“NEVER HAVE I EVER,” NETFLIX
Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) is an Indian American teenager who has enormous rage issues. While her explosions tend to be fairly down to earth, they are still shattering; her suppressed pain over her father’s death led her to a temporary bout of paralysis. Balancing her runaway emotions and fighting with her mother while also trying to fit in at school and get with the cool boy of her dreams makes for a constant jumble of painful, awkward experiences. Sounds like high school.
The reviews:
The Wall Street Journal’s John Anderson writes, “the best comedy is totally unsafe; and “Never Have I Ever” is the teen-sitcom equivalent of running with scissors, used hypodermic needles and a fully operating chain saw,” adding that star Ramakrishnan is “equal parts caustic and adorable.” Vanity Fair’s Sonia Saraiya finds the series “practically built for quarantine marathon-watching. Its twists are fairly predictable, and its drollery is openly derivative of other teen hits . ... But you don’t watch something like this because it’s innovative; you watch it because it feels good to consume as much of it as possible.”
The scoop:
Lang Fisher, who co-created the series with Mindy Kaling, says they knew they wanted Devi to have a temper. “Often when we see teenage girl characters who feel like outcasts, they’re quiet and mousy and wallflowers,” she says. “Mindy and I were not like that when we were teenagers. We weren’t particularly cool, but we had big personalities and were dramatic and talked a lot and had weird confidence in some areas and were very insecure in others. We wanted this character to have that kind of a feel.”