Dr. Jean Fishman, The Mindy Project

Dr. Jean Fishman (Niecy Nash)

The romantic comedy The Mindy Project follows the life of OB/GYN doctor Mindy Lahiri. Dr. Jean Fisherman was introduced in the third season as the new department chief at the hospital. She was quickly annoyed by Mindy and assigned her the graveyard shift. To get on Jean’s good side Mindy invites her out on a girls night and as they were coming back from their night out, Mindy plucked a bug out of Jean’s hair, who took it as a sign and went in for a kiss.

Surprised and unsure of how to react Mindy kissed her back. Despite the episode not airing during sweeps week, the kiss followed the typical “Lesbian kiss episode”, a trend in which a female character (usually guest) who identifies as lesbian or bisexual kisses a (regular) female character who identifies as heterosexual.

After stressing about the kiss for a while Mindy finally told Jean she was straight. Then “Deb-Deb”, Jean’s furious wife showed up, upset that her wife had been kissing other women and stormed out of the room again. Once again doomed to the graveyard shift Mindy schemed with her boyfriend, Danny, to get Jean and “Deb-Deb” back on her good side. Danny pretended to be heartbroken over the situation and started drinking and making fake suicide threats, until he was comforted by Jean and “Deb-Deb”, who forgave Mindy for her “seduction” of Jean.

Jean made a few more brief appearances during season three, but they all revolved around her being the boss at the hospital and her sexuality didn’t come up again, she then disappeared off the show.

Appearances:

• 4 episodes. 3x05, 3x06, 3x08, 3x100

Female love interests:

• Dr. Mindy Kuhel Lahiri (Mindy Kaling, straight, regular)
• Deborah aka "Deb-Deb" (Julie Goldman, guest, 1 episode, wife)

Relationship story arc with a woman: No

No male love interests

Relationship story arc with a man: No

Male love interest after being identified as a lesbian? No

Filter Relationship Arc:

• None

Storyline during sweeps? No

[1] A relationship story arc is defined as explicit, developed on screen, and lasting more than 3 episodes. It is listed as questionable or subtext if romance is only implied, mentioned instead of shown on screen, part of a dream sequence, or otherwise not explicit for the viewer.
[2] Sweeps episodes air in February, May, July and November, the periods when advertising rates are set. A character is marked as "sweeps" when there is a very limited number of episodes that address their sexuality, all air during sweeps period, and the storyline is otherwise ignore/dropped.