Never Have I Ever, Reviewed – The New Yorker

As the new Netflix coming-of-age series Never Have I Ever begins, its fifteen-year-old heroine, Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), before heading off to her first day of sophomore year in high school, kneels in front of her households shrine. Hey, gods, she says, hands folded in prayer. Its Devi V., your favorite Hindu girl in the San Fernando Valley. Whats poppin? Shes wearing a cute, casual outfit and is in a tidy middle-class bedroom. Last year pretty much sucked, she says, so this year she has some requests: she wants to be invited to a party where she has the opportunity to say, No cocaine for me, thanks ; thinner forearm hair; and, most important, a boyfriendand not some nerd from one of my A.P. classes. He should be a stone-cold hottie who can rock me all night long, she says. (This is startlingshe looks more like a kid than an adult.) He can be dumbI dont care. Thanks for considering. I love you guys.

This voiceassured, breezy, somewhat self-aware aspirational hedonism, with a keen appreciation of stone-cold hottieswill be recognizable to fans of Mindy Kaling, the Nora Ephron-loving Office alum, memoirist, and longtime proponent of the rom-com, who co-created the semi-autobiographical Never Have I Ever with her Mindy Project colleague Lang Fisher. The series, like the drinking game with which it shares a title, is about innocence and experienceand about a teen-agers plucky, nave desire for more. It asserts itself with sassy confidence right away, not just in Devis voice but in the narratives framing. You may ask yourself, Why is sports icon John McEnroe narrating this tale? John McEnroe asks, reasonably, in voice-over. One reason is evident immediately: its funny. After a brief montage of McEnroe jumping around and hoisting trophies in a terry-cloth headband (Wow, I look great there!), he presses on with Devis backstory.

Devis parents, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan) and Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy), came to the U.S. in September, 2001, McEnroe tells us: Not a super chill time to be a brown person in America. They were a happy family of three; last year, while watching Devis harp solo at a school concert, Mohan had a heart attack and died. Soon after, Devis legs stopped working, and she spent three months in a wheelchair. She was cured from her paralysis by a glimpse of the school hottie, a swimmer named Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet), which inspired her to rise up and walk. (Cue the opening credits, to Robyns Dancing on My Own.) By the end of the first episode, Devi has introduced herself to Paxton and offered to have sex with him.

If youre thinking, Yowsers, I agree. The series is itself like a socially awkward teen-age nerdcharming but maladroit, heedless, a little exhausting. (The wheelchair subplot is treated as a lightly embarrassing trauma, then abandoned.) Like many nerds, it leads with a bit of showing off: theres a montage of Devis having competed for No. 1 since elementary school with her rival, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison). You might call them the John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors of Sherman Oaks High School, McEnroe says. Not to make this about me. Devi and her two high-achieving best friends, the theatre nerd Eleanor (Ramona Young) and the robotics whiz Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) are known, McEnroe explains, by the lightly racist nickname the U.N., because theyre an ethnically diverse group of academically focussed, um, I cant think of a better word for dorks. Devi is also a hothead, were told. Just as McEnroe once screamed at umpires and threw tennis racquets, Devi blows up at her friends and relatives, and does things like smash her chemistry beaker when Ben gets a better grade. Shes feisty, which we like, and grieving, which we empathize with, but shes also difficult. And both she and the series itself tend to fixate on hotness in a way thats off-putting, suggesting that nerds of many ages simply cant differentiate between beauty, desire, love, and connection. Devis frequent comments on looks are meant to charm us, I thinkas when she exclaims that a visitor to the house is hot, when shed worried hed be an uggo. The visitor politely thanks her, but some of us will cringe.

And yet this beauty fixation, in the form of Paxtonhis meaningful glances, his meaningful hoisting himself out of a poolsets in motion a kind of heros journey for Devi, to the benefit of characters and viewers alike. Paxton, like many classic rom-com dreamboats, has a soul behind his penetrating stare. Hes a jock who doesnt care about school, but, as played by Barnet, he has the subtle thoughtfulness of rom-com hunks from Jake Ryan to Gilbert Blythe to Jordan Catalano to Peter Kavinsky, and, like them, hes observant and often kind. Many actual teen-agers learn the hard way that the love interest theyve been idealizing is less appealing than theyd imagined, but in rom-coms, including this one, were shown what might have happened if that fantasy had been right. Devi has a dream in the second episode in which Paxton whips off his shirt, revealing truly astonishing washboard abs; praises her oversized T-shirt and the scent of her dandruff shampoo; and wants to have sex with her. But what he does during Devis waking hours is almost as fantastical: he notices how shes feeling, asks her how she is, and begins to welcome her into his happy, easygoing world. Whoa, Devi, you came! he says, when she shows up at a cool-kid party. And brought California Brittle! This slaps. Come in!

Still, the series often falls prey to what I think of as the Bridget Jones movie problem: were shown the heroines semi-comedic blundering more than her charm, and, therefore, an idealized dreamboat falling for a blurting, insecure everywoman. (Beer me! Devi says to Paxton, at the party. Love that bread soda.) Another Netflix rom-com megahit, the stellar To All the Boys Ive Loved Before, based on the novel by Jenny Han, did much to elevate the awkward-bookworm-meets-sensitive-jock formits characters have tender, funny conversations, and, though its heroine has growing up to do, shes stubbornly principled and kind. (Boys is also brilliant at conveying the complicated relationship between romanticization and romance in a teen-age girls mind.) Never shares an aesthetic and some plot elements with Boys but often lacks its emotional acuity. For much of the ten-episode arc, the writers struggle to imagine a realistic interaction between Devi and Paxton, or to convince us of why hes increasingly drawn to her; their fledgling attraction can be butterflies-inducing but vaguely embarrassing in its unreality. Its like watching a Pride and Prejudice in which Mr. Darcy falls for Kitty or Lydia, trusting that theres an Elizabeth within.

Kaling productions, including The Mindy Project, in which she starred as a fashionable, boy-crazy ob-gyna kind of Legally Blonde, M.D.are at their best when portraying friendship between equals that turns into love. Perhaps this is because such stories, more common in real life, are also more easily observed, full of the little pleasures and interactions that add up to intimacy. Never takes care to humanize Ben, Devis rival, and to develop a grudging affection between them. A climactic sequence at a Model U.N. conference, in which the volatile nature of their friendship is reflected on a mock world stage, is particularly well done, and hilarious: Devi, incensed about a seeming betrayal, acquires nukes for her country, Equatorial Guinea, and declares war on the U.S., a.k.a. Ben. But their first truly vulnerable conversation, in which they confess their mutual loneliness after Devis mom invites Ben to dinner, is one of the series best scenes, and its bravest.

The series is fairly successful at showing us familial love, too, and at evoking grief, including in scenes with Devis therapist (Niecy Nash). Devis late father keeps appearing to her in visions, like a benevolent version of Hamlets father: hes a handsome, warmhearted, tomato-growing, Vespa-riding mensch, and a McEnroe enthusiast. (Hes a firecracker! he says to Devi, watching tennis on TV. Look at him standing up to that umpire.) Never does so much well, and the actors are so good, that its painful when it goes awry. The greatness of the coming-of-age rom-com is its ability to show us how realistic people, even nerdy ones, might better understand and connect to one another if they werent so awkward and scared all the time. A study of hotness, by hotheads, is less satisfying. In the seasons lovely final scene, Devi asserts herself with vulnerability and confidence, moving beyond her baser instincts, and experiences the happiness that can result. If theres a second season, well see if the series can do that, too.

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Never Have I Ever, Reviewed - The New Yorker