peter with his doctor-friend Jessica (Julia Stiles), after seeing how responsible he’s become. When Peter asks for her number, Danny says she’ll find him. Later at the hospital, Mindy points out that Peter is the one eating popcorn in the break room. Well, Morgan took that bag and she introduces herself to him. Morgan, not realizing, agrees to go out on a date with her. They sleep together and it’s not until the holiday party does she realize the name mix-up happened.
Mindy, meanwhile, has Danny for Secret Santa. She doesn’t know what to get him, which leads to this exchange in the office:
Peter: “Golf balls.”
Mindy: “That’s for white people, Danny’s Italian.”
Morgan: “Meat balls.”
Mindy: “No, I’ll just eat them.”
She ends up making a documentary for him, including a short cameo by filmmaker Ken Burns. It’s very touching, including interviews by Annette, Morgan and Mindy. In it, Mindy briefly discusses their relationship, and how she didn’t know she liked him until she went to Haiti and they exchanged letters.
During this movie, Danny takes off for Ma Castellano’s house. He wants her engagement ring, feeling that proposing is the only way to make up for tanking her chances at the fellowship. Thankfully, we have Annette Castellano to set him straight: the only way to make up for what he did is to try and get her into the program.
Also during the video, Jessica realizes that Morgan has been posing as Peter, and runs out. It doesn’t take much for him to win her back though. However, we can’t say for sure if it’ll go anywhere. Maybe we’ll see her again after the new year?
Side note: If anyone knows where we could get a Wreath Witherspoon, we’d like to spruce up our holiday decorations. Maybe it was a Pinterest template?
Finally, there’s a sweet moment between Peter and Lauren during “Christmas” – he gives her a toy truck for her son Henry, and remembers her dislike of Christmas, both of them being Jewish and all.
Danny does pull through for his girlfriend, tracking down Dr. Fishman at her all-women nativity scene to submit the application. Lo and behold, two weeks later, Mindy is accepted. Now, the question is: will we come back to a seven – or eight – month time jump? Only time will tell.