100 Favorite Shows: #60 — Never Have I Ever
“I just want to be a normal girl, who isn’t called mean names and could actually have a boyfriend.”
Everyone wants to be in the Mindy Kaling business. Since The Mindy Project wrapped in 2017, Kaling has been involved in the creation and production of a number of series, including Hulu’s Four Weddings and a Funeral and Netflix’s Never Have I Ever. The latter is an undeniable standout and was one of the best new shows of 2020. Loosely based on Mindy Kaling’s own youth, Never Have I Ever stars Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Devi Vishwakumar, a high school sophomore in Sherman Oaks who is navigating the loss of her father, Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy), the loss of feeling in her legs, the loss of closeness with her mother, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan), and her hopeful loss of her own virginity, as she courts the attention of Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet). It’s a testament, not only to South Asian representation on screen, but also to the wide range of coming-of-age stories available in the world today. Fortunately, a second season of Kaling and Lang Fisher’s series is already on the way.
(In case this actually needs to be clarified, this essay does have spoilers for Never Have I Ever in it.)
In an interview with Metro.co.uk, Darren Barnett spoke of how his character, Paxton Hall, became Paxton Hall-Yoshida. “My mom is Japanese and my grandmother spoke it and I took it in school. It was really cool because I was just speaking in Japanese with our Assistant Director, Yuko Ogata,” he began. “Mindy and Lang came up to me. They were like, ‘Hey, were you speaking in Japanese with our AD? Do you mind if we make your character match what your real ethnicity is?’” It might have been easier to leave Paxton as a Hall, rather than a Hall-Yoshida, but on Kaling and Fisher’s series, there was a true commitment to diversity and representation. So it was that Darnett brought his own heritage to a character with a background rarely seen on television.
I admire the willingness to adapt one’s own series to the performers who inhabit the character. Paxton Hall was conceived of before Barnett ever turned up to audition, surely, but Kaling and Fisher knew that Never Have I Ever could reach a higher ceiling by honoring the personal cultures of the actors they called in to play on the series. This sense of diversity and inclusion flowed throughout the entire show, from Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez), a black-Mexican teenage girl questioning her sexuality, to Paxton’s sister, Rebecca (Lily D. Moore), who was born with Down syndrome. Never Have I Ever was not just committed to showing diversity on screen, but also to fleshing out the lovable cast of characters with genuine stakes (from the struggle to raise a child as a single mother to the struggle to keep a boyfriend secret).
Most prominently, Never Have I Ever went to great lengths to demolish the stereotypes associated with South Asian people in American culture and media. There were still plays on concepts typically associated with South Asian characters (Devi’s mother finds high-fiving to be “violent.” Kamala’s (Richa Moorjani) arc revolves around an arranged marriage, which is in itself subverted as Kamala strives to rebuke it by instead dating an Asian man, Steve (Eddie Liu), and then falling for the hot, personable Prashant (Rushi Kota)), but for the most part, any South Asian culture was infused into the series for elucidation, rather than simple satire.
The fourth episode, “… felt super Indian,” for example, portrays the Hindu celebration of Ganesh Puja on screen, but blends cuisines to the point where it’s almost indistinguishable which foods are Indian and which are the preferred American delicacies of the average teenager. Even from the opening scene of “Pilot,” Devi wrestles with her conflicting cultures by praying to Shiva for sex and access to cocaine (but not to use cocaine). Never Have I Ever feels authentically cross-cultural because it never limits its characters to occupying the roles of showcasing all of Indian culture in one go. The experience is reserved simply for characters of this specific background in this specific corner of the world. It isn’t a quintessential “Indian show” or a token program of diversity on Netflix. Ideally, Never Have I Ever will open up the streaming world to cultures and backgrounds, experiences and ethnicities of all types. This particular brand just happens to be populated with characters who care as much for Ganesh Pujah as they do for high school parties, tennis matches, Nick Jonas, and the Los Angeles Lakers.
While Devi grapples with both fitting into her identity and into her desired cliques at school, the larger conflict is within her heart as she struggles to be without her father. For the majority of the series, though, she refuses to admit that this is her most major concern. She even ignores the grief of losing Mohan during therapy sessions with Jamie Ryan (Niecy Nash). Instead, the therapy sessions focus largely on her tumultuous sophomore year of high school. Even though Devi feels bullied and mocked in her grade, she at least relishes that this is a “normal” experience for her, rather than being forced to dwell on the abnormal loss of her father.
