The Final Season of "Never Have I Ever" Is a Delight
And, a note on diversity in television and the writers' strike
Warning: Some spoilers for “Never Have I Ever” seasons 1-3.
For four seasons, “Never Have I Ever,” the Netflix series co-created by Mindy Kaling, has graced us with the tales and exploits of overachieving high school student Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). Its final season offers a practically perfect last installment. Unlike some shows, which falter after their first seasons, “Never Have I Ever” has gotten better with time. It ends on a genuinely sweet high-note that avoids some of the cliches and pitfalls we see in other high school shows (though not all of them). In a few cases, it subverts expectations, providing a more realistic approach to the college admissions process— looking at you, Rory Gilmore. And while romantic relationships are a huge part of the series, its focus on Devi’s close Indian-American family unit, which includes Devi, her mother, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan), her paternal grandmother, Nirmala (Ranjita Chakravarty), and her cousin Kamala (Richa Moorjani), is what makes the show special. The strong friendship between Devi and her two best friends, Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) and Eleanor (Ramona Young), fine balance between comedy and drama, witty script, and excellent ensemble cast also make the show an overall delight.
When “Never Have I Ever” was first released in 2020, it provided a much-needed salve of heartfelt humor in a dark time. In the previous years, television had been experiencing somewhat of a Renaissance of content created, written, and starring marginalized groups amid the boom of streaming. In the 2020-2021 television season, 78% of the 1,500 most popular shows featured people of color or LGBTQIA characters, according to Nielsen data.
“Never Have I Ever,” which I first wrote about in 2021, was a clear part of this trend. Devi’s family is Indian-American, and her best friends Fabiola and Eleanor are Afro-Latina (and queer) and Asian-American, respectively. Their classmates often refer to them as “the UN,” a dig at their diversity. The first season of “Never Have I Ever” had some serious missteps around its portrayal of disabilities, which I feel I have to mention. It occasionally dipped into stereotypes– Devi’s mom at first appears to be a stereotypical strict Indian immigrant parent obsessed with her daughter’s achievements. But over subsequent seasons the writing and cast added depth to these portrayals. For example, after the show’s first season was criticized for only portraying Hindu Indian-Americans, it introduced a Muslim Indian-American character, Aneesa, who at first appears as a rival to Devi because they are the same ethnicity, but later challenges this notion. (Aneesa doesn’t show up much in season 4 because of scheduling conflicts.)
As Pop Culture Happy Hour cohost Aisha Harris points out in her new book, Wannabe: Reckonings With the Pop Culture That Shapes Me, when representation of marginalized groups was more scarce, there was a tendency, and a pressure, to be uncritical about it. “In my earliest days, I could occasionally lean hard into the ‘representation for representation’s sake’ frame of mind, in large part because I was operating primarily from that same scarcity mindset,” she writes. In some cases, though, “political aims and impulses can come to overwhelm artistic expression for the worst… Striking a balance can be difficult.”
I think that “Never Have I Ever” does ultimately strike the balance between interspersing specific cultural issues and themes, which touch on everything from unrealistic expectations for Indian women to Japanese internment to coming out, and ultimately being overall a fun, brightly-colored romantic comedy. Harris also points to a troubling whitewashing of characters of color that veers closer to virtue signaling than to honest, flawed portrayals. “Never Have I Ever” isn’t afraid of this; Devi can be annoying, obnoxious, and arrogant— basically, a normal teen. (See also: “Ramy” and “Beef,” shows that are unafraid of writing authentic characters that don’t cater to white audiences.)
Mindy Kaling, the co-creator of the show, has faced criticism for her portrayal of Indian-American characters, who often are loosely based on herself, because most of her Indian-American characters almost exclusively date and end up with white men. Is that, in a way, catering to white audiences despite ostensibly representing a certain type of character? But I’d argue that the degree of vitriol targeted at her – arguably the most famous Indian-American actress working today – feels disproportionate to her crimes. It feels like she probably wouldn’t face this level of internet hate were she, say, not an Indian-American woman. And the solution to these problems is simply more quality representation. Mindy Kaling cannot be responsible for representing the experience of an entire cultural group. She is not the only Indian-American woman working in comedy. I hope that in the future, we see actors like Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, the star of “Never Have I Ever,” an unknown who won the role over 15,000 other candidates, in many more roles to come. And I hope that other South Asian actresses and comedians, like Geraldine Viswanathan of the brilliant and underrated “Miracle Workers” and stand-up comedian Aparna Nancherla, along with actors and writers who haven’t had their big breaks yet, see future opportunities to make their mark in entertainment.
However, it’s hard to think about all of this without considering the current context. The Writers Guild of America has been on strike for over six weeks at the time of this writing, over a number of issues mostly surrounding the streaming model. It boils down to a few critical issues that have allowed TV executives to profit while writers and other creatives have seen less pay for more work. The rise of streaming has made television writing an increasingly precarious industry, where smaller writers’ rooms are tasked with writing more content over a shorter period of time, and receive much lower residuals, the payment that TV writers get whenever their show airs. Plus, there’s the looming threat of AI.
For a few years it felt like streamers would buy any content, greenlighting show after show after show. Yet more recently there’s been an industry contraction that has seemed to target some of the most diverse shows – see the cancellations of “Glow,” “Teenage Bounty Hunters,” and “Midnight Club,” for example. While LBTQ+ representation was on the rise, in 2023, it dipped, with cancellations amounting to a loss of 100 queer characters on television. We’ve also seen streamers simply remove shows from their platforms to avoid paying further residuals.
As the number of greenlighted streaming shows contracts, we’re seeing concerning signs that the newest voices to be included in television will probably be the first to be kicked out. Politically, it seems there’s also been a shift towards more “conventional” shows. While the CW was for a time the most diverse network on television, it was recently acquired by Nexstar, a conservative media company, indicating a new direction. From a cynical perspective, it seems that the Trump years were maybe just a profitable moment to pursue content that looked like it was part of #theresistance. Now, in a “post”-pandemic moment of apathy and exhaustion, maybe that’s less true. Maybe the numbers didn’t bear out. But this is all hypothetical now, and I’m still holding out for a positive end to the writers’ strike as we saw back in 2007.