Who cares if there is no stamp commemorating Diwali when NBC’s Emmy Award winning comedy The Office has an episode commemorating the Hindu holiday. The episode, written by Mindy Kaling, born Vera Chokalingam, (also author of the Diwali song (link via nirali magazine)-, the Hindu answer to Adam Sandler’s Hannukah Song) airs tonight on NBC at 8:30 EST. Tonight’s episode, simply titled “Diwali,” has Michael played by Steve Carell, urging all the staff to support Kelly Kapoor, played by Mindy Kaling, and attend a local celebration of the Hindu Festival of Lights. As Ryan (B.J. Novak) nervously faces Kelly’s family at the event, Michael, his new girlfriend Carol, and the staff sample a range of Indian culture and cuisine. Since the episode hasn’t aired yet, we can’t say too much about the content, but the fact that the show is happening is pretty cool. I hope some YouTube links will pop up in the comments after the show airs. Check out Nirali Magazine’s blog for an exclusive look at the show.
Mindy was on the morning talk show out here in LA. She was a writer for The Office and kinda got roped into acting on the show as well. I think it is AWESOME that Mindy wrote this show- and she chose to make it the Diwali theme – as far as I know, the comedic writing world is very male and the fact that she as a woman broke this barrier is a huge acheivement. Tell me how the show goes- I’ll be missing it!
Mad props to Mindy 🙂
Mindy also showed up with Steve Carrel in “the 40-year-old virgin” as “Amy.” I think she has a real knack for comedy and I hope her career yields even more success.
Thanks for the post, Taz, I’ll make sure to watch 😉
can’t wait.. it’s on in 2 minutes 😉
So glad for this reminder! Imagine if I had missed it?
No live-blogging?
Mindy has also written for Saturday Night Live and has penned a movie tentatively titled “Unaffiliated,” a sorority comedy that was picked up by Fox’s new teen focused film division–Fox Atomic.
OK watching it now and it’s hysterical in the stereotypical way. Ive been emailing you guys like nuts trying to get you guys to post about it. About damn time 😉
Oh yeah heard her on NPR’s Fresh Air earlier and she said her parents were going to be on the show, her real parents.
mindy is a dartmouth grad.. go dr. seuss (an alum….along with kaptain kangaroo…)…good show! west coasters tape it/tivo it…
OMG I’m dying…it’s too funny. Go live blogging!
I ran into / met Mindy @ a party in LA not too long ago. There’s a big story here for another time (perhaps the NYC meetup) BUT, she’s really sweet / cute in person as well. At the time, I had no idea who she was (I don’t watch The Office regularly) & so I only found out afterwards that she had a fanbase. BTW, I didn’t ask her if she read SM.
It. Sucked. Ass.
The Brits want their Office back.
I think the song was a bit lame, but I love her parents trying to set her up with a doctor.
I wanted to be at that party.
Well, yeaaaaah. You can’t compare it to the British Office. Nothing beats that.
Dwight was hilarious. It’s very telling when Kelly couldn’t explain anything about Diwali and Dwight could. Hilarious.
I never liked the show. I never really got it. My office environment is different so I could never relate but all the over stereotypical stuff that was so subtle was funny…losing shoes at a religions/temple event, the garlands around their necks, pulling out the Kamasutra, setting her up with a doctor, it was funny.
Goddamn Limeys. Bugger Off!
so are you going to throw yourself into the fire after she dies?
long live diwali
now where the HELL are my shoes?
long live the infamous brownies…
subramaniam chandrahekar…
apu…
and of course… m. night…
where the hell were the infamous female brownies? manjula.. consort of apu ;)…
padmma lakshmi
and of course…. aishwairya rai…
dwight was hilarious… ‘this is the best office meeting ever’…
Thought it was funny, the line from the mom, “oh she’s very fair” and Micheal’s response….so cool. i thought it was awesome. Good job Mindy!
the s’mores/samosa joke and steve carell’s hilarious attempt at bhangra had me rolling, and kelly’s dad sooo reminded me of my own anytime i brought home a non-indian…
Stop comparing the British Office to the American one. Yes, they’re different, but they’re both totally hilarious in their own way.
Mindy Kaling is a hilarious and talented writer and I look forward to her new movies/projects.
Having said that, this episode was, as I expected, a million laughs per minute. From the stereotypical Apu and Indiana Jones (they eat monkey brains -how many times have we ALL experienced that?) to the totally realistic Kelly’s parents asking Ryan about his future plans with their daughter, I thought this was a groundbreaking step forward for Desis in comedy.
I am, however, pissed that SM didn’t fenagle some sort of casting call in which we all could have been cast as extras in that episode. Hmph. Now I’m going to go watch Parminder Nagra’s character get it on with John Stamos’ on tonight’s “very special” ER.
Preface: this might be considered inappropriate by some, but… I’m like that.
Anyone else think her real last name is hilarious? Choke-a-lingam?
It’s not really pronounced “choke,” the “o” sound is much softer. Sounds very Tamilian to me, even the way it’s translitterated — there’s no “sh” in Tamil, only “ch.”
There is a ‘sha’ in Tamil. Although it is grantham or “vadamozhi” (northern speech?), one of five consonants borrowed from Sanskrit.
Chockalingam is shiva? As a kid, I found the name funny because it sounded somewhat like something else that means “shrunken lingam”. So before I met the first Chockalingam of my life (when I was 5), I was anticpating a small, dried up man. I didn’t know what lingam meant at that time, though.
I saw it tonight, the show was awesome, and the writing excellent. I didn’t know that Mindy was the writer, I thought she was only an actress. great job!
legume.
Stop comparing the British Office to the American one. Yes, they’re different, but they’re both totally hilarious in their own way.
