Did Mindy Kaling's Writing RUIN or SAVE 'The Office'?

Brief analysis of Kaling’s writing style and contribution to the Office.
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[@thisjustin6529]

This was a really interesting format . I enjoyed this just as much as I enjoy the field guides.

[@Mulverine]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@Nothing_Israel]

Also wanna point out how bummed I am that the writer for the Velma series was also the writer of my favorite episode of The Office ever . Like , the Michael Scott Paper Company arc was so good that I remember kinda wishing that they would have just kept it up. Had the show suddenly become about this super small ran out of a dude’s condo paper company slowly overtaking its corporate competitor, I would not have minded at all. Seeing Michael Scott show his actual skill as a salesman is always so fun.

[@gracefulgrizzly39]

Do Toby! (Paul Lieberstein)

[@childress5000]

“That’s what she said!”

[@nrpbrown]

Honestly I am glad she was here as a wild card. She definitely went too far sometimes but those wild swing for the fences episodes that sometimes missed are part of The Office and I appreciate her part of that chaos.

[@Forriedude]

I want one of these for Paul.

[@Djmaxham]

I would be interested to see how much the actors played into the actual creation process.

[@JessicaPark1]

From what I’ve heard and read about Velma, it almost seems like they hated Scooby-Doo and were given the opportunity to trash it, while assuming the audience shared their sentiments. The problem many viewers I heard from had wasn’t that they changed the ethnicity of some future Mystery Inc team members but that they made all 4 of them extremely unlikable and unlikable in an uninspired way. People can enjoy watching a group of unlikable characters who are well-written - It’s Always Sunny, Seinfeld, Arrested Development - but they still have to be interesting. If you can’t tell whether you dislike the intentionally unlikable characters or if you dislike the show, the writers probably missed the mark.

[@rosamy2017]

I think people also didn’t like how cynical Velma was. Like in Its Always Sunny, yeah the characters are all dicks but they’re still fun to watch on screen and we still like them despite their depravity. It seems like with Velma the characters were all dicks without having anything about them towards which the audience could feel affection.

[@WynnWynn-gl3fk]

She did a lot of great writing on this show often with micheal etc. she deserved to be in the intro and so did Angela. It is a shame she ruined Velma.

[@MissCalaMari]

I mean she neither created, wrote or directed a single episode of Velma. I wouldn't put the blame entirely on her shoulders lol

[@ProvencaLeGaulois]

Oh wow Chris have you been pumping some iron? You look mad jacked dude. Thank you for this dive, love your take on the writing aspect. Happy holidays

[@Mulverine]

See next vid…lol

[@YouLousyKids]

And then she did "Velma" and it makes you wonder what happened.

[@oliviastratton2169]

He says in this video that she didn't write "Velma".

[@YouLousyKids]

@@oliviastratton2169 I find it hard to believe she'd participate in it if she didn't have some influence/say in its approach. You don't see her declining to be in it when she sees the awful writing. 🙂

[@car9melo]

​@@YouLousyKidsyea but no one cares what you find hard to believe 😂😂😂😂

[@YouLousyKids]

@@car9melo You can pretty much respond "no one cares" to what anyone says about anything in KZbin comments. It's the equivalent of a flaming bag of dog turds left at someone's door.

[@car9melo]

@@YouLousyKids and you can clearly just put your fingers in your ears and cry about something in your imagination 😂😂😂

[@Cdr2002]

You describe her like a combination of Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park and Havik from Mortal Kombat

[@ian7064]

My vote is to analyze the guy who wrote "Broke" . If he's responsible for a bunch of duds, I think it'd be fun to look at them in their entirety

[@dominiccenteno1233]

I think she wrote most of my favorite episodes, she's really great in The Office. Maybe because I love the Office whenever Michael is so mean and is the "villain" of the office. The Injury and Classy Christmas were some of my favorite episodes in the series.

