Never Have I Ever finally breaks Indian-American trope. Girls chasing boys, not just Princeton

Mindy Kaling, who peaked as Kelly Kapoor in The Office, has made it her life’s goal to push for Indian characters who live for success.

A screengrab from Netflix's Never Have I Ever | Netflix

There’s one only way to watch Mindy Kaling’s wicked portrayal of the Indian-American teenager in Netflix’s Never Have I Ever Season 4 — plug in and shut your brain down. The show, named after a drinking game, grows on you like any saucy teen drama. It’s a story about a hothead teenager in California Valley who ends up having everything she ever dreamt of.

The Indian American stereotype is all about spelling bees, mathletes, and Princeton University applications. While this is true, the series shows that South Asians are also normal teenagers, trying to be ‘sex-successful’.

Kaling, who peaked as Kelly Kapoor in The Office, has made it her life’s goal to push for Indian characters who live for sex and success. That’s all Maitreyi Ramakrishnan’s character called Devi Vishwakumar in Never Have I Ever wants — to be sex-successful. And very predictably, she becomes so. But mind you, Devi’s triumph hasn’t come easy. The writers of the show made sure she hits rock bottom in every other episode, and that’s where the show gets entertaining.

As the protagonist, Devi is, hands down, the best thing to come out of Kaling and Lang Fisher’s mediocrity. The fact that she is an academic overachiever like every other South Asian in American TV soaps isn’t overbearing. She is a lost teenager grieving her father who died before she could become attain maturity. As much as her teenage angst stems from sadness, it gets aggravated by the menace of straight girlhood — boys, boys, and boys.

Charged with hormones, Devi spends her time in her school’s hallway, gawking at boys. She doesn’t wait for them to notice her, instead, she asks her crush to “take her virginity”. Her desperation to do the deed is almost annoying but not unbelievable. Ramakrishnan deserves the credit for bringing that originality in Devi, saving her from being another chewed-up version of the ‘flawed’ Indian-American personality Kaling is infamous for writing. 

Chasing relatability

More than the Indian diaspora storyline, Never Have I Ever has spent four seasons chasing relatability. The show has cramped up random pop culture references in each episode like a name-dropping narcissist. Timothee Chalamet, Taylor Swift, Riverdale, Euphoria, Dua Lipa, Michelle Obama, Dawson’s Creek, and whatnot come out of the blue. You almost feel embarrassed for the wannabe-cool showrunner.

Speaking of embarrassment, the series continues to show a myopic view of Indian culture season after season, even after being heavily criticised for it. Kaling and Fisher will have you believe that the Indian subcontinent is ruled by Tamil Brahmins. Forget about caste representation, the show has space just for Hindu gods. When Devi sits down to pray in season 4, every idol placed on the table is given separate screen time.

Salty, sexy mothers & grandmothers

Never Have I Ever keeps reminding you that it’s showcasing multiple generations of Indian-American women — Devi and her cousin Kamala, her mother Nalini, and her grandmother Nirmala, whose story does take you by surprise. She is a paati-turned-sex-positive-grandma who falls for a white man and can’t shut up about how she ‘satisfies’ him. Proving that Devi is her granddaughter, she calls a hot teenage boy Chex Mix. Her salty character is one refreshing way to show Indian elderly women on screen, but it would have worked better if Ranjita Chakravarty had any acting skills.

Meanwhile, Devi’s mother Nalini (played by Poorna Jagannathan) is more believable in her dating escapade. Both Nalini and Nirmala have come a long way to believe that they deserve to act on their desires. And that their lives aren’t meaningless just because their husbands died.

Thanks to Nirmala’s love story, Never Have I Ever ends with a dance performance by Devi and Kamala on Mounika Yadav’s Saami Saami from Pushpa (2021). It’s tolerable as far as these things go in diaspora storylines. The finale season of the series struggles to wrap up the scattered storyline, though. Arguments are miraculously resolved, exes become friends, and friends turn into lovers. In all fairness, nothing more should be expected from a platitudinal coming-of-age story.

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)