Never Have I Ever – a nice blend of coming-of-age teenage drama with an Indian immigrant family experience

The coming-of-age teenage drama! Who wouldn’t love to watch that? Never Have I Ever certainly has an engaging start to the story as it blends cultural aspects from an Indian immigrant family experience. The story starts with Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a 15 years old sophomore student at Sherman Oaks High School. Though she is a classic Indian origin geek who is trying very hard to cope up with foreign land, Devi starts her school with two prime motives – getting a boyfriend and the tag of “cool”. As any Indian kid, Devi do not just wish this for herself but she wants her close friends Eleanor (Ramona Young) and Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) to achieve the same goal.

So now all the Big Bang Theory fans might think of Devi as Female Kunal Nayyar and you all are somewhat in line with the thought but that’s not just the story of Devi’s world. As any American teenager, Devi is also sincere enough to have a therapist to deal with her eight-month-old trauma of her father Mohan’s (Sendhil Ramamurthy) death due to a heart attack. Therapist come into the picture as Devi hasn’t been able to address her father issues with the new found wanna be coolness of hers, you will see here avoiding a lot of emotional questions addressing the issues and pivoting them to either boyfriend, friends and mom issues.             

Devi’s struggle between two culture (American at School and Indian at Home) has been perfectly reflected in this series which will surely keep you interested throughout Devi’s clueless struggle finding who she is – and more importantly, who she should be. You won’t find anything unique about this coming-of-age plot as it addresses the same questions as tons of other teenage dramas. Only difference here is charming disposition comedic writing in addition to easily likeable characters and eye for a clever comic set up of the story.

You will surely find great comic pieces to connect differences between cultural aspects and prodding teenage obsessions. The story is a perfect mix of intelligence, stupidity, animosity, and kindness but it surely struggles to create fabric of Indian existence instead of blindly replicating it. You will find everything along the plot progress friendly miscommunication, public humiliations, and an unexpected kiss which highlights Devi’s dilemmas finding her identity or her refusal to negotiate with it.

You will keep hearing John McEnroe -The tennis legend’s near-constant voiceover as he was Mohan’s favorite tennis player which keeps a tone of a father figure watching Devi over. Although it seems very cliché in such stories, the voice over explains Devi’s struggle.

Devi’s character has been nicely woven to make here self-aware, awkward, and testy but mostly trying to fit her as a whiney & sad teenage who can’t get her shit together which will surely keep you hinged to the story.

There will be few episodes where you will think letting go of the show but plot certainly get much better sixth episode onwards. The show in between also revolves around some of the interesting subplots that includes Fabiola coming out to her friends and family, Eleanor’s mothers return in her life and Kamala’s tossing between love and arranged marriage.  

You won’t find Never Have I Ever much compelling compared to other plots you must have seen but you will surely not find this annoying or tedious. It certainly is a good watch if you love teenage dramas and you will surely love it if you are an Indian living abroad.