'Smart, moving and nuanced — eventually.' Read inkookang's review of NeverHaveIEver:
Netflix's new teen dramedy, created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, begins as a fusillade of quirks. Fifteen-year-old Devi is introduced, in quick order, as a studious horndog, a mourning teen still reeling from her father's recent death, a none-too-devout Hindu and a temporarily paralyzed outcast whose tongue-lolling lust for the hottest boy in school, Paxton , miraculously restores her ability to walk.
There're more quirks. In the pilot, Devi announces her plan to "rebrand" herself and her unpopular friends via a scheme that includes using a fake relationship with a closeted but obviously gay classmate as a "launchpad" toward a straight boyfriend. And yet the strangest detail of them all: The entire proceedings are narrated by 61-year-old tennis legend and noted hothead John McEnroe.'s 10-episode debut season — might give some Kaling loyalists PTSD flashbacks to, a groundbreaking sitcom that regularly asked its starved-for-representation viewership to overlook bizarre turns, tonal ungainliness and a chronic squandering of promising characters and cast members.also shares with that earlier series a bratty Indian-American protagonist, an insult-spewing dark-horse love interest and a conspicuous lack of interest in exploring female friendships.is that, at least in the latter half of its first season, the series streamlines into a deeply moving exploration of a teenage girl falling apart because she can't bear to deal with her grief. But until then, we've got the hit-or-miss spectacles of Devi asking her therapist to buy her a thong and describing a friend as "naturally snatched." Is it a win for representation to have a foul-mouthed teenage Indian-American anti-heroine use her horniness as a distraction from her grief, a laLike most teen stories on screen,is less about actual adolescence than stylized riffs on coming-of-age milestones. Devi's mom would prefer that her only child put off dating until her mid-twenties, but the blustering high-schooler announces to her therapist, "I'm ready to bone." By the end of the pilot, Devi sexually propositions Paxton, and he accepts. The slow-burn relationship that follows is one of the season's highlights, particularly as it veers unpredictably between platonic hopelessness and heartwarming attraction from episode to episode. Just as compelling is Devi's will-they-or-won't-they romance with her academic rival Ben . Smarmy yet vulnerable, the suitcase-carrying would-be valedictorian reminds me of several boys I went to high school with — and whose screen counterparts I rarely see portrayed in a sympathetic light. Ramakrishnan and Lewinson share the kind of comedic chemistry that converts readily to romantic sparks, and it's no coincidence that the season gains emotional depth and a greater resonance starting with the sixth episode, which is dedicated to Ben's inability to address his loneliness. Those relationships make even starker the inertness of Devi's friendships with her ostensible besties, theater nerd Eleanor and robotics geek Fabiola . Unfortunately, it's hard to understand what draws these girls to one another other than their lack of popularity, so Eleanor and Fabiola mostly exist as a barometer of how terribly Devi is acting any given week. Despite her unimpeachable grades, Devi never quite feels like she's measuring up, particularly to her graduate-student cousin Kamala , who's nicer, prettier and "more Indian" than the teen cares to be. Devi's misbehavior mostly stems from the unresolved issues about her father's death, but the show is nuanced enough to also suggest that the seeming impossibility of the expectations placed on her makes her more willing to act out, since she feels so far from meeting them anyway. In, there's nothing more powerful — or destructive — than a teenage girl who doesn't want to feel "less than" anymoreLee Rodriguez, Ramona Young, Jaren Lewison, Darren Barnet
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