Season 4 of The Office premiered last night with the much anticipated episode entitled "Fun Run". I haven't watched the second part of it yet, but here was my favorite exchange of the night so far:
Michael: Kelly, you are Hindu. So you believe in Buddha.
Kelly: That’s Buddhists.
Michael: Are you sure?
Kelly: No.
(Michael turns to the new IT guy.)
Michael: What are you?
IT guy: Well, if you’re gonna reduce my identity to my religion, then I’m Sikh. But I also like hip-hop and NPR. And I’m restoring a 1967 Corvette in my spare time.
Michael: Okay so one Sikh. And . . .
Oh, Michael. While searching unsuccessfully for a video or screen capture of that scene, I found this lovely article: Masti See TV, by Hilal Nakiboglu Isler, at Nirali Magazine.
. . . [Mindy Kaling's character on The Office, Kelly Kapoor] might be a minor one—like most roles that go to desi actors—but it is different. Tune in to NBC on Thursdays and you’ll see why: Kelly is memorable–not because she’s Indian, but because she is chatty, upbeat and, well, irritating. There are no exaggerated accents to her performance, no suggestions of superior ability in math, no terrorist plots uncovered by co-workers.
Kelly Kapoor is the girl next door (make that cubicle). And her character is so stunningly ordinary, it represents a real triumph.
Kaling, a Dartmouth College alumna, once told her school paper she felt the world of “sitcoms and sketch” was “very white.” A script intern for Conan O’Brien at the time, she found the lack of women and people of color backstage to be disappointing.
Six years later, she is now in Los Angeles—and with acting, writing and producing credits on an Emmy-winning show, she’s out to change the plot. . .
If you readers watched the show last night, what was your favorite part?
