Mindy Kaling helped It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia bring its toxic subtext to the surface

Slate

Kaling's appearance as Cindy in the Season 13 premiere wasn't just as any foil. "As she herself puts it, she’s a 'brown-skinned girl,' and so her eventual ejection from the Gang, while inevitable, feels different from previous iterations of this storyline," says Inkoo Kang. "The Sunny writers know that their morally grotesque characters are uncomfortable around black people, routinely stereotype other people of color, and mistreat women on a regular basis. (One of the show’s most remarkable aspects is its high-wire ability to engage in politically incorrect humor that seldom feels like it’s punching down.) But women and people of color are rarely suggested as substitutions for one of the Gang’s members, so Cindy’s ousting becomes one of the show’s most forceful reminders that, while the group regularly brushes off outsiders, that closed-mindedness includes a refusal to treat anyone who’s not a white man as a potential coequal. If the Gang previously seemed like dirtbags whose actions largely happened to be racist and sexist, Cindy’s expulsion suggests that their uglier qualities were meant to be the text, rather than the subtext, all along." ALSO: Rob McElhenney explained how hard it was to get his body ripped for this season.