[@inconvenienced]

Oh Mulverine (is your name Chris? I feel like I've heard you mention your name before but I'm not 100% so until I can confirm it I'm going to say not at all ridiculous things like "oh Mulverine") I'm so so so excited to finally see this!!! Thank you for putting the time in, you have a very specific way of looking at things that makes you really good at turning the chaos of something like an episode, or a body of work, into something more digestible and orderly. I have thoughts!! Actually not sure where to start - I guess with the whole "chaos" thing. I'm not sure I would describe her episodes as chaotic exactly (although I've never actually looked at a list of them) but maybe more... cynical? I think she mines a lot of humor from the fact that it's an ugly world full of awful people - I feel like Angela is nastier in her episodes, Michael is more willing to revel in his selfishness, Stanley in his greed/lust/gluttony, etc. - actually, I might go so far as to describe her as the "realist" of the staff - just in the sense that she's uniquely able to illustrate the base emotions that motivate the actions of the characters, and since there's nothing funny about someone who's constantly motivated by positivity (Chris Traeger is fine but c'mon if that wasn't Rob Lowe it would be borderline unbearable) she instead shines a spotlight on less admirable qualities characters may have, and the consequences of letting those qualities take the wheel. She isn't quite as dark as Paul Lieberstein (my favorite Office writer, I think) but she is wonderful at both creating a world where people don't make an effort to be better and illustrating why people SHOULD make that effort. Would we have still gotten the Office without Mindy? Maybe, but I don't think it would be so revered. Greg Daniels seems to have a natural instinct to make things silly, borderline zany even. See season 9 as an example of what the Office would have been without the guiding hands of Kaling/Lieberstein. I prefer the Office as a semi-grounded look at the personalities in the workplace, rather than slacklining and drinking too much espresso and trying to ride a chair over a power line... without people to pen in the sillier instincts of Daniels and even Mike Schur (who I think is an all time great writer but tends to skew a bit too positive for my tastes if left to his own devices) the show would've been more over the top and wacky, imo, and I'm really, REALLY glad it's not. As for the thing about her changing the tone of the show, I actually completely agreed with that decision - I also remember Greg saying "I never want to see Jim as the best man at Dwight's wedding" and gee, look what happened after she left! The larger point that maybe one person shouldn't have so much influence is a fair one, but all these episodes go through so many rewrites and drafts and table reads, if the showrunner at the time (was it still Paul? I forget for S8) really didn't want that to happen they had plenty of opportunities to stop it. All told I think she, along with Paul and probably BJ, were the beating heart of the Office for a long time, which is why the show was able to maintain so much of the world-weary corporate hell hopelessness of the original while still injecting enough joy that people didn't actively dread coming to work. They really pulled off a hell of a balancing act that I don't think would have succeeded in the hands of lesser writers. Ok sorry for the long comment, been meaning to talk about this for days but finally got the time - LOVED this video!! I think the motivations of the artists are so much more interesting than the motivations of the art + have been following specific writers around from show to show for as long as I can remember - I've always wondered if Andy Bobrow is actually my literary soulmate or its just a weird coincidence that he's worked on 3 of my all time favorite shows (Malcolm, Community, Last Man on Earth) - that said if I had to pick a writer for you to do next it would 100% be Spitzer, if only because I don't think he gets the respect that Mike Schur does for doing essentially the same thing, identifying the mistakes they made in the Office and creating a superior product by fixing those mistakes. Ok wall of text over, Thanks Mulverine! ;)

[@TheEldritchGoth]

The pre Velma days

[@Nothing_Israel]

As a writer, I swooned at this lovingly detailed deep dive on Mindy’s contributions. I always find television writers rooms interesting because they are often so mysterious- the committee writing process has this great humbling effect where writers on shows will often not be sure which jokes were theirs and which were pitched by another writer. And that kind of collaborative writing process is kind of a dream - i am an editor , formerly a reporter, and it is far less collaborative in that world. Typically a story will go through one or two editors but the reporter works alone. Anyway - other television writers I would love to see given this treatment might be Megan Ganz, who wrote on “Community” (and was such a good writer Dan Harmon almost wrecked his career and hers - long story), wrote for “Modern Family” and finally co-created the terribly slept on Apple TV comedy Mythic Quest. I would also be interested in learning more about Conan O’Brien’s television writing days. Mitch Horowitz - he created arguably one of the greatest television comedies of all time and then a series of very funny shows that somehow never get remembered (“Running Wild” deserves some attention). The Tina Fey & Robert Carlock live action cartoons also should get some special recognition. Speaking of which, Donald Glover got his start writing for 30 Rock, before creating his own shows. His writing veers from super dark and serious to incredibly wacky on a dime.

