As a fan of both New Girl and The Mindy Project I was excited to see some promotional material about new episodes coming soon arrive in Slate’s DC office. But the letter is pretty funny, and not in a good way:
Dear press member,
It’s a date on Tuesday nights this fall as your favorite funny ladies (and men) from NEW GIRL (9:00-9:30 PM ET/PT) and THE MINDY PROJECT (9:30-10:00 PM ET/PT) return with all new episodes, beginning Tuesday, Sept. 17 on FOX. These women are always on the go and you can be, too, with the enclosed tote bags and personalized luggage tag.
The tags look great and all, and it’s certainly wonderful to see a couple of shows with woman leads and woman show runners. The patriarchy is alive and well in Hollywood as well as the c-suites and the boardrooms. But these aren’t actually shows about women who engage in a particularly large amount of overnight travel. I’m not even sure you’d say these are particularly shows about women who are unusually busy. Jess was unemployed for a lot of last season, and a big theme on The Mindy Project is how much time Mindy spends alone at home watching romantic comedies. The cupboard of clichés just seems perhaps a little too thin for publicists to come up with anything better.
