Never Have I Ever Analysis

Never Have I Ever S1 (2020)

Created by: Mindy Kaling, Lang Fisher
Starring: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan
Streaming on Netflix.

It's interesting how life is for an average Indian. The expectations of your parents are at one extreme, and the expectations of Instagram is at the other extreme. You are somewhere at the middle, not living up to either of them. 

It's a coming-of-age show set in high school. It's about an Indian-American teenager dealing with life, high school and also the recent death of her father. It talks about the feeling of being left out, being a misfit, the feeling of not being good enough, a question on our self worth and more such things. The striking aspect of this show is the style of it. There is a very interesting idea, where the voice over is done by John McEnroe, a tennis player who has nothing to do with the show. Breaking the fourth wall is becoming a cliche these days unless the actor is really good, so this is an interesting way they did it in this show. Although Devi is not written to play by any stereotypes, the way her mother talks felt a bit unreal and like it was written to cater to the stereotypes. Some of the exaggeration could be for the jokes to work, I get it. I'm not vouching for political correctness here, lol. 

The track with Paxton is beautifully written - the part where she ditches her friends and goes to Paxton - it's kind of sad the difference in the level of efforts people put in when they are actually into someone and when they aren't. You can clearly see through. The subplot with Devi and her mother's relationship is very well written. Devi's mother was portrayed mostly from Devi's perspective, I wish we saw a bit of why she is so rude to Devi, so that the ending would've been more organic and we could've empathized with her mother too a bit more.