Fox at the TCA press tour: Mindy Kaling can’t get away from The Office that easily

From the floor of the Television Critics Association Press Tour, where Fox is currently previewing its new fall slate to an audience of complimentary-waffle-and-gummi-bear-stuffed reporters and critics: Though she’ll be busy with her own sitcom, the forthcoming The Mindy Project, Mindy Kaling will appear in the ninth season of The Office. Kaling’s character, Kelly Kapoor, will woo longtime viewers into a false sense of security before she’s sent to live on the farm (no, not The Farm) that Karen, Roy, and everyone else who’s been disappeared by the show now calls home. Kaling confirmed she’ll be a part of The Office’s season première, with the potential of other episodes down the line. After that, of course, Dunder Mifflin Scranton will presumably be staffed by Andy, Jim, Pam, Creed, that Homer Simpson doll, and an overturned broom with a bucket covering its bristles—the last of which ought to present the latest challenge to Jim and Pam’s marriage by midseason at the latest.