[@Mulverine]

thanks for the suggestions - I loved Mythic Quest btw

[@inconvenienced]

Lol saying that Harmon almost ruined his career over Ganz because "she was such a good writer" is... certainly an interesting interpretation of events. To be honest, I've been underwhelmed by everything she's done outside of season 3, which makes me wonder how much of Cooperative Calligraphy was a product of the room. I mean, her name is on the S4 finale! Then all the MF eps... they're fine, but she just came in SO hot with that first script, I feel like she never quite captured that level of brilliance again. From what I've seen anyway, I'm sure I don't have the full picture - I've never seen Mythic Quest, for one. As for Mitch... I have a theory based on absolutely no inside information and all circumstantial evidence that it was actually the combination of Mitch Hurwitz and Abraham Higginbotham that made the first 3 seasons as brilliant as they were. Higginbotham was a showrunner on Malcolm for a while before he got hired onto AD, and Malcolm was (in my opinion) every bit as brilliant and innovative as AD, but a combination of less mature subject matter and existing just outside the DVD era sort of doomed it to a forgotten netherworld, despite the fact that it pioneered single camera comedy and creative, interwoven storytelling years before the Bluth's existed. You can see the brilliance of Mitch Hurwitz in season 4, but you can also see the warts - he's SO ambitious that he seems to get in his own way quite a bit. I think having AH there to help run the room is what made the first 3 seasons such an achievement - then he got poached by Modern Family (that fucking show, ugh) to basically create a store-brand version of Arrested, which led to both guys producing kind of half-baked versions of things they had created brilliantly in the recent past. And that is my conspiracy theory of ADS4 - I have absolutely zero evidence for any of it but it FEELS right, which I'm pretty sure is exactly what you're supposed to get out of a conspiracy theory? Lol I dunno I would like to one day see a documentary on Fey + Carlock, they have such a unique, "machine gun" style that just assails you with joke after joke, I feel like it shouldn't work but for them it does. I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be critical of your comment or anything, honestly I just get excited when I get to talk about comedy writers with other people, it's an extremely uncommon occurrence lol

[@fshoaps]

I too find the 'politics' of television writers rooms very interesting. I read a great book about the writing, and showrunning of Modern Family that went into it a lot.

[@Nothing_Israel]

@@inconvenienced Sounds like I just found “my people,” haha. Glad to see I am not the only one who sits around theorizing about writers rooms and what secret formulas go into making good writing. Your AD theory actually sounds pretty spot on. There exist so many examples of creators who benefited from having someone there to ground their work instead of letting them get drunk with creative freedom. Your theory kinda reminds me of the theory I had about Rick & Morty, wherein Justin Roiland was getting a lot of credit for being a co-creator on a brilliant animated series that he probably didn’t deserve that much credit for. Roiland’s work prior to working with Harmon was all just offensive for the sake of being offensive stream of consciousness comedy, and the work he did without Harmon on other shows is also pretty mid. After he got fired due to the inappropriate texts and his messed up social life, it was revealed that Roiland had become uninvolved with R&M’s writing for the past few seasons with his feeling edged out by Harmon who brought on more “Community” writers. As for Megan Ganz - Mythic Quest should be seen before discussing her work. I can say that Harmon at least claimed his initial attraction being related to her ability as a writer - but obviously it is impossible to say how true that is, hence part of why it is so unfair when a person’s boss gets a crush on them.

