The Mindy Project Season 4 Episode 3 Recap: Jake Gyllenhaal Probably Doesn't Have Rubella

Another week, another bunch of lessons learned through a series of Mindy (Mindy Kaling) defying Danny's (Chris Messina) uptight, overprotective orders.

First-time parents are always in for an adjustment when they finally take their baby home, and Mindy and Danny are no different. The fact that they're OB/GYNs hasn't prepared them at all for actually raising a baby — their job ends the moment a woman gives birth. Now that baby Leo is safely home, they're as green as any first-time parent, and since this is a sitcom, even more prone to hijinks.


Of course, they respond in ways completely typical of their characters. Danny goes overboard baby-proofing the house for Leo's arrival. He read somewhere that kids shouldn't look at screens until they're age 18 (um, wait til Leo starts using an iPad in nursery school, Danny — they start them young these days), so he removed anything that could qualify as such from the apartment. He also disabled the Wi-Fi so that he and Mindy could be 100% focused on the baby. It's unclear where he read that bringing home a new baby equals torture for the mom and dad, because that seems to be Danny's method of parenting thus far.

It's all fine for Danny, though, because he's not taking paternity leave. Mindy's stuck at home with nothing to do but breast-feed and read the books Danny left for her in a care package (like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which Mindy notes features the n-word "as many times as a Kanye song," but — to her dismay — also contains "a message, like a Common song"). Danny has forbidden her from taking Leo outside before he's been vaccinated. We all know that forbidding Mindy from doing something basically means she'll do that exact thing, and to the nth degree. So outside she goes, to Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal's cookbook (Jake & Maggie Gyllenhaal's Grillin' Haul) signing because "What are the chances that Jake Gyllenhaal has rubella?" Great question, Mindy.

There's no way that Mindy is going to get away with this scheme without Danny finding out, and she doesn't, of course. She gets locked out of the apartment, and has to rely on the help of her neighbor (played by Eliza Coupe, miss you so much now that Happy Endings is off the air, girl), who she asked to stop having such loud sex the other night, to get back in. They end up bonding, and Mindy sets her neighbor up with Morgan. refinery29