Never Have I Ever — Season 1(2020)
‘Never Have I Ever’ is the name of a silly game that teenagers and bored adults play at parties. One person states that they’ve never done something, and all the members of the group who’ve actually done it take a sip out of their cups. This repeats till they all get drunk. ‘Never Have I Ever’, the TV show, from the trailer might seem like just another silly show about an Indian teenager attempting stupid things she’s never done before. But the trailer does absolutely NO justice to what the show really is. What NHIE has is a pretty solid story!
NHIE is the story of Devi Vishwakumar, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, an American born South Indian Tamilian teenager, navigating life. She’s lost her father whom she was very attached to. She’s so traumatized by it that her legs become paralyzed. However, she does regain their use by some strange miracle. She’s sitting in her wheelchair, and cranes her neck to get a look at the boy she likes. In the process, she lifts herself out of her chair using her legs. Maybe the sight of him for just a moment made her forget how terrible her life has become?
Because she lost her father and because of the paralysis, everyone starts perceiving her as some sort of lost cause to be pitied. She’s also got a reputation as a nerd. So when the new term starts, Devi decides that she needs to change her life and image. And how does she plan on doing that? By becoming cool. And that means getting a boyfriend, losing her virginity, wearing sexy clothes, going to parties, getting drunk and the like. However, her harsh and overbearing mother, played by Poorna Jagannathan, with whom she shares a very tense relationship, would never allow such things. Devi is feisty, short-tempered, hot headed and bratty, and she can hold her own with her.
But ultimately, she’s not dealing with her feelings about losing her father, the one person she loved the most in the world. She’s absolutely shattered by it. She’s so traumatized that she was paralyzed for a while. But she buries it all, and clings to this idea of being “cool”, getting a boyfriend and losing her virginity, because she believes that that will make her life better. She simply refuses to deal with her grief.
Devi is also having a hard time dealing with her “Indian-ness”. She’s almost ashamed of her own roots. She finds common Indian customs and traditions to be awkward and stupid. She’s been raised in America, so she’s not Indian enough to other Indians. But she’s not American enough for everyone else. I believe that popular culture is so deeply influenced by white people and their way of life. It’s rife with stereotypes about people from other ethnicities, and there is a certain gold standard for beauty and what makes one worthwhile. And so by comparison, everything else just looks stupid. Of course that narrative is gradually changing. But we can’t deny that certain ideas are still widely prevalent.
NHIE is the story of how Devi grapples with the loss of her father while navigating high school, and figuring out who she is and where she really belongs. There are also parallel story lines of other characters. There’s a girl struggling with her homosexuality. There’s another whose mother has abandoned her. There’s a boy who seemingly has everything in the world, but is actually really lonely. There’s a cousin who is being coerced into an arranged marriage. There’s also a woke, but very dorky history teacher whom I found quite endearing.
The entire series is narrated by John McEnroe who was Devi’s late father’s favorite tennis player. That could be because Devi’s father wanted her to be as spunky and as fearless as McEnroe. Devi aspires to make her father proud, and in her head John McEnroe’s voice is the voice that is narrating the story of her life. Or maybe it was just for fun. That part is open to interpretation.
Now I’ve seen other teenage shows. But NHIE felt very different to me. The obvious reason is because the show is centered around a South Indian like myself. It was very relatable on so many levels. The statue worship in Hindu culture, reverence to text books, celebrating Ganesh Chathurthi, judgmental aunties at gatherings, ostracizing someone who has married outside the community or is divorced, arranged marriages and Devi’s parents calling her kanna as a term of endearment. There are lots of little jokes scattered here and there which fit so naturally into the narrative. It has no over the top scandals and drama. It all just felt so natural to me.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is absolutely delightful as Devi. Poorna Jagannathan plays the caring, but overly harsh mother to perfection. Sendhil Ramamurthy is pitch perfect as the gentle, caring and enthusiastic father in the flashback scenes. Richa Moorjani, Ramona Young, Lee Rodriguez, Darren Barnet, Jaren Lewinson and the rest of the cast are just as good.
The background is all sunny and bright, because the story is set in California. So it’s very visually pleasing. There’s a lot of cultural diversity in the characters. There are South Asians, Asians, African Americans Hispanics, Caucasians and people of mixed race as well. There’s a good amount of representation here. Plus the actors playing the characters actually look their age.
Overall, ‘Never Have I Ever’ is an absolutely delightful watch. It definitely is a teenage drama, but it is so much more than that!
(Images from various sources on Google.)