Sometimes, Devi does manage to take this need to be “cool” too far — to the point where she comes across like a sociopath to her closest friends, Fabiola and Eleanor (Ramona Young), demanding they all three get boyfriends simultaneously during their sophomore year of high school. Fabiola and Eleanor initially attempt to quell Devi’s desires by not playing into them (when Devi demands they “dress sexy” for school, Fabiola wears a medium polo, instead of a large, and Eleanor dresses like a flapper), but ultimately fail to keep their differing sexual and romantic desires a secret from Devi. But the fact that they felt the need to keep it a secret at all is a testament to Devi’s increased (and confused) selfishness at the outset of the series.
As she does many times during the show, Devi skips talking through these feelings with her friends and instead chases down the latest boy she’s crushing on. “Pilot” culminates with Devi ambushing Paxton after his swim practice and asking him to have sex with her. (It’s a moment punctuated with a patented Mindy Kaling needle drop in the form of “Playing Games” by Anna of the North, while Paxton’s previous theme is Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own.”) It’s an incredibly awkward decision that somehow pays off, but it’s all done in the name of Devi finding her voice. Plus, after decades of Animal House/Pretty in Pink type male-ordained romances, it’s nice to see the woman take the reins for once, even if she’s not entirely comfortable in her sexuality.
Never Have I Ever, for all its literal growing pains, is draped on the basis of Mindy Kaling’s own Cambridge upbringing. The setting, time period, and character relationships are all revamped, but considering Kaling’s forward-thinking youth persona portrayed in her three memoirs, there are a few key parallels between Devi and Mindy. Namely, the similarity between the two comes in the sense that they were both ahead of their time in high school (if not entirely emotionally mature). Devi has distinct Mindy vibes, though, as any devoted Kaling obsessive who gets notifications about her Instagram posts (that would be me) could tell you.
However, Never Have I Ever also manages to transpose many of these classic themes and feelings into a culture that is distinctly modern. Devi’s academic rival, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison), has a Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping poster in his bedroom (his solo episode is also narrated by Andy Samberg). Their history teacher (Adam Shapiro) mistakenly uses modern slang like “litty” and “shooketh.” It feels distinctly of its time, but also inordinately timeless.
Not only does Never Have I Ever take a cue from coming-of-age high school stories rather than supernatural team-up high school stories (a refreshing shake-up in a Netflix television landscape that seemed dominated by Stranger Things, 13 Reasons Why, and Riverdale), but it also treats its flawed characters with thoughtful authenticity. Many times, Devi can come across extremely self-centered and paranoid, but it all comes from a place of emotional authenticity — a place her friends go to forgive her in the season one finale, “… said I’m sorry.”
Even then, this finale managed to present us with an impossible dichotomy. Most of the time, I know exactly who I’m rooting for in a love triangle (Get out of here, Roy and Karen! Go make up with Juliet, Sawyer!). Not on Never Have I Ever, though. Each character is treated with rich empathy and dynamism to the point that the choice between Paxton and Ben is genuinely conflicting. Paxton is more than the trope of a jock who blows off classes (he’s genuinely sensitive about his intelligence). Ben is more than an asshole and pulls off the enemies-to-friends trope with Devi perfectly. Yet, I felt just as much joy when Devi kissed both of them and I do not envy the writers who plan out season two. (For now, I’ll take a seat on a fence post and proclaim myself Team Devi.)
Ben’s solo episode, “… been the loneliest boy in the world,” gives us plenty of pathos for a character who seemed devoid of it initially. However, this is also present in the series’ best installment to-date, “… had to be on my best behavior,” when Paxton is ruthlessly insulted by Devi’s mother to the point where he ignores Devi’s advances of friendship in subsequent scenes.
This moment helped provide larger stakes to Never Have I Ever, which was barreling to the conclusion of its first arc, as Devi’s season-long romance clashed up against the bubbling tension with her mother, whom Devi felt hated her and wanted to move to India just to spite her daughter. Both conflicts present significant hurdles for Devi to overcome in the finale, but not before a classic sitcom premise unfolds for the first twenty minutes of the penultimate episode.
