25 pop culture confessionals from Ike Barinholtz

Before the next episode ofThe Mindy Project—which airsTuesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET on Fox—star Ike Barinholtz, a.k.a. scene-stealing nurse Morgan, gamely offered EW insight into his pop culture diet. Warning: Baby talk and snack playlists ahead.

Show that’s always haunting my DVR: “My in-laws, whenever they come in town, decide that they need to DVR all the local news. The bete noire of my DVR is local news in Los Angeles. I have to constantly delete those, which is actually kind of a herculean task. Shows that I have DVRed that I like to watch, I’m actually pretty good about knocking out. Once you have a baby, you quickly learn how to watch TV very economically. Baby’s in bed at 7:30, we have an hour and a half, let’s watch 3 shows.”

Baby programming I actually enjoy: “She’s only one and a half so we’re holding off until she’s around 3 before she can watch stuff, but right now the only things we let her watch are Chicago Bears games and Meet the Press. Either she’s going to be a political analyst or a linebacker.”

Favorite office decoration at The Mindy Project: “Our writer’s assistant is a kid named Landon Young and he’s a very cool, good-looking young man, but he was a child actor who was very chubby and I have his headshot from when he was a little boy hanging up in my office. I tell you, it’s a pretty big inspiration. He gave it to me for Christmas. It was my favorite gift this year.”

Binge I keep delaying: “Every person tells me how great The Americans is. My grandfather has come back from the dead just to tell me how great it is.”

Cell phone background: “That’s reserved for baby stuff. It’s some variation of a picture of me and my daughter with my face cropped out. It’s really just her. And she doesn’t even appreciate it. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

‘80s nostalgia I geek out about: “I was very big into ‘80s comedies. I still to this day love National Lampoon’s Vacation. I think that is a perfect movie. Trading Places is a big movie in our household. Love 48 Hrs. All the young Eddie Murphy stuff. ‘80s comedies really resonate with me the most. I think part of the reason I do what I do is to try to be as funny as some of those great Ivan Reitman or John Hughes or John Landis films.”

Most frequently used emoji: “There’s an emoji of a face—not a happy face, but a face where one eye’s closed with the tongue sticking out. I like that one a lot because it means a lot. It can mean ‘I’m horny!’ or ‘I’m hungry!’”

Show I’m always behind on: “Top Chef is really the only reality show I watch, but I watch the entire season over the course of one Saturday, so whenever people talk about it, I’m completely out of the loop and I can’t contribute to the conversation.”

Channel-surf go-to: “Honestly I have too many of those. I can go anywhere from super classy to, like, Goodfellas, to Bottle Rockets. For some reason, World War Z, whenever I see it’s on, I have to watch. And I pretend like I’ve never seen it before and my wife’s like, ‘You’ve seen this five times.’”

Next movie on my Netflix queue: “When I first met my wife, I told her I love foreign films, but what I really want is a giant studio film that has explosions and karate. So a lot of times, it’s compromising and being like, we’re not going to watch X-Men tonight but we can watch this Polish film Ida, and then I fall asleep ten minutes in, and the next day I’m like, ‘Okay, it’s time to watch X-Men.’”

Morgan-ism that still makes me laugh: “To me, the Morgan joke we keep coming back to that I always love is when he complains about how he’s underpaid when he constantly calls the doctors one-percenters. He’s like, ‘Well, I would love to have lunch, I just don’t have any money today.’ I love having him play the poor little kid. That’s a very funny thing to me. And also, his blind defending of Mindy. There was a joke, I don’t even know if it made it to air, where she claims that when she gets photographed, her eyes come out blue, and someone’s like ‘No, you have brown eyes,’ and Morgan’s immediately like, “NO, she has blue eyes, like Frank Sinatra.’ And I always think that’s very funny.”

Last text from Mindy: “I texted her three questions and she didn’t text me back and I very quickly was like, ‘Hey, don’t you ever disrespect me by not texting me back. You’re really messing with the wrong guy. I’ve never been treated this shabbily. Screw you, I’m done with this, go to hell.’ And then she sent me back, ‘Sorry I was in editing, I had no reception.’ And I said “Sorry!” and the corresponding emoji was gun-to-my-head.”

