The end of Mindy Kaling’s endearing series about Devi and her people is a little too tidy for someone like her.
Because Devi Vishwakumar has been a disaster and a work-in-progress throughout Never Have I Ever’s four seasons and three years, we have all enjoyed her adventure. It’s bittersweet to see her neatly tie up all the loose ends by the series finale, even as she begins the final season on the same note. When we are still trying to make sense of our life, how can she have it all?
It’s the pattern of Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) screwing up one front of her life after succeeding on the one she’s been struggling on for a long time that has been the most recurring in this series by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher. She even received a warning from her mother Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan) for kissing Ben (Jaren Lewison) right after they had a family gathering to discuss scattering her father’s ashes into the ocean.
The story continues through Never Have I Ever’s ninth episode as long as that trend continues. However, as the final episode is coming to a close, Devi abruptly changes into the goddess she has been baptised as. She discovers true love, enrols in her ideal college, and even has the best sex of her life. While one may be confident Devi will face new challenges in college (since when Devi is there, danger can’t be far behind? ), it seems a bit of a reach to have her fulfil every expectation for even one day.
Devi’s journey would have been less ambitious and more relatable had the show finished earlier. And hasn’t her entire trajectory been focused on relatability beyond all else? Devi’s path, which has actually been about seeking internal validation rather than external, feels more like it will be complete when her therapist tells her how she has overcome her trauma. It would have been more rational for her to write about the same topic for the admissions essay of her ideal college and leave her decision to chance.
But once more, let’s talk about the programme we saw rather than the one we had planned to see. Devi has discovered the hard way that you cannot have everything. that you must lead a life devoid of bias and entitlement. Even when viewed through that perspective and without applying any high-horse analysis, the series finale nevertheless encounters some difficulties. Good for Devi as she overcomes everything, however when she briefly refers to her lehenga as a sari, it calls to mind the numerous stereotypes of Indians that American entertainment have foolishly accepted through the years. Then, all of her victories are reduced to story devices that seem forced rather than natural.
Never Have I Ever originally began as a programme that gave us Indians a sense of inclusion in a crowded Western environment. Many thanks to Mindy Kaling, who has steadily ascended the sitcom ladder from The Office, where she started. Never Have I Ever demonstrated how Indians delighted in their own cool place in American popular culture before there was a Ms. Marvel and a Pavitra Prabhakar.
Never Have I Ever, to its credit, developed into a programme that normalised its Indian lead and didn’t focus on desi-ness as its only selling point. It ultimately transformed into the tale of any teenage girl coping with loss and all of its venomous claws in a very cutthroat, self-critical Gen-Z society. Devi became the on-screen representation of the comforting hug you can expect every time you mess up and doubt yourself thanks to Maitreyi Ramakrishnan’s endearing vulnerability.
Devi’s effort to become a “sexy-successful senior” in Season 4 is filled with her trademark gaffes. She questions whether the intercourse was inappropriate after losing her virginity. She realises she hasn’t adequately prepared herself for leaving home when she devotes all of her focus to getting into the college of her dreams. Additionally, when she is cruising through her “hornaissance,” she finds it difficult to tell the difference between “bad boys” and just bad boys.
Yet again, the fantastic comedy keeps everyone in good spirits even if you can already predict what Devi would do wrong next. Again, there are a tonne of pop culture references. Most of them work (Devi’s friends telling her to imagine herself as Kristen Stewart to avoid seeming overly needy after sex, or her wanting to listen to sad Adele after a breakup, or her wondering if Ben expected Euphoria sex), but some don’t (Devi saying her high school goals include becoming Timothee Chalamet’s Instagram follower; wut?).
Mindy Kaling finds the perfect balance between mocking oneself and revolting against it. This season, for example, Nirmala Mami refers to herself as a GMILF when she begins dating a silver fox, whom she can’t help but refer to as “my white boyfriend” often. With phrases like “It’s a great present,” she perpetuates innocent prejudices. “Regifting this would be painful” or “Nirmala mami is too trusting.” She sincerly responds to all spam mails. But she also slips in a few delightful surprises: “I don’t think my guy is having an affair. I make sure all my men are very happy,” or “Panditji picked this wedding date because he believes it to be a lucky time for sensuality.” Or even something absurd like calling Paxton “carwax.”
