First Look With Neha – Mindy Kaling’s ‘Never Have I Ever’
If you have read ‘Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?’ by Mindy Kaling or have binge-watched reruns of ‘The Office’ or both, then you have been looking forward to ‘Never Have I Ever’ as much as I have!
Created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, this new Netflix comedy series is about a first-generation Indian American teenage girl Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and all the challenges in her personal life, friendships, love interests and relationship with her mom. Drawing inspiration from Mindy Kaling’s own personal life growing up in America, ‘Never Have I Ever’ plunges into the trenches of the most awkward years of anyone’s life – the teenage years. Top it off with Indian upbringing in America, you get by far the most relatable show about first-generation Indian Americans.
Growing up in America as a minority is certainly not the easiest, with the bullying, stereotyping, name-calling, and segregation. It makes kids question their own identity. Fitting in is something a lot of kids struggle with for different reasons, but minority kids have it especially worse, for simple reasons such as their different looks or hard-to-pronounce names.
‘Never Have I Ever’ casually touches upon these issues in a twisted funny way. Devi goes through her day-to-day life wishing things were different and trying to convert those wishes into reality. What follows is a series of unplanned and unfortunate blunders, and Devi finds herself constantly putting out fires while trying to save all the relationships in her life.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan shines as the perfect frustrated, self-absorbed, and rebellious teenager. Her character Devi desires to sleep with the hottest guy in school, get wasted at parties, and become one of the popular kids. She finds herself in a constant clash with her mom. Devi struggles to address the real root cause of her problems by covering it up with the ‘life-is-unfair’ mantra of teenagers.
This show also features well-known actors Sendhil Ramamurthy and Poorna Jagannathan as Devi’s parents Mohan and Nalini Vishwakumar who migrate to southern California from India with the hope of living the American dream.
‘Never Have I Ever’ is a one-of-a-kind show in that it portrays a realistic picture of the lives and culture of Indian Americans, while also showing the difficulties they have to face either due to ignorance of others or their own struggle to fit in without losing sight of their roots.
This review is dedicated to all the Devis, Nalinis, and Mohans – you don’t have to prove yourself to anyone, it’s enough to know who you are :
