Never Have I Ever: The Indian-American Show of My Dreams

Let me explain how much I was looking forward to the release of Lang Fisher and Mindy Kaling's new Netflix series, Never Have I Ever: I specifically took the day off work today so I could bingewatch it all. And now I'm here blogging about it and telling you it is just as great as I hoped it would be (actually, greater), and you should drop everything you're doing and watch it too. Come on, no one's going on vacation any time soon, so you might as well take a holiday to indulge in this televisual treat.

The show is centered on Devi (newcomer Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, who is all set to be the next teen sensation), an Indian-American high schooler in California, who had a pretty brutal end to her freshman year. And when I say "brutal," I don't just mean teen bullying, I mean that her father died and she subsequently was psychosomatically paralyzed for three months until she finally got up from her wheelchair and was fine. But don't worry, we get through all of that in a breezy five minutes in the first episode. I swear this is actually a comedy. And by the way, the whole thing has voiceover narration from John McEnroe. Which, I know, sounds so bizarre, but trust me, it's hilarious. There is no better voiceover for the trials and tribulations of a dramatic brown girl than John McEnroe.

Devi lives with her dermatologist mother, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan, who should get twenty Supporting Actress awards for this role), a strict South Asian mom who is trying to figure out how to raise an American teenager all by herself. Devi's cousin, Kamala (Richa Moorjani), is also living with them while she studies engineering at Caltech. So what you have are three Indian women who are having three very different experiences of what it means to be Indian in America. Nalini is the older immigrant, who came over here with very traditional notions of living the American dream, while her daughter was born and raised in the States and therefore has very different notions of what you are meant to be doing in high school. Kamala lies somewhere in the middle of that spectrum - having grown up in India, she is fairly traditional like Nalini, and wants to please her family, but now that she's got a taste of freedom in America, some of those traditions may not stick.

The show is an absolute delight in the way that it plays with every aspect of Devi's identity and the clash between the life she lives at home versus the life she leads at school. This show jumps right in with the raunchy premise that Devi wants to have sex this year, and this girl does not pull any punches. She is, of course, a straight-A student with a slew of extracurriculars, and she sets about excelling in this particular venture like any other. Which brings us to the romantic complications that are at the heart of any show created by Mindy Kaling. There is an extremely hot boy that Devi is lusting after (who happens to be half-Japanese, just to add some more fun diversity into the mix), and then there's her extremely annoying childhood rival. It's pretty clear how things are going to pan out there, but rather than the classic Darcy-Wickham conundrum, this situation is a little less black and white. Both boys are immensibly likeable whilst carrying plenty of emotional baggage, and it will certainly be fun to see how things go in future seasons. 

But the focus of this first season is Devi. She's in therapy to deal with her father's death (with Niecy Nash playing the therapist we all wish we had), and the season builds to some important breakthroughs that are needed for our heroine to really get her life back on track. The last few episodes are definitely emotional, but this is first and foremost a splendid comedy. This show feels like it was written by a bunch of people who truly love a great one-liner. It is eminently quotable, brimming with excellent jokes even when it is serving a heaping dose of emotional upheaval. My favorite is Episode 4, where Devi has to celebrate Ganesh Puja with her family and fully lean into her Indianness. There's the cool pundit, the shunned divorcee, the "aunties" who aren't related to you by blood but have lots of opinions about your life that you have to politely listen to because you're Indian. She talks about how she can feel too Indian and then subsequently not Indian enough, and she hates all of it. Girl, preach.

Never Have I Ever is a poignant, witty, and sharply-observed comedy that will delight all brown people and will certainly introduce everyone else to what their Indian friends and colleagues go through every day. There are so many throwaway details, like everyone leaving their shoes outside the building before a puja, or the family eating dosas for dinner, or when Devi's mom calls her "kanna." The production and costume design are a whimsical delight, as with any Kaling show. The cast are all incredible and never feel like caricatures. I haven't even discussed Ramona Young and Lee Rodriguez, who play Devi's best friends, Eleanor and Fabiola; they introduce even more diversity into the mix and liven up the proceedings with their own family dramas. And yet, everyone comes together to make this messy, vibrant, loving world. While the point of this show might be to shine a spotlight on Indian Americans and the various weird things we get up to, the ultimate plot is that we're all still struggling with the same old universal dilemmas. It's about knowing yourself, managing your relationships, and getting through adversity. Never have I ever loved a show so much. 

Breeders and #blackAF: Frustrated Family Sitcoms

A lot of people are currently stuck at home with little kids and losing their minds. For those people, the quarantine has magically offered up two wonderful "comedies" about the frustrations of marriage and parenthood. While these shows are two very different beasts, they both feature sweary adults who are constantly on the edge - which is a condition that most of us can relate to, whether we are isolating with our families or are all by ourselves. The creators really lucked out when their shows dropped just in time for a global pandemic when we all desperately need some dark comedies to binge through.

Breeders: Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard star as Paul and Ally, a couple living in London with two young children. Paul is perpetually frustrated with his kids; nothing can ever go according to schedule, and every day is yet another struggle of finding lost toys, persuading the kids to sleep, dealing with school drama, and trying to find the spare moment to be an adult. Alongside Freeman, the other co-creators of this show are Chris Addison and Simon Blackwell, names you may recognize from their work on Veep, or its British predecessor, The Thick of It. So the language on this show should come as no surprise. Freeman is swearing up a storm at his unruly children and if you are currently stuck in endless Zoom conferences with colleagues or getting supremely annoyed at joggers who won't maintain a six-foot distance when you're on on your daily walk, you might want to live vicariously through Paul and revel in the litany of inventive cursing that every episode brings.