[@inconvenienced]

@@Nothing_Israel haha yeah, I always knew there were more people like me out there... unfortunately, my wife/friends/family are NOT those people, so it's nice to tell this theory to someone who has more than a polite nod as a response, lol I honestly had no idea Ganz got to make her own thing - I will 100% check it out, the script for Cooperative Calligraphy was just so unique... like she had the pieces to work with coming in, having an Abed is obviously going to be helpful for your bottle episode, but the execution was still so impressive that I started paying close attention pretty much immediately. I can discount her S4 contributions because nobody came out of S4 looking good (honestly, I give the most credit to Port + Guarascio for managing to get the show renewed for S5, regardless of how much creative input they had/exercised - EVERYBODY used the "let's do it like Dan would" strategy, but at the end of the day if the show ended with 4, they would get the blame, so I think they deserve a little credit that it didn't - anyway massive tangent sorry) but I was really underwhelmed with the Modern Family stuff... but again, Modern Family is pretty fucking underwhelming in general, so yeah I'd love to see something she created herself. I don't doubt for a second that Harmon was attracted to her talent, but if she had been a 400 lb Serbian refugee with the same amount of talent, I don't think the same situation plays out lol - it's totally understandable, suddenly a pretty girl shows up who also happens to be incredible at the skill you value more than basically any other, yeah you're probably going to become enamored with her... I really feel for everyone in that situation, I can absolutely see the perspective of both Harmon and Ganz and while I don't think Harmon was trying to be a creep, he wasn't really trying not to either, which is your responsibility when you're in the power position he was.... anyway I'm not trying to re-litigate this, it's over, fault has been assigned and accepted, I just never bought the whole "talent" line - it's like dudes who say they only care about personality, overcorrecting to the extent that we're supposed to pretend physical attraction isn't like a powerful base instinct that motivates almost all humans. I always got the feeling Roiland was responsible for the silly shit like interdimensional cable, like he has a unique mind that develops some interesting jokes but he needs to be surrounded by adults for that to ever have any value to anyone. If you want to come over and chat more about writers rooms for 8-9 hours I'll make cookies

[@Jamessmith-xk3fh]

I don't know if it's me but I kind of only like her in the Office

[@lostcauselancer333]

Is the thumbnail a reference to RRR?

[@bizarroeddie1]

given how many classic episodes she wrote, the series definitely would be less good without her, that's not even debatable.

[@chrisreiss5139]

Hot girl is my *favorite* episode. How strange am I?

[@JuniorRDZ04]

I never realized how much of the cringe and zaniness her written episodes have brought to the show. I’m glad that she was a part of the series.

[@lando6420]

since when do you have 36k I thought you had like 400k

[@EmitOcean20]

Serious. Didn't think 400k, but way more than posted. 😢

[@CorHor]

The woman is a nightmare

[@spelunkyboy]

Well she's a hypocrite - in media and in life. As someone said, great art comes from honesty.

[@XZAVIER-DAA-GOD]

Velma isn't just terribly rated it's terribly written and a terrible show

[@bloodygoat6941]

So true

[@aspookyspookynight]

So don't watch?

[@XZAVIER-DAA-GOD]

@@aspookyspookynight wdym so, and I didn't, and so it's a bastardize Scooby show

[@henrypeters5291]

@@XZAVIER-DAA-GOD How can you say you it's bad if you did not watch it? Granted it is bad, but it is not fair to give your opinion for something you haven't seen.

[@XZAVIER-DAA-GOD]

@@henrypeters5291 I watched the 1st episode then, a breakdown on the rest of the show, and the fact is it just sucks so it's not a opinion

[@arturohernandez8789]

☕️

[@Nothing_Israel]

Where is your other writer spotlights, man?! This one was months ago! Where’s the BJ Novak spotlight?? We know you got love for Michael Schur! How about Greg Daniels? Honestly, I think one could make a good argument for a video on how Daniels handles romantic storylines vs. how Schur does. It seems like Daniels likes making characters fall in love who actually have things in common / like each other (Pam / Jim, Dwight / Angela, Leslie / Ben) while Schur seems to like the more sitcom traditional route of writing romances between characters who are opposites - Amy & Jake, Eleanor & Chidi, Jason & Janet, Charles & Gina). I think the opposites attract romances tend to feel less satisfying or realistic, than the Daniels’ thing of characters liking each other. ‘Cause when characters are always bickering (Ross / Rachael style), it makes them exhausting, and hard to root for.

[@TitaniusCornwood]

she likes cringe

[@Lucy-yc4bc]

Algorithm

[@joaonettoofc]

She nailed in The Office, but in Velma she destroyed all things. Normal, we are humans.

