Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever - riddled with love triangles and questionable clichés - is back with its second season.
However, it’s not as redeemable as many would have hoped.
Whether it was the narrator John McEnroe’s misplaced narration of a Brown teenager’s life, or recycled stereotypes that continued to rear their ugly heads, the first season left a bad taste in everyones’ mouth.
Never Have I Ever introduced us to Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a first-generation Indian-American teen struggling to cope with her father’s death. Her hot-headed decisions as she juggles school and family leave the audience questioning the character’s likeability.
Picking up where season one left off, season two starts with a love triangle Devi found herself in. Choosing to date both Paxton (Darren Barnet) and Ben (Jaren Lewison), Devi sets a precedent for the next episodes. She makes the audience cringe at her decisions and hits a dramatic low once again. New season, same script.
Devi’s character remains stagnantly cliché and even in season two, her Indian identity is not explored except for in a few episodes, which barely scrape the surface of the widely complicated issue of identity.
The episode, Never have I ever... had an Indian frenemy introduced another Indian teenager, Aneesa (Megan Suri), into the mix. As Devi feels her place as the ‘only Indian’ in the school being threatened, one would think that Kaling is finally giving the fans what they have been asking for all along.
However, to everyone’s disappointment, the episode essentially skips over her identity crisis and instead spins it into a tale of a typical high school rivalry over a crush.
Not to mention a plot about Aneesa’s eating disorder, which ended before it even began, falls short. To the impressionable target audience of teenagers, it’s almost conveyed as a topic not worth talking about.
Not only is this problematic, but it's the last thing you’d want from a ‘teen’ drama.
Ultimately, Kaling’s writing throughout is a series of missed opportunities despite the enormous potential.
Clearly, this show has once again failed in its only purpose of making teenagers like Devi feel represented. Instead, the focus on stereotypes makes the character ‘crazy Devi’ unrealistic and unwatchable.
Overall, the representation Kaling claimed to bring to the table only served to make me, a young Indian woman, uncomfortable. I had to force myself to sit through the show. You keep hoping that the next episode will finally turn the tables and bring you something watchable but, sadly, it never does.
