“Never Have I Ever Season Four” Stepped Right Into the Affirmative Action Debate
Season four of Never Have I Ever is entirely dedicated to college — a fitting theme as Devi and her friends, Fabiola and Eleanor, enter their senior year of high school. But, even more so than previous seasons, the main conflicts feel especially contrived. And the underlying politics of the story are more troubling than ever before.
From the beginning of the series, Devi has dreamed of attending Princeton, and we learn that this dream is rooted in a memory of her late father. On the day of the high school’s college fair, though, Devi fumbles her meeting with the representative from Princeton, cutting to the front of the line and aggressively promoting herself when the rep makes clear that she should wait her turn like the rest of her classmates. But, by the end of the day, Devi manages to turn it around with her honesty and integrity when she admits to the Princeton rep that her new boyfriend stole the rep’s wallet.
Little does Devi know, however, that her friend Fabiola has also decided to apply early to Princeton. Fabiola hadn’t been planning to even speak with the Princeton rep, knowing that Devi had called “dibs” on the university back when they were in elementary school. But at her mother’s insistence, Fabiola stops by Princeton’s table at the college fair and learns about the exceptional robotics program. And so, Fabiola secretly applies early without telling Devi and gets in, while Devi is waitlisted. When she eventually finds out, Devi lets her fury and anger get the better of her, in the way that she has since the beginning of the series.
It’s an interesting choice to make this one of the major arcs of the season, given that any day now the Supreme Court is expected to strike down Affirmative Action. The argument put forward by a group of Asian American applicants to top tier institutions is that by using race as a factor for consideration in admissions, Asian American applicants are being discriminated against and having their chances of being accepted unfairly curtailed. As countless research has shown, the real harm comes from legacy and athlete admissions, which is how the Ivies continue to perpetuate homogenous student bodies composed overwhelmingly of white students from families that fall within the top one percent of income. The argument also, conveniently, ignores the racist history of these historic institutions, rooted in slavery and segregation, that was the original basis for Affirmative Action as a form of reparations.
As I’ve noted before, Mindy Kaling sits in uncomfortable proximity to this anti-Black racist argument put forward by Asian Americans. Years ago, her brother pulled a racist publicity stunt to try to make the false point that his chances of getting into medical school improved when he pretended to be a Black applicant. Mindy has said nothing publicly, even as her brother used her fame and reputation to get a surge of media attention that his racist act otherwise would never have been afforded.
Intentional or not, season four of Never Have I Ever provides fodder for the same racist argument that her brother advanced and that is now in front of the Supreme Court. By the show’s accounting, Fabiola ruined Devi’s chances of getting into Princeton by applying early. Allegedly, Princeton will only accept one student from a high school like Sherman Oaks. The conflict becomes an opportunity for the series to finally show some character growth for Devi as she eventually realizes she shouldn’t be cutting off her best friend for being successful. But ultimately, Fabiola decides not to attend Princeton, and it’s only at that point that Devi gets accepted.
As in previous seasons, it’s hard not to feel that a show that’s theoretically about raising the profile of an often-misrepresented racial minority in America completely misrepresents racism as it exists in America. Ironically, Fabiola decides to attend Howard, but there’s no discussion of what it means for someone like Fabiola — who literally has never been portrayed as having a Black friend — to attend an HBCU. It’s all about robotics for Fabiola, not identity, even as her storyline early in the season is that she’s the president of a misogynist club. While I had given up hope that Never Have I Ever would present Fabiola’s Afro Latina identity with anything resembling depth, this final move only underscores how much Fabiola’s character is about checking the box for Black representation for Mindy Kaling.
The realities of racism and class are completely outside this show’s imagining. Paxton drops out of ASU because he doesn’t feel like he “fits in.” And as we watch dozens of white, blonde students ice him out, there’s no reckoning with his biracial identity as even a potential factor. As someone who struggled to fit in at a big, predominantly white state school, this oversight feels like an erasure of five of the most difficult years of my life where racism was always the common denominator.