Written by longtime Kaling collaborator Matt Warburton and directed by Tristram Shapeero, “… had to be on my best behavior” presents a tried-and-true comedic premise to the series (characters gather in an intimate, bottle setting and maintain a comedy of errors around one another), complete with one character — Devi’s uncle, Aaravind (Iqbal Theba) — who randomly turns up and exists solely to criticize the ease it would take to break into the Vishwakumar home. The episode revolves around Kamala meeting Prashant for the first time and trying to keep Steve (with whom she breaks up during the episode’s events) away from him and the disapproving Nalini.
The episode is both specific to the previously established culture of these characters (Nalini attempts to manipulate Prashant by infusing coconut oil into Kamala’s hair) and outwardly hilarious. Steve’s idiocy is referred to by characters who have witnessed him falling of roofs and climbing trees throughout the series. Nalini compares her home to a GameStop at the mall when Paxton turns up (revealing he kissed Devi in an “unforced error”) with all the “boys coming and going.” It’s a classic comedy premise and Never Have I Ever rises to be just as funny as those in its structural ancestry.
As funny as this penultimate installment is, though, there is a raw heart at the center of it. Devi begins the episode trying (and failing) to fall asleep because her good memories (a kiss with Paxton) keep getting pushed out by memories of her last moments with her father and with an argument she had with Fabiola and Eleanor. For as much as “… had to be on my best behavior” grapples with numerous central romances on the series, the actual heart of the series is evident in that Devi needs to come to terms with the loss of her father.
Even when episodes do not directly address the space Mohan posthumously occupies in Devi’s subconscious, his presence is still felt throughout, thanks to the narration from tennis legend John McEnroe, who portrays himself. (McEnroe’s brand of comedy is a particular standout in the series, as he makes frequent references to his own career (like Aaron Rodgers in the “A.A.R.M.” episode of The Office) and observes Devi’s hotheaded actions with empathy and with the occasional surprise we experience as a viewer alongside Devi).
McEnroe does turn up physically in the season one finale, using his temperament and volume to save the spreading of Mohan’s ashes in time for Devi to be there with Nailini and Kamala when they’re scattered. However, the biggest role McEnroe plays is in “Pilot,” when Devi walks downstairs and — in a moment of imaginative realism — sees her father sitting on the couch watching old tennis highlights of McEnroe berating umpires. Obviously, Mohan is not really there, but that’s not even close to the point. John McEnroe is a touchpoint for Devi to connect to her father, even after his death, speaking to him in her own mind through the use of McEnroe’s voice and actions on the tennis court. She confides in her father that she feels ugly and he reaches out to her with the exact comfort she needs to hear. Devi knows exactly what Mohan would say to her in such a situation and the advice is already internalized within her. John McEnroe just helps bring it out.
Ultimately, Never Have I Ever’s first season builds to a resolution of Devi’s grief as she finally advances to the acceptance stage of Mohan’s death, rather than remaining in denial. The way forward for Devi is to face all sides of her relationship with her father. Rather than repressing any memory of him out of fear for immeasurable sadness and regret, Devi accepts the harrowing recollection of her father’s heart attack in tandem with some of the best memories of him.
This breakthrough comes in the form of Devi playing the harp, a complex and beautiful instrument with a “million strings,” which Mohan compares to Devi, who is complex and beautiful beyond his comprehension, upon its initial purchase. This earnest sensibility is refreshing in a television landscape of irony and detachment, but it’s also crucial for Devi to recognize that her father will always be a part of her — the good and the bad. By plucking her fingers along the strings of the heavenly instrument, she reinstalls her father to an immovable place in her heart. It’s a major revelation for a sophomore with a shit ton on her mind, but Devi is so easy to root for (Ramakrishnan’s turn is just exceptional and in the debut performance pantheon), that we’re as moved and proud as McEnroe is while watching her omnisciently.
Granted, the actual finale ends with the cliffhanger of Devi kissing Ben, but there’ll be plenty of time for that in season two. For now, Devi has come to a place of closure for her father, who lives on within John McEnroe tapes and within her spirit. If any spirit deserves to outlast Netflix’s “three seasons and done tendency,” it’s Devi’s. Never have I ever felt so enchanted by a character in just a handful of episodes.