While the first few episodes are hilarious, this is also a very dark show because it has a foothold in reality. Yes, Paul and Ally's frustrations with their kids and each other can boil over in comically heightened ways, but they also boil over in the very traditional ways that occur when the people you love and spend the most time with get under your skin. I've watched the first eight episodes and have no idea what might happen in the final two episodes of the season, but I suspect it will be something dark, sobering, but still insanely funny. Which is certainly the kind of tone I'm looking for in my entertainment these days.

#blackAF: The title says it all, right? From creator Kenya Barris, who also stars as himself (somewhat fictionalized, though I doubt by much), you can basically summarize this show as: black-ish but with a lot more swearing. Ergo, the replacement of "ish" with "AF." I love black-ish and have never missed an episode, but apparently what I was missing was a hilarious meta commentary of the show's creator and his family where every single episode title proclaims that "this episode is about slavery." It is an insane and wild ride through the black experience when you're an affluent black family who has "made it" but still holds a lot of baggage personally, culturally, and socioeconomically. You will recognize every single one of the members of this family from black-ish, because again, both shows are based on Barris' actual family, but now everyone is just extra real and ready to tell you about the struggle.

Rashida Jones also stars as Barris' wife, Joya (she plays a former lawyer, as opposed to Barris' real-life doctor wife), and she is a delight. I've never seen Jones in a role where she got to lean into her blackness and now it feels like the gloves have come off and she is ready to outdo Barris in his constant racial commentary. The two of them are excellent and the actors who play their kids are incredible as well, lending depth and frankness to this portrayal of a black family that is enjoying a lot of privilege but still encountering the barriers of systemic racism in interesting and nuanced ways. The women of the family also have their struggles with feminism, and while the show is always going to be first and foremost about black identity (and slavery), it also delves deep into the other complicated and intersecting identities of its characters. It is super meta, super smart, and insanely funny. And like Breeders, while over the top, it is also very grounded in reality, so while you laugh, you will also uncomfortably squirm. I have already bingewatched six episodes in a day, so clearly, I can't give you any higher recommendation than that. 

Jawaani Jaaneman & Maska: Bollywood Pandemic Viewing

Still stuck at home and scrambling for new things to watch? Maybe now’s the time to dive into some Bollywood escapism. This weekend, I contributed a review of two movies, Jawaani Jaaneman (which you can find on Amazon Prime) and Maska (available on Netflix), to the fabulous BollyBrit website as their newest contributor. So please head on over to this link to check out those reviews.

If you want the one-minute review: they are both light and frothy and are good pandemic viewing. Maska, however, is good regardless of whether you’re in quarantine, while Jawaani Jaaneman is more the sort of thing you start to tolerate after a month of self-isolation. So go forth and get your Bollywood on!

Uncorked: Refreshing and Crisp

Uncorked is a perfect #QuarantineAndChill movie. It's on Netflix, it boasts a splendid cast, and a witty, loving script by writer-director Prentice Penny. If you are going stir-crazy in self-isolation and think you've watched all of Netflix, think again. This movie is a breath of fresh air (which is great if you are not allowed to leave the house to get any literal fresh air). 

Mamoudou Athie plays Elijah, a man who works at his family's local barbecue restaurant in Tennessee as well at a wine store. He loves wine, as evidenced by the way he recommends it to a novice who enters his shop looking for a bottle of wine: when he asks her what kind, she says, "a good one?" which leads to a delightful interlude where he explains the different kinds of wine to her by comparing them to hip-hop artists. Elijah is torn between his desire to follow his passion and his father's expectation that he will take over the family restaurant. That is certainly a classic trope - personal ambition versus familial obligation - but nothing about this movie feels forced or hackneyed. Instead, it's a warm and surprising movie about how hard it can be to figure out what your dreams are, and then the cost of pursuing them.

Two things make this movie stand out: the cast, and the script. Elijah's mother and father (Sylvia and Louis) are played by Niecy Nash and Courtney B. Vance, and they are the ultimate power couple. Sylvia is all about supporting her son and encouraging him with this "Somalia" thing (No, mom, it has nothing to do with Africa, I want to be a "sommelier"). Louis is dismissive, assuming this is yet another flight of fancy his millennial son has taken up. The script is full of sly jokes and a lot of heart, with little one-liners and asides that make each character feel fully realized. Everyone has a little backstory, some quirk or family drama that is driving their decisions, and as the movie progresses, it is delicious to watch the story come alive with all these different notes. It's a deeply human story and resonates in this time when we are all yearning for more connection. 

Uncorked is also emphatically a movie about wine. It seems clear to me that Prentice Penny must be a wine connoisseur on the verge of being a master sommelier himself because there is so much love in every shot of a glass of wine being poured, swirled, and sipped. But this is alongside a great story about a working-class man pursuing what is decidedly considered an upper-class passion. There are so many hurdles in Elijah's way, whether they be personal, familial, or socioeconomic, but ultimately, this is a story about a man who has found the thing he is meant to be doing with his life. During this quarantine, may we all be so lucky to have such epiphanies. And if not, at least we can forget our cares for a few hours and watch this charming movie.