Later in the season, Devi visits Blair Quan, a former classmate at Princeton, and finds out that Blair failed out of her classes and now works on campus. The show is again flirting with the realities of the real world while simultaneously twisting its way out of grappling with structural inequality: working students from low-income backgrounds (who are, primarily, students of color) are far more likely to drop out of top tier institutions because they’re unsupported and made to feel like they don’t belong.
As if all this weren’t bad enough, in a time when anti-LGBTQ legislation is passing by unprecedented numbers across the country, Never Have I Ever has more or less written queerness out of its final season.
Pretty much all of the show’s LGBTQ+ characters are either absent or pushed to the sidelines.
Problematic as it was, the incisive commentary of Devi’s trope-ridden gay classmate Jonah is nowhere to be found in season four. Fabiola’s first girlfriend Eve moved to Korea at the start of season three, but Eve’s coterie of queer friends disappeared with her, never to be seen again. Fabiola’s competing paramours from season three, Aneesa and Addison, are both present in season four, but their roles are so minor, so perfunctory, it couldn’t be more obvious that the writers kept their parts because they knew they couldn’t plausibly ignore either character.
There’s one brief scene of Fabiola and Addison making out so I guess, technically speaking, there is some queer content. But Addison can’t even make it to the prom with Fabiola, which feels like a backslide from one of Fabiola’s major season two storylines when she and Eve nominated themselves to be the Queens of the Winter Dance. And while queer and trans actresses Niecy Nash and Alexandra Billings feature prominently in the season, there’s nothing in the story to explicitly suggest that their characters share their real-life identities.
It’s hard not to feel like this was an intentional decision, especially compared to the side characters who do get actual plotlines in season four. The ups and downs of Eleanor and Trent’s incomprehensible relationship merits far more attention than either of these characters really deserve. This is in sharp contrast to the complete lack of development of Fabiola and Addison’s relationship given that at least two obvious opportunities present themselves: Addison is away at their first year of college, and Fabiola is primarily looking at schools on the East Coast.
Meanwhile, Devi’s classmate Eric, who was the subject of fatphobic jokes in season one, has a charming story of being trained in swimming by Paxton so he can fulfill his dream of making the cut for the boy’s swim team. This was one of the few storylines I actually really liked in season four, and I appreciated this complete turnaround of a deeply problematic story from season one. But it was also hard to see this time dedicated to athletes and the school’s athletics with nary a mention of Aneesa. Her appearances are relegated to the background with a couple of throwaway lines that she’s not stressed about college because she already got recruited to play soccer somewhere (we don’t even know where). Aneesa also occasionally hangs out with Fabiola without even a nod to their past romantic relationship.
And so, the show’s queer South Asian representation that was luke warm at best in the first place has been completely erased in the final season.
Many people will say that I’m taking a high school dramedy far too seriously. That I’m unfairly targeting Mindy Kaling, who is one of the few successful South Asian writers and actors in American media. That for all its faults Never Have I Ever will always be pulling off a feat of representation, and clearly over the seasons the writers have taken some of the criticisms seriously.
But increasingly I find myself asking in my personal life, in my professional life, and in the media I consume: what is the value of diversity for the sake of diversity? Surely, having non-white characters that counter (at least some) harmful stereotypes on the screen, having people of color in positions of power, is better than the status quo of whiteness as the norm, the standard for success. But when whiteness remains at the center of decision making, these changes become purely superficial.
The fact of the matter is that Mindy Kaling has always aspired to one thing, and only one thing: her personal success in a white world. And so she writes her stories to appease white audiences and, more importantly, conservative white media moguls, all while saying that she’s changing the narrative for Indians in American media.
I used to feel furious about this. But honestly, I just feel sad for Mindy Kaling now. The betrayal of realizing you have a seat at the table solely so that the white people who hold the purse strings can feel like they’re being “inclusive” hurts more than lying to yourself that if you just play the game well enough, you’ll eventually be able to change the rules.
