Non-vocal Communication

                This week’s assignment was to watch a television show that I do not normally watch while the sound was muted and then watch it again with the sound turned on. The purpose of this was to see if the conclusions that we drew from the first viewing matched with what we found to be true in the second viewing. The show that I chose to watch was “The Mindy Project”.

                The episode opened with Mindy, the only character I knew, having breakfast with a man. After watching their interactions for a couple of minutes, I determined that this man was either her husband or her boyfriend. The next scene shows Mindy in her bedroom with a pile of clothes on her bed and she is struggling to put on a pair of pants. She is clearly upset with the way her body looks and complains about being fat, this is easy to figure out because she slaps her belly. The man in her life, Danny, tries to reassure her and I lip-read the word pregnant. Mindy is not mollified by his response, she still seems upset and debates wearing something that looks like a sleeping bag with arm holes.

                Relationships at work were fairly easy to identify on the first viewing. There was the perky co-worker/friend, the snarly older woman/receptionist, the co-worker who is friends with Danny, and the boss who doesn’t seem to get much respect. The boss announces that they will be having a new staff photo taken, but when he brings the photographer in, Mindy protests that she needs more warning so that she can have her hair and makeup done and wear an appropriate outfit. (She was wearing a track suit.) At the end of this meeting there is an exchange between the boss and the other two main male characters that I didn’t understand at all when the sound was muted.

                After work that night, Mindy meets with her friend and some other woman who try to rebuild her self-confidence. At the same time, Danny is at what appears to be an adult pajama party with his friend and the boss. His friend spots a woman that he is clearly interested in with another man and convinces Danny to scope out the situation. Danny reluctantly agrees and has a conversation with her which, when muted, made me think that she may be interested in Danny. Then an angry woman burst into the apartment and throws everyone out. I was confused by this scene because I had no context as to who she was or what gave her the authority to throw everyone out.

                When Danny gets home, Mindy is dressed in an outfit that her best friend’s friend had given her to feel sexy. Unfortunately, when Danny sees her, he laughs. This was obviously not the response she was looking for and her feelings are clearly hurt.

                The next day, at work, Mindy tells her friend what happened, which makes her friend angry. When they try to take the staff photo again, Mindy is yelling at Danny, her friend is yelling at Danny, and Danny’s friend is yelling at him about something. Danny seems confused. Mindy and his friend go and confront the woman he is interested in. During this confrontation, he and Mindy seem to be united in what they are saying; but, at some point, that changes. He appears to be trying to say something, but Mindy waves him aside and talks over him. At about the same point in the conversation, Mindy hears what she is saying to this other woman and has some sort of epiphany.

                Meanwhile, back at work, Danny is confronted by Mindy’s friend and the woman who tried to help Mindy. They are upset by the fact that he had laughed at her. He appears to protest, but they are not letting him off the hook. Also, the boss has a confrontation with the woman who broke up the party the night before.

That night, Mindy shares her epiphany with Danny and they make up. When they prepare for the photo at work the next day, Danny wants to stand with Mindy – who is dressed in what I can assume is more normal attire for her. At the last minute, the boss runs in all disheveled – he is wearing the same clothes as the day before and I assume he has had sex.

When I watched the episode with the sound on, I discovered that I had been correct about most of my previous assumptions. The one assumption that I made in error was the one concerning Danny and the woman his friend liked. First, I did not know that the friend and the woman had been dating and that Danny had introduced them in the first place. The awkwardness that I saw the first time was due to the fact that she was considering breaking up with Danny’s friend, not because she was attracted to Danny.

On the first viewing, I had missed a few things - like the fact that a wedding announcement from a former colleague had upset the boss because he had once dated the bride. I also missed what the boss was saying to the guys after the meeting; he was inviting/ordering them to his adult pajama party so they could help him find a girlfriend. And it turns out that the mysterious angry woman was the boss' neighbor.

Although there were a few times when I was able to lip-read what was being said in a scene, the majority of my interpretations of the scenes and the characters came from their body language and facial expressions. These actions combined made it easier to understand the tone of the conversations. It was amazing to me how, as an example, Mindy was able to convey the fact that new thoughts were coming to her as she spoke with the ex-girlfriend. I think that my schema of understanding television comedies also helped me understand the parts the characters were playing. It probably would have been more difficult for me to make sense of a genre that I do not normally watch.