NEVER HAVE I EVER… First Take

Mindy Kaling’s latest creation Never Have I Ever has just dropped on Netflix. Being the longtime Mindy Kaling stans that we are, we naturally dove right in. (FYI ‘stans’ are what the cool kids these days call ‘fans’.) One episode turned into two, two turned into three and next you know, this Nice Girl had binged five episodes in a row and had to resist the urge to watch just “one more” of this 10-episode season.

Co-created with Lang Fisher (whom Kaling also worked with on The Mindy Project), Never Have I Ever is a semi-biographical story that follows modern first-generation Indian-American teen, Devi Vishwakumar. Devi is played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, a Canadian newcomer who beat out 15,000 others for the role after Kaling put a callout on social media! Devi has had one heck of a traumatic year – her father (played by Sendhil Ramamurthy from The Flash, Heroes, Beauty and the Beast) died after having a heart attack during her orchestral recital and as a result of her grief, Devi temporarily lost feeling in her legs and spent a good chunk of her freshman year in a wheelchair. Now a sophomore, Devi wants to shake her pariah tag and become popular and as with most teenage shows and movies – having sex with the hot guy in school is apparently the answer. Her experiences in the series are narrated by tennis great John McEnroe, who tells us that the connection will be revealed in the series and it will make sense. Having made it halfway through the series so far, I am intrigued to find out what that connection will be. Update: I somehow missed this on first watch, but the connection was revealed sooner rather than later and was a device connecting Devi closer to her deceased dad.

Even in the opening scene of the series, the resemblance that Ramakrishnan’s Devi has to Kaling’s previous roles, Mindy Lahiri from The Mindy Project and Kelly Kapoor on The Office, are uncanny. It truly is like watching a mini Kaling – the casting is so spot on! As with those aforementioned roles, Devi too is like a human hurricane – brazen, confident, full of quips and a lot of the time self obsessed. She’s brazen enough to even ask her therapist (played by Niecy Nash) to buy her a thong! In episode three, one of Devi’s best friends describes her as, “She’s a trail blazing Indian diva that marches to the best of her own drummer.” In another episode, her school nemesis remarks that she has a “difficult personality”, to which Devi retorts with “Who me? I’m a goddamn delight!” (Which by the way, I’m pretty sure was uttered by Mindy Lahiri on The Mindy Project on at least one occasion.) Despite these perceived flaws, Devi also has moments of vulnerability that much like her predecessors has you empathizing with her, rather than disliking her. Just like those characters, she’s a smart young woman who just wants to be loved.

While Never Have I Ever follows Devi’s life, the remaining ensemble cast also get their chance to shine with their own storylines. There’s her traditional mother Nalini (played by Poorna Jagannathan), who is now a single working mother trying to raise her teenage daughter while coping with losing her husband. Devi’s cousin Kamala (played by Richa Moorjani) is a graduate student at Cal-Tech and seemingly a modern woman but torn between her cultural upbringing and making her parents happy by partaking in an arranged marriage or choosing love with a fellow non-Indian student. As well as being a part of Devi’s quest to become popular, her best friends dramatic Eleanor and robotics wiz Fabiola are struggling with mother abandonment issues and sexuality respectively. Devi, Eleanor and Fabiola are nicknamed the UN at school, which you think would be a cute nod to their cultural diversity but is actually a cruel taunt tied to their social pariah status. It stands for “Unf**kable Nerds”. Ouch!

(L to R) MAITREYI RAMAKRISHNAN as DEVI VISHWAKUMAR, and LEE RODRIGUEZ as FABIOLA TORRES, RAMONA YOUNG as ELEANOR WONG. Credit: LARA SOLANKI/NETFLIX

Then there’s of course the guys on the show – school stud Paxton Hall-Yoshida (played by Darren Barnet), who seems like your typical teen pretty boy with not much substance but surprisingly does have feelings (cue the Jordan Catalano My So Called Life vibes here) and then Devi’s academic nemesis Ben (played by Jaren Lewison). I’m calling it now – Ben is totally the Danny Castellano to Devi’s Mindy Lahiri! The way these two bicker and antagonize each other totally reminds me of Mindy and Danny’s relationship during season one and we all know how much Mindy Kaling loves rom-coms, so I’m totally expecting there to be a moment between these two by the end of the season! Don’t think that I didn’t notice the looks during the Model UN episode, guys!

As with Kaling’s previous works, Never Have I Ever has no shortage of pop culture quips. Within the first half of the season, there are references to Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, Grey’s Anatomy and even characters watching Riverdale. (We see you Netflix placements.) In fact, there’s this standout quote from the series: “I’m sorry. I just watched 16 hours of Riverdale, plus some fanfiction where Jughead kisses Harry Potter.” Ha!

I may only be halfway through the season, but if you’re looking for some charming light-hearted escapism with subtle depth, or want to compare what life is like for teens these days (seriously is sex really that big of a deal?), give Never Have I Ever a go.