Review of Never Have I Ever Season 1

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

About a year ago (at the time of typing this) I quit my job as a professional film critic to explore what was out there in the world when it came to publishing about the movies and books I wanted to see, not just what was popular in the moment. Digital media and working within it can be fun and all, but it can be grinding when you’re just chasing after all the latest trends and clicks for SEO.

I started this blog four years ago, during the pandemic, but never really took it seriously beyond the occasional post here and there about what I was up to. In 2023 I began to realize the impact this blog was having on me, and other people were reaching out about reading it, so I expanded. Once I quit my job, I decided to focus on the blog more while job hunting, as I do make a few pennies here and there from the display ads on the screen.

Television has been something I’m really catching up on during this period, as television shows require quite a bit more commitment than a movie for me. You can’t also really take a break from them somewhere in the middle of a season, as then you’ll completely lose interest or forget the entire plot. When I do that I try not to review those shows, as my review is a bit more unreliable.

Today’s review is on a show I watched pretty slowly throughout its first season: Never Have I Ever. I had heard of this show several years prior, but had no interest in watching it until now. Even at this very moment of typing this blog post out, I had no direct interest in watching the show, but thought it seemed like the right time to sit down and see a show like this.

So I watched all of season one, then planned to continue onto season 2, but that review probably won’t come out for a while. This was fairly easy to binge watch over the curse of two weeks though, so let’s get into the review of season one!

High schooler Devi learns to navigate life without her recently deceased father, leading to some stressful adventures.

Our main character in this show is Devi, who, prior to the start of the series, lost her father suddenly. This led her to be unable to walk for three months and she was in a wheelchair. Right at the first episode, she’s ready to go back to school and see herself in a new social setting once again, as a new person, even if it causes her a lot of anxiety.

At the same time, she’s ready to take on the new school year with her best friends Eleanor and Fabiola, whose stories we learn more about throughout the first season as well.

These three best friends are going to have their ups and downs throughout the course of the first season, learning more about themselves and their sexualities, interests, and what makes them grow as people. Eleanor has to deal with the fact her mother is never around, especially when she randomly shows up in town, while Fabiola is realizing that she might actually be a lesbian and have a crush on one of their classmates.

One of the big focuses though is Devi’s crush on a fellow classmate named Paxton. He seems to be out of her league, especially considering the fact she was kind of invisible until now in her school. Devi’s also still very much trying to get over the trauma of her father’s death.

She goes to therapy often with Dr. Ryan, where she chats about everything except her father. There are very specific triggers for Devi that we’ll see throughout the show, making this very much about a girl who’s going through grief and trying to be a “normal” teenager in an American high school.

As all of this is happening, too, we have a side plot where Devi’s cousin Kamala is living with her family and has a specific secret. When she went away to college, she actually got a boyfriend, but never told any of her more conservative family members that she found someone romantically.

So when they start trying to find someone for an arranged marriage, it sets off the panic when she has to meet the guy, Prashant, for the first time. That’s another side plot, especially when her boyfriend realizes what’s happening and tries to make things right in his own way.

Overall Thoughts

I know I ignored this show when it first came out in 2020, but I realized pretty quickly that the diversity represented in it is fairly refreshing. The entire premise of it focusing on a Tamil-American teenager feels monumental in so many different ways, but that didn’t click with me until I had finished the season. It was quite the breath of fresh air.

That said, I thought that Devi as a character was really realistic and I could relate to her. While the narrator/voice in her head explained things going on, I realized it’s pretty much the same way I narrated everything as a teenager, and that while I did not lose my father at such a young age, I could relate to her experiences.

Some teen focused shows are not relatable at all, but this one really was. I’m not Indian or Tamil American either, but the little references of culture and having a strict immigrant parent were relatable as well.

I say watch this one if you haven’t already and want something solid to watch! I really enjoyed the experience of watching this, and will continue onto season two.

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