Never Have I Ever’s Queer South Asian Representation Is a Cop Out
This review has spoilers for Never Have I Ever Season Three.
Never Have I Ever returns in season three with even more relationship drama for the Sherman Oaks High School teens. Devi finds herself with no less than three love interests: her nerdy frenemy Ben, the hot jock of her dreams Paxton and a new paramour aptly described as the combination of Ben and Paxton if they were also Indian. Her best friend Eleanor weighs dating Paxton’s stoner friend Trent, a convenient pairing introduced at the end of season two. Best of all, though, their mutual friend Fabiola gets to explore the breadth of her own romantic interests for the first time in the series.
Fabiola’s story opens with an abrupt announcement from her girlfriend Eve: her family is moving to Korea. Granted, the specifics of how this was handled feels more than a little racist in the same way a lot of season one’s attempts at humor badly missed the mark. But this is a very welcome change for Fabiola as a character. This pairing has never really made sense from the beginning of the series, beyond the simplistic logic of “obviously the two lesbians have to be into each other.”
Across the first two seasons, NHIE failed to convince me why Fabiola and Eve were together. They had no common interests and the entirety of season two was spent showing how Fabiola was repeatedly alienated by Eve’s friends for being a geek and out of touch with (white) queer culture. At the very end of season two, in what’s supposed to be a moving scene where Eve accepts Fabiola for all of who she is, including her nerdiness, Eve tells Fabiola she loves her because Fabiola is “the most beautiful person [she’s] ever met.” Clearly the writers couldn’t come up with a single justification for their relationship either, and they have finally decided to cut their losses.
After a brief period of trying to make a long-distance relationship work, Fabiola decides to end things with Eve because the strain of the sixteen-hour time difference starts affecting Fabiola’s grades. Surprisingly and fairly unrealistically, Fabiola never expresses any sadness about the end of her first queer romance which — if I’m following the time span of the series correctly— had lasted nearly a year. An unconvincing end for an unconvincing relationship.
This does leave Fabiola available to explore the wide world around her, though. Eve’s coterie doesn’t reappear in season three, and, instead, the show pursues a relationship that fans were clamoring for after season two.
But before we get there, we need to talk about the most recent addition to Devi’s friend group: Aneesa. Introduced as a transfer student in season two, Aneesa is a South Asian Muslim who eventually started dating Ben after Devi left him for Paxton. Season three starts by laying bare how badly matched this couple is. Aneesa can’t understand Ben’s relentless obsession with grades and “going to a good college,” and Ben devalues Aneesa’s passion for soccer. The nail in the coffin for their relationship, though, is the fact that Ben clearly isn’t over Devi and is constantly condescending to Aneesa, who eventually decides that she deserves better.
Part of what convinces Aneesa to end things is the contrast between how poorly Ben treats her and how sincerely Fabiola cares about her. At one of the lowest points in her relationship with Ben — when he misses her winning goal in the district championship game because he’s too busy flirting with Devi over text — Fabiola runs into a crying Aneesa in the bathroom. As narrator John McEnroe says, “Aneesa just wanted to feel seen” and in walks Fabiola gushing over Aneesa’s incredible play, even though following sports isn’t her forte. Caught up in a wave of emotions, Aneesa kisses Fabiola.
As she tries to sort out her feelings about her relationship, Aneesa asks Fabiola to forget about the kiss. Later, after breaking up with Ben, she friend-zones Fabiola. Months pass in a montage, and we find out that the pair have been spending more and more time together, but Aneesa doesn’t talk about her sexuality to anyone, and they remain good friends with an ambiguous chemistry. Though I wish we saw a bit more of Fabiola and Aneesa’s gradual transition from just friends to more, this part of their story is generally handled in a charming way. In one of my favorite scenes of the entire season, Paxton observes the pair’s awkward tension, casually asks Fabiola, “So you guys hooking up?” and eventually gives her a lesson in flirting. But before Fabiola can put her newly acquired skills to use, Aneesa cuts to the chase and asks Fabiola if she wants to date.
