Mindy Kaling, creator and star and multi-hyphenate involved with The Mindy Project, posited that the creative limits of network television are actually better for showing realistic love lives than the freedom of cable television. Because in life, you can’t get everything you want.
In a profile for The Guardian, Kaling told Rebecca Nicholson:
Every character on my show is obsessed with sex and love, but with [network] standards, they can’t say all they wanna do is get banged six ways from Sunday. There’s a difference between wanting it, which applies to every human, and it happening, which is what cable shows. It is a different thing altogether.
Life is not the please pile of cable TV; life is network rules and figuring out how to make stuff work despite all the limits. Anyway, Kaling goes on to say that “one of the things I value most on my staff is their ability to write boyfriends.” As good of a writing test as any before it.
