Is Mindy Kaling too ugly, or are you just too rude?

After an incredibly well received debut, praised by viewers and critics alike, what is happening with The Mindy Project? After a bumpy second season that brought threats of cancellations, the Fox Network decided to renew the sitcom for another series.

This was largely due to the interest created by the finale to the will-they-won’t-they between the quirky female lead, Mindy, and the attractive colleague/increasingly-more-intimate-but-just-a-friend-come-on-who-are-we-kidding-here, Danny.

Now Danny and Mindy are finally together, with the biggest drama on the horizon being how long she will be able to fake going to the gym in front of her man. The start of a relationship like this one is often the end of a show’s charm. Ratings have progressively dropped, pushing the producers to schedule 15 episodes, instead of the usual 22.

Writer/producer/star Mindy Kaling must not feel great about this new development. Yet, she probably has no time to focus on the disappointment, since all her efforts have to be put towards answering ridiculous accusations. The latest being that the actor Chris Messina, who plays Danny, is too attractive for her.

Critics (which in this context I would more appropriately refer to as pure and simple trolls) have pointed out that many of her past co-stars were equally “out of her league”. Are they suggesting that she tricked them into acting alongside her? Because any actor in their right mind would jump at the opportunity to work with Kaling, who has become one of the most successful comedy writers in the US since her participation in the show The Office.

The long list of fitties includes actor Seth Rogen. How come when he stars in a movie where he plays the husband of Australian beauty-queen Rose Byrne, no one questions the plausibility of such a plotline? Mindy Kaling is just as talented and just as funny. She is possibly more powerful, yet she doesn’t even seem to deserve realistic criticism.

You know what? The writing on The Mindy Project is getting progressively lamer since Mindy and Danny became an item. Its humour is more facile. Kaling’s character has become too over-the-top to be relatable. And frankly nurse Morgan and receptionist Beverly are just a little bit creepy.

However, how screwed up is the world of TV that they can’t seem to find a way to criticise Mindy Kaling for the content of her work? Instead it seems more worthy to spend time describing how she is the only fat and ugly lead on a sitcom, something which never happened to Seth Rogen. Or John Belushi. Or basically any other male comedian.

I’m not going to imply that our standards of beauty are far off from what girls actually look like, my rant has gone on long enough, and I actually have nothing against some of the beautiful actresses on our screens. It just so happens that I think Mindy Kaling is one of them. Or that, at least, she deserves to have her work shredded to bits for slightly more constructive reasons. And don’t worry, she can take it. In this sense alone, we can say she’s a big girl.