So far so good, and so much better than Fabiola’s love life has been up until this point, at least in my view. But from here on out, the show raises a lot of questions for me in terms of what it means to tell queer stories, especially when it comes to telling the story of a person from a greatly underrepresented racial group within the queer community as a whole and queer media overall.
Aneesa never comes out, beyond her joint announcement with Fabiola that they are a couple. The show offers no explanation of how Aneesa views her sexuality, not even a paltry, “I always knew I was bisexual.” There’s also no exploration of how Aneesa came to terms with her queer identity, which I would expect for a teenager like Aneesa. Maybe I’m just projecting, given my own long journey of coming into my identity as a queer South Asian, but given how few portrayals of us there are in media (and especially media targeted at teens), I don’t know that I am.
Similar to the pointed assertion that Aneesa is Muslim in season two, it’s hard not to feel like Aneesa’s queerness is a matter of convenience for the writers of Never Have I Ever. The introduction of Aneesa as a South Asian Muslim was a necessary corrective in response to season one’s unabashed Islamophobia, but Aneesa’s religious identity isn’t integrated into her character in any kind of convincing way. Likewise, Aneesa’s queerness is ancillary to putting her in a relationship with Fabiola: the writers seem more interested in giving fans the pairing they wanted to see after season two rather than developing Aneesa as a nuanced character in her own right. Honestly, by the end of the season, even Eleanor’s on and off clueless boyfriend Trent has more depth than Aneesa does.
To be clear, I’m not saying the show should have leaned into tropes about Muslims to depict a Muslim character, and I greatly appreciate that the series has walked back its flat, stereotypical portrayal of queer people. I also don’t think that every queer story has to be a coming out story. But the superficial presentation of Aneesa’s queer and Muslim identities feels analogous to the show’s lazy approach to portraying racial identities without any real depth. After three seasons, Fabiola’s Afro-Latina identity still hasn’t been explored, and season three never again broaches Eleanor and Paxton’s respective Chinese and Japanese heritages, even in passing.
And, as Fabiola and Aneesa’s story unfolds, Aneesa increasingly feels like just a prop to move the story along. Eventually, Fabiola falls for Addison, a nonbinary student from another school who is a science geek like her. As Aneesa watches yet another one of her partners show more interest in someone else, she encourages Fabiola to pursue her crush, as if Aneesa herself would have no feelings about that. With no tears shed, Aneesa calls it off with Fabiola, merely saying, “I gotta take a break from you bookworms,” before (essentially) walking offscreen for the rest of the season.
The show tries to chalk this up to Aneesa and Fabiola just being a bad fit. After they start dating, they struggle to hit their stride as a couple, misunderstanding each other’s interests and misreading each other’s body language and cues. But it’s hard not to feel like NHIE is trying to sideline the existence of queer South Asians. We get no further insight into Aneesa as a character after the breakup, and the season ends without her ever explicitly saying she’s part of the LGBTQ+ community.
This failure of representation feels both striking and unsurprising, in the context of the larger show. On the one hand, Never Have I Ever’s main objective seems to be to move the needle on narratives for South Asian women in media. The series’ nuanced portrayal of grief after the death of Devi’s father Mohan, from both Devi and her mother Nalini’s perspective, allows for a level of emotional complexity and growth not often seen in media in general — but especially not often granted to South Asian women. Devi’s cousin Kamala’s story has also come a long way, from living with her relatives who are setting her up for an arranged marriage in seasons one and two, to moving out of her aunt’s house so she can pursue a relationship on her own terms in season three. And Devi herself, from the beginning of the series, is seeking out a social and dating life that she knows is at odds with her family’s expