“Never Have I Ever” arrived on Netflix on April 27, 2020, with a premise that sounds like a hundred other teen shows: a high schooler wants to be popular. What separated it was the girl at the center. Devi Vishwakumar, played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, is an Indian-American Tamil teenager in Sherman Oaks, and the show never lets you forget it.
It ran four seasons and 40 episodes, ending on June 8, 2023. Created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, it earned an 8.1 out of 10 on Metacritic’s aggregated critical score. That number is right. Here is why.
Trailer, via Netflix.
A Father Dies at a Band Performance
The show opens on grief. Devi’s father, Mohan, dies suddenly at her band performance. The shock leaves her unable to walk for three months. She recovers only when she tries to stand to get a look at her crush, Paxton Hall-Yoshida, played by Darren Barnet.
That is the engine of the whole series. Devi’s paralysis is psychological, and her recovery is not heroic. It is hormonal. The show understands that a 15-year-old’s grief and a 15-year-old’s desire do not take turns. They arrive at once, and neither one waits.
Ramakrishnan carries this. She plays Devi as loud, scheming, needy and funny, and she never asks you to find her likable. The performance works because it refuses to smooth Devi out.
Nalini, Kamala, and the House on the Hill
The family material is where “Never Have I Ever” does its best work. Poorna Jagannathan plays Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar, Devi’s mother, a woman managing her own loss while trying to raise a daughter who is fighting her at every turn.
Richa Shukla Moorjani plays Kamala, Devi’s live-in cousin. Kamala is hiding her college boyfriend from the family, which expects her to marry Prashant, a man she has met once, in an arranged marriage. The show does not treat Kamala as a cautionary tale or a joke. She gets her own wants.
The mother-daughter strain runs through the second season hardest. Devi learns she has to move to India. She and Nalini have a huge argument before they spread Mohan’s ashes. While spreading the ashes, Devi says sorry to her mom.
That scene lands because the show built toward it for two seasons. It is the moment “Never Have I Ever” stops being a comedy with sad parts and becomes something else.
Fabiola, Eleanor, and Two Friends Who Get Their Own Stories
Devi’s friends are not props. Eleanor Wong, played by Ramona Young, learns her absentee mother has been back in town for months with no contact. Fabiola Torres, played by Lee Rodriguez, struggles to come out as lesbian.
These are B-plots, and on a lesser show they would be filler between Devi’s romantic disasters. Here they hold. The show gives each friend a full arc across the four seasons, and it does not resolve them as lessons for Devi.
The result is a series about a girl who is not the only person in the room. That sounds like a small thing. It is not.
Paxton, Ben, and the Cheating Problem
The love triangle is Paxton and Ben Gross, played by Jaren Lewison. Paxton is the popular swimmer Devi has wanted since before the show began. Ben is the rival-turned-something she keeps colliding with.
In the second season, Devi cheats on both of them with each other. She then has to make up with Ben and Paxton. The show does not let her off. It also does not drag the punishment out past what the story can hold.
A new Indian-American student, Aneesa Qureshi, arrives at school. Devi gets jealous about Aneesa’s popularity and about Aneesa dating Ben. Devi starts a rumor about Aneesa having anorexia, at a track race, after seeing Ben and Aneesa in a tent that Trent started to hook up in.
This is the ugliest thing Devi does. The show knows it. It does not ask you to forgive her quickly.
John McEnroe Narrates a Teenager’s Interior Life
The narration is the show’s strangest and best choice. John McEnroe voices John McEnroe, narrating Devi’s life. Kaling approached him about the role during an Oscar party hosted by Vanity Fair.
McEnroe was offered the part, and he took it. The decision should not work. A tennis champion narrating an Indian-American teenager’s high school years is a non sequitur on paper.
On screen it works because McEnroe plays it straight. He is not winking. He is commenting on Devi’s choices with the exasperation of a man who has watched a lot of unforced errors. The show uses him sparingly enough that he never wears out.
15,000 Auditions and No Chemistry Reads
The casting story matters to what you see. In July 2019, Ramakrishnan was reported to be cast as Devi after Kaling put out an open casting call and received over 15,000 responses.
That is a lot of tapes. What the show got out of it is a lead with no prior screen baggage, playing a character who could easily have been cast as a name. Ramakrishnan’s Devi is specific in a way that a familiar face would not have been.
All the actors met at the first table read, and no chemistry reads were done between characters. That is unusual. It also explains something about the ensemble. The friendships on the show do not have the polished, workshopped feel of a cast assembled by pairing. They feel like a group of people who met and figured it out.
Though it takes place in the San Fernando Valley, the series has been reported to be loosely based on Kaling’s childhood experiences in the Boston area, while Kaling herself has said it is based “in the spirit of my childhood”.
Sherman Oaks, Not Boston
The setting is the San Fernando Valley, and the show is committed to it. Devi is from Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. The show is loosely based on Kaling’s childhood in the Boston area, and Kaling has said it is based “in the spirit of my childhood”.
That gap is worth naming. “Never Have I Ever” is not a memoir. It is a construction, and it knows it. The Tamil family, the Sherman Oaks house, the high school social map — these are assembled from a real experience and shaped for a story.
The show has been described as a watershed moment for South Asian representation in Hollywood. That description is earned. Devi is not the only Indian-American character on the show, and she is not a symbol. She is a teenager who lies, schemes, apologizes badly and tries again.
What the Show Gets Right
The case for “Never Have I Ever” is not that it is the first show to put an Indian-American teenager at the center of a Netflix comedy. It is that the show does the work after the premise. It gives Devi a mother with her own grief. It gives Kamala a life outside the arranged-marriage plot. It gives Fabiola and Eleanor stories that do not resolve into Devi’s growth.
The four seasons hold together because the show ages with Devi. The first season is about wanting to be seen. The later seasons are about what you owe the people who see you anyway. The finale on June 8, 2023, closes the last three years of high school without pretending the ending is tidy.
The weaknesses are real. The love triangle runs long. Some seasons spin a subplot past its usefulness. But the show’s central bet — that a teenage girl’s grief and a teenage girl’s appetites are the same story — pays off.
The 8.1 is not a gift. It is what the show earned across 40 episodes, with a lead who had never done this before and a narrator who should not have been there. “Never Have I Ever” is a comedy-drama that took its characters seriously and its audience seriously. That is rarer than the score suggests.
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