Mindy On that Certain Memorable Kiss

Hey guys, remember when Dr. Danny Castellano grabbed Dr. Mindy Lahiri's ass as they made out on that airplane on The Mindy Project? That was pretty attractive, huh? Now, like a good showrunner/star/someone who knows exactly what that plot twist did to her audience, Mindy Kaling's talking about the Danny/Mindy kiss, where it might lead, and how it differs from the main 'ship on that other big show she worked on, The Office.

First, on the Jim and Pam of it all, as compared to the Danny and Mindy of it all:

[Mindy and Danny are] much older than Jim and Pam were. It's much more like an expression of that than it was like a romantic kiss.

This isn't the first time Kaling's talked about Danny and Mindy vs. Jim and Pam — in fact, she's brought it up or had it brought up to her multiple times in interviews. Here's what she said to TVLine this past November:

It’s not like Danny and Mindy are Jim and Pam, where they are destined to be together because they’re each other’s true loves and soulmates.

Danny and Mindy are very, very spiky, dynamic, prickly people who are older than Jim and Pam and are more set in their ways,” she adds. “So if we move in that direction, it’ll be interesting, but it doesn’t have to be permanent. If Jim and Pam got together, it would be traumatizing to viewers to have them split up or for there to be infidelity, because they were such an idealized, very romantic romance… Danny and Mindy are not.

And here's what she said to Us Weekly very recently:

Well, the good thing about them is the kiss can go so many ways. Because it was more of like a frantic makeout, because it was more of an expression of lust than romance, those are the kind of things that people often regret. So I feel like that left it open in a lot of ways for us. But in the first episode back, it deals with it in such a funny way that I'm just excited for you guys to see it.

So basically: Maybe don't expect Danny and Mindy to immediately and permanently profess their undying devotion to one another. Whether their relationship is what TV fandom refers to as "endgame" is very much up in the air until, well, the show's end, but there's (hopefully) a lot of wiggle room along the way. And remember, Mindy's still got feelings for (currently broken-up) boyfriend Cliff, and Danny's not the best at maintaining that expressing-of-vulnerability thing.

But hey, doesn't that just make it all the more exciting?

Image: Fox