Never Have I Ever… Seen Representation Like This: Review of Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever
Review by Mimi Anagli
Developmentally Edited by Alexandra Hidalgo
Copy Edited and Posted by Megan Elias
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in Never Have I Ever
Almost every sitcom centered around a teenage girl follows a suspiciously similar story. There is the episode where the young protagonist is having family problems so they rebel in school, the one where boy drama consumes their entire life, or the one where fitting in matters more than friendship. These plot lines can be loosely seen in shows like Lizzie Mcguire, Gossip Girl, The Carrie Diaries, and just about every other teen drama. This framework has been repeated over and over because it’s a vaguely relatable yet dramatized depiction of what the majority of teen girls go through. Unfortunately, by choosing to represent the majority, many of these shows forget about the minority. Before the 2000s, shows like Sister, Sister and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air were among a very small handful of diverse narratives. This lack of diversity is something that TV has started addressing. With shows like Grown-ish and Atypical, the traditional teen experience is no longer white and privileged. Now adding to this short yet growing list of diverse sitcoms is Mindy Kaling’s overwhelmingly hilarious and relatable new Netflix original series, Never Have I Ever.
The show follows the life of Devi Vishwakumar, an Indian-American teen who is starting her sophomore year of high school. While dealing with the everyday teen angst, boy drama, and peer pressure, Devi, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, also struggles with grief, cultural identity, and acceptance. Devi wants to be a normal teen like everyone else. This is made clear in the opening scene where she prays that she’ll be invited to a party with drugs and alcohol, have her arm hair thin out, and get a boyfriend. To Devi’s annoyance, these hopes are overshadowed by the fact that she is known as the girl whose legs stopped working for three months after her dad died at her freshman year orchestra concert.
As much of a sick joke as that sounds, that is the reality of Devi’s adolescence, and instead of dealing with it in a mournful way, she deals with it by putting all her energy towards what she thinks is having a “perfect” high school experience, being popular and having sex. A lot of mainstream shows and films depict grief in the same way, usually involving a lot of tears. Never Have I Ever highlights the fact that there is no set way to grieve and that grief presents itself differently depending on the cultural context. Devi deals with her dad’s death by projecting her anger towards different situations and people. She is in denial of the fact that this great loss is affecting her and refuses to face it until it starts hurting other relationships in her life. On top of that, others around her are grieving differently, which adds feelings of isolation and misunderstanding to her already convoluted emotions. For instance, Devi’s mother, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan) copes by putting up a strong front. Although she is accepting of Devi using Western grieving methods, Nalini does not wish to deal with her own grief in the same way. This cultural difference in grieving is depicted in one of the show’s most iconic scenes, when Devi’s therapist says, “I didn’t think you were someone who believed in therapy”, and Nalini responds with, “I don’t. It’s for white people.” By portraying these different forms of grief, Never Have I Ever shows that grief can be a very individual and cultural process. No matter what spectrum of emotions someone lands on, their response is normal.
While tackling the topic of grief, Never Have I Ever also takes on the topic of cultural identity. As an Indian-American, Devi feels the pressures of having to be a perfect Hindu daughter at home and a normal American teen at school. Her two identities don’t exactly live in harmony. The second she seems too Indian at school, she and her friends get called the UN. This inner conflict is something that I found very relatable. Having immigrant parents like Devi, I instantly felt the embarrassment Devi felt when having to wear traditional garments in public, or the frustration she felt when her family wouldn’t allow her to take part in normal American pastimes. At one point or another I, and probably many first generation Americans, have been in exactly the place that Devi is in. In high school, feeling comfortable in your own skin is hard enough, and having added parts to your identity that make you stand out is less than desirable. For Devi, her Indian culture makes her different, and in high school different is weird.
This reluctance towards cultural acceptance is most apparent in my favorite episode, “Never have I ever… felt super Indian.” In the episode, Devi and her family spend the day celebrating Ganesh Puja. A day full of Indian traditions in a place where Devi can potentially be seen by non-Indians is not exactly her cup of tea. She spends her time complaining until she runs into an old family friend, Harish, who has just gone off to college. Prior to college, Harish was an “insecure Indian” just like Devi. Now, college has shown him that there is no reason not to embrace his identity, which gets Devi to rethink her college plans of becoming atheist, eating cheeseburgers, and finding a white boyfriend. While watching this episode, I couldn’t stop thinking about how if I had seen this when I was in high school, I’d probably have felt more comfortable embracing my own cultural identity at the time, and would have started realizing sooner that there is a lot to gain in being culturally different. College is all about finding an identity that is unique to your background and experiences. Unlike my experience in the bubble that was my small town high school, my college years have been enriched by discovering new cultures through people who are proud of where they come from.
In addition to telling the story of an Indian-American girl, Never Have I Ever has layers upon layers of diversity. With a Japanese-American love interest, a Jewish rival, and two best friends who are Chinese-American and African-American (one of which is gay), Never Have I Ever is truly one of the most diverse shows I’ve ever seen. This show really does it all and more. It’s cheesy and corny just like any teen sitcom and even has a 29 year old playing a 16 year old — I mean I don’t know what’s more “teen sitcom” than that. It’s relatable to teenagers who have wanted to fit in, have felt misunderstood, or have even just had an embarrassingly huge crush on the hottest guy in school. Most importantly, it is relatable to Indian-American women and other women of color who haven’t had the chance to see themselves or their culture represented on screen. Having hit #1 on Netflix’s top 10 list, Never Have I Ever is a refreshing new story that has helped widen the path for narratives that depict non-white experiences.
You can watch Never Have I Ever on Netflix and learn more about Mimi on her profile.