[@smartdud]

She distorted Scooby-Doo

[@XZAVIER-DAA-GOD]

They wasn't allowed to use Scooby or the real Shaggy, because they're the stars

[@smartdud]

@@XZAVIER-DAA-GOD Velma changed

[@henrypeters5291]

She definitely gets more crap for that than she deserves. (Obviously, had it done well, she would have gotten more credit for it than she deserves). But while she very likely had a writing input, she did not write any of the episodes. They were all written by Charlie Grandy (another writer from the office).

[@Mibbitmaker]

I see it similarly to the late night wars of 2010 - Jay Leno got tons of flack over it. During that time, my dad opined that Leno got a raw deal, and that NBC was the real culprit in that disaster. My take was that, yes, NBC was the main problem in how things went down, but that Leno wasn't blameless. He did have a lot to do with it. In the writing, Grandy was the main problem, but Mindy was the producer and had a hand in decisions on the Velma show.

[@henrypeters5291]

@@Mibbitmaker Best analogy I have heard.

[@frankaliberti]

Giving Mindy any props for all of this is an incredible disrespect for everyone else involved in making those episodes. The biggest proof of that is how much of a failure she was on her own after the Office. The only reason she’s still relevant is because of how much pandering and virtue signaling she does to whatever trending social topics are rising up on the media that month.

[@MissCalaMari]

The Mindy Project ran for six seasons. Sorry, but in the world of television production, that is a HUGE success. HUGE. The vast majority of shows never get off the ground, and a tiny percentage reach the 100 episode mark.

[@frankaliberti]

@@MissCalaMari You think you understand how TV works, but you don’t. Some networks will bet on a show based on a pilot, and that usually gives the showrunners 1 season. If the show works, it’ll get rebewed. Sometimes they’ll bet on the showrunners themselves. That usually gets them 3 seasons. And if the show is a success, it gets renewed. FOX gave Mindy 3 seasons because of the success of The Office, even though all she sid was stand on the shoulder of giants and take the praise. Then, FOX gave up on the Mindy Project as soon as they could because the ratings were so low. By season 3 it had less than half the viewership of season 1 because all The Office fans that gave that show a chance quit as soon as they realized what was happening. Then Hulu came along and picked up the show for another 3 seasons because Hulu, backed by Disney money, was buying every dropped show from “famous” showrunners at the time and syndicating as many shows as they could to be able to bite enough market share to compete with Netflix. They didn’t care about the success of the show, any viewership to them was good. Since streaming services don’t really share their viewership like TV does, it’s safe to assume it didn’t go too much above the low numbers of season 3. Articles online will say Mindy decided to cancel the show because she was busy with other projects, but it doesn’t take a genius to add two and two together. She hasn’t done anything relevant since then besides showing up in one or two episodes of other people’s TV shows, and a couple of forgettable movies. In addition, all the praise the show got from critics is easily debunked by looking at the viewers opinions and scores, which usually reflect a realistic opinion of the show and not a paid-for virtue signaling review.

[@DominickSpano]

I personally am not a Mindy fan. I think she is full of herself and sort of self-centered. Point in fact at the end of your video she would not go along with the flow of the series, but write episodes that go against most that were set up from a select season. Like a child who wants to just get her way. She just isn't my bag, and I get the impression that if she met a fan she would be a jerk. If you like her that is great and if you enjoy her episode that is wonderful. I would never take that away from anyone, but I don't care for her.

[@Rastamanjungle]

i used to think office is best tv comedy series ever i rewatched it like 10x times, but lately i rewatched Friends and i change my mind. Oh and by saying rewatched office 10x i mean season 2-7 i wont touch season 1 or season 8-9 they are terrible.

[@johnparker4484]

Friends is trash

[@Rastamanjungle]

@@johnparker4484trash is season 8-9 of the office, and its trash of the worst kind. Season 1 of office is also trash when compared to UK version on which it was based. Friends is good from 1 to 10.

[@Rastamanjungle]

@@johnparker4484 also friends was the most watched comedy tv series of all time, so the only trash here is you :D

[@lsixty30]

No, you just don’t like the office that much 😅