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Mindy Kaling is a writer, actress, and showrunner. She's also a prophet. Unearthed through the forces of Twitter this afternoon, writer and comedian Akilah Hughes stumbled upon a passage from Kaling's most recent essay collection Why Not Me? that predicted nearly every single aspect of Aziz Ansari's Netflix sitcom Master of None's pilot episode.
In the essay called "Coming This Fall," which was also published in the New Yorker back in August), Kaling calls out the television show pitch tropes that networks, for whatever reason, continue to clamor for (examples: "The Abandoned-Spinster Club," "Hot Serial Killer Who's Kind of Literary," and "Talkative Chubster Seeks Husband"). There's also this section entitled "Neurotic Sensitive Guy Is Also Super-Unhappy."
Which, sure, there are many, many television shows that can be described as such. But it's in the details where it gets almost eerie. Not only does she nail the whole sad-LA-slash-NYC-dude-in-a-creative-profession thing, but she also predicted that the pilot episode would involve a) a child's birthday party with a bouncy castle, b) kids that only exist as an impediment to the main character's sex life, and c) has no jokes, but is deemed brilliant and hilarious.
Mindy Kaling predicted "Master of None" pic.twitter.com/BsPlQRl4yu
— Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) December 17, 2015
Neither Mindy nor Aziz have responded just yet, but chances are Mindy already knows what's going to happen next.