Yes, they’re different, but the Brit version is in a class of its own. Ricky Gervais makes a hell of a difference for one. Carrell is quite a good actor, but Gervais is a born funny man. The character equivalent to Gareth’s isn’t a patch on the original. Yeah, let’s totally stop comparing these two shows 🙂
For Gervais fans reading, if you haven’t already, do check out his stand up comedy acts. I got dvds of Politics and Animals, they’re insanely funny. There’s also the new series called Extra (not sure if it’s running in the US) and it’s definitely worth watching too.
Sorry, that should have been Extras, not Extra.
here is the NPR link where mindy is interviewed..
odd song choice for the bolly/bhangra get-down, though. Lo Aa Gaye LoDi Ve from “Veer Zaara”? bizarre.
As white boy who married a desi girl, the conversation between Ryan and Kelly’s parents was spot on. After a slightly awkward dinner at the “best” Indian restaurant in Dallas in which her mom said absolutely nothing to me, then immediate question out of her mom’s mouth at our next in encounter was “What do you like about my daughter and what are your intentions?” Fortunately my bio-data was on the acceptable side.
Both British and American versions owe a debt to Mike Judge and his underappreciated “Office Space”. “Yea, that would be great…mmmm kay? Oh and you forgot to put the coversheets on your TPS reports.”
Was anybody else a bit disappointed by the ep? Maybe it was after all that hype…
Anyway, it’s still pretty cool that Kaling is a writer for The Office–and did you guys know that there are a lot more South Asian writers working for primetime shows? You didn’t? Oh, well, you’ll just have to read about them in Nirali on Monday. 😉
asha’s dad: yeah, the grilling and toasting of the boy was to par… office space is a classic.. in my row of dvd’s which are the ‘golden bunch’… (p.s. asha in the ducky costume, ubbery cute!)
ismat: i just wanted more… the 20 or 24 minutes were too short for everything.. they coudld’ve done without the other 3 getting toasted while working and doing shots… (jim, and the 2 cohorts)…more diwali..less toasty time… would’ve made for a better episode…but hey, i’m not a tv writer..
An in another news, Parminder Nagra in ER performed a hot bed/bath scene last night. In her dream that is.
“Okay, sit down. This isn’t Lord of the Rings.”
LOL. 😀
Quel horreur!! I missed it!!! YouTube link please!
I thought this episode was hilarious and had me rolling throughout. Steve just plays Michael with brilliant nervouse energy. You expect what he is going to do next but wish that he wouldnt do it.
When the little girls around Ryan said that “Kelly ko Zach Braff pasand hai”…i laughed so hard i peed a lil(TMI)
and who else caught Parminder getting all steamy in the shower with uncle Jesse?
That movie is a classic!!!
Well, remember Dwight is sexually attracted to two ethnicities – “White and East Indian.” 😉
Lots of quotes from Office Space here.
I thought Gary Cole in particular was brilliant; he had such a practically-comatose laid-back style in the entire movie. The way he kept slowly saying “If you could do such-and-such, that would be terrific, okay ?” whenever making a request of his underlings was so accurate to real life (it’s even funnier to me because I’ve seen that for real many times). I’ve actually had to force myself not to start grinning whenever previous managers have said that to me, because it’s instantly reminded me of the movie.
Gary Cole’s constant drawling “Hmmmmmm…..yeahhhhh” was hilarious too. They even made that part of the song during the credits at the end of the film.
Uncle Jessie from The Dukes of Hazzard ??? What the hell kind of show is ER turning into ?!
It was enjoyable, but the other story line of the drinking game in the other regional office went nowhere.
Favorite lines, “Kelly, who is one of our most ethnic employees…” and “This is the best meeting ever.”
Since I can’t speak a lick of Hindi, can someone translate what Kelly’s sisters were saying? And BidiSmoker, get off your morally superior high horse for a second. What Mindy did is pretty damn cool. This was the most desi half-hour that I’ve ever seen on American network television–well, maybe there was a “very special episode” of Blossom meeting a brown friend…
Damn! To be young and free….
Missed the show…can’t watch TV with two kids 14 & 7. Most of the shows I like, have ‘inappropriate’ content for the kids…so says wifey. How I wish I could watch Colbert & Office!
Bidismoker,
I agree with Southie, why you gotta hate??? You act as if its morally wrong to act in those roles. While i know nothing about you, i do know you are the exact type of desi people that are part of the problem. While its not favorable to be a 7-11 clerk, cab driver or tech nerd, those are the roles that are available, and its bloody hard to get any work being desi. So instead of hating, why don’t you write the next brilliant screen play to glorify the desi actor, well unless ofcourse you are too intellectual,too sophisticated, too creative to do something for the masses…are you sure you’re not an aunty….cause they are the greatest haters!
As someone said above – it sucked!! There was no head or tail. I am tired of the same jokes. But maybe for the american audience it was something new. I am not sure it was a good introduction to Diwali – even as s joke. Diwali like halloween?? WTF? That tells me that the writer has either thought so OR she probably actually heard some ABD making such a statement in real life.
or as um .., like a writer, she came up with it on her own?
Bidismoker,
I retract my previous statement as after lookin at your blog, you seem like you may be a chill character and i do agree with a lot you say.
Rani, Yes if she came up with that as a writer on her own, consciously or sub-consciously she made that connection. Maybe where she was growing up, people walked around wearing garlands at a diwali party making her feel that it was a costume party. I know that writers sometimes exaggerate to make a comic point, especially when the content is focused on a general American audience, but some of the jokes made me choke.
Jai, Not from DoH but from Full House, a tv-series.
“Kelly likes Zach Braff”, while looking at Ryan