My playlist in the editing room: “I have a snack playlist. Pringles, sour cream and onion. Salted cashews. Anything salty that’s going to make me drink a lot of water so I constantly have to pee.”

My Saturday night getting ready playlist: “Elton John’s ‘Saturday Night’s Alright’ over and over in a loop. I think the best music to get going to go out is some kind of hip-hop rap. But again, I have a little kid at home, so it ends up being like, Bach for Babies.”

Go-to impression to entertain said baby: “I read all of her books in the voice of Barack Obama. ‘Goodnight moon! Goodnight cow jumping over the moon!’ She doesn’t know who he is, though. She’s a Republican, she doesn’t get it.”

Unnecessary thing on my key ring: “I have a National Public Radio donor’s card that was supposed to get me 10 dollars off at the Vitamin Store, but it expired three years ago.”

Video game that I’ll destroy you at: “NHLPA Hockey ’93. That was one that I could beat a lot of people in. That is the original Nintendo, my friend. Old school. When I play the new games, like a shooter, it’s just a waste of everyone’s time. I get killed instantly, I’m a liability. I don’t understand how they work.”

Greatest TV inspirations: “I really loved Sam Malone on Cheers. Arguably my favorite character of all time is probably George Costanza. I feel like he has the funniest point of view and is so loathsome in general but he’s so funny that you don’t care. I love Jeffrey Tambor as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show. Again, a very despicable guy but very dumb and very sincere and very funny. I love those three. And I would say Michael Jordan because I watched him on the TV a lot.”

Unpopular TV opinion: “I got in a big fight in the writers’ room a few years ago when I said that I really couldn’t stand Clair Huxtable on The Cosby Show. The dad and the kids would be, like, dancing, and she’d come home and make them stop. Always ruining their fun. The funny thing is, I think that’s probably the least of The Cosby Show’s problems right now.”

Game of Thrones alter ego: “Here’s the way I would see myself versus the way I would actually be: I see myself as being, if not a Stark, a close ally of the Starks, who’s really trying to kill the Lannisters and right all the wrongs and restore balance to Westeros. The reality is, I would probably be the guy that Tyrion hires to go get hookers for him. Tyrion’s like, ‘Here’s a bag of gold, go get five hookers.’ ‘You got it, dude.’ But the important thing is that I see myself as a Stark.”

Dream fictional destination: “Oz. But the prison.”

Last bad horror movie experience: “I don’t dig a ton of horror, but years ago I watched the film The Strangers and I thought that was incredibly scary. I’m actually buddies with Scott Speedman and even still when I see him, I’m like, ‘Gosh, you’re going to die. They’re going to get you, man.’ The movie really stuck with me. Whenever someone knocks on my door, I’m like, ‘Shit, here come The Strangers.’”

Last time I was legitimately star struck: “I always get star struck by the people you don’t expect. Like, I could see Edward Norton and be like, ‘Oh, cool,’ but if I saw the bad guy from Die Hard I’d be like, ‘Oh my God. Don’t move.’”

Proudest Halloween costume: “One year I had a giant zit on my nose and I just wrapped a bandage around it and slicked my hair back and put on a tan suit and went as Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. And it killed! The whole time people were like, what a great idea, and I’m like, if only you knew about the pimple on my nose that inspired this costume.”

Favorite moment on the Sisters set: “Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Paula Pell are three of the literally funniest people in the world, and you do get a feeling sometimes that you want them to do like a Weekend Update for you. But at the end of the day, they’re just super normal ladies who like to look at pictures of your baby and go, “Oh my God, she is so goddamn cute.” I hope people like the movie. It still won’t come out for like a year, but I think people are going to like it. I think it’s really funny. It comes out the same day as Star Wars, and I think it’s a bigger movie in scope. And here’s the deal: you can go see Star Wars opening weekend if you want to sit next to some dude in a Darth Vader helmet, or you can go a couple weeks later and that first week go see Sisters, because there’s going to be no nerds in costume at Sisters. Actually there might be a couple people in line dressed as Amy Poehler.”