Following the life story of Devi, a smart Indian American teenager, who joins the high school recently and navigates through life, trying to deal with the challenges of such a new phase in her life, beside making friends there, and the embarrassing situations she has because of her short fuse.
Never Have I Ever has greater emotional depth. Devi ultimately has a lot of trauma to deal with, and the series compassionately guides her to where she needs to be.
The tension between Devi's desire to assimilate and her mother's more traditionalist leanings underlines everything, and makes the usual tropes about love triangles, wild parties, and painful misunderstandings feel brand new again.
When Ramakrishnan is paired with Ramona Young and Lee Rodriguez as besties Eleanor and Fabiola, respectively, the trio have all the crackling spark of a John Hughes movie.
This series allows these kids and their parents to be complex and imperfect and sometimes dead wrong; which allows us to giggle and grow right along with them.
Comedy is never safe; 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. It may also be the meta high-school series of our time.
Kaling and Fisher have created a shockingly intimate first-gen portrait that's as comforting as your mother's chai and as salty as the gossip served with it.
There are so many pleasures in this series, none of which would work if Devi weren't such a delightful protagonist, an ideal mixture of understandably selfish, self-blind, legitimately funny, fundamentally good, and deeply caring.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, a fresh and inventive newcomer, brings a sly self-awareness to the role as if simultaneously sympathizing with Devi and seeing through her.
Never Have I Ever is like an awkward teenager saying the corniest things to win affection: annoying at first but then it quickly grows on you. And just as quickly the series wins you over with rare wit and unexpected emotion.
Part teen romance, part coming-of-age comedy, Never Have I Ever is a delicately written little show, an immigrant tale that feels just about authentic enough to survive in a world where Master of None and Little America exist.
Even when the show gets a bit predictable, in terms of teen relationships and parental conflicts, it remains so endearing that I couldn't fault it. Plus, it has enough originality and fun little quirks... to keep it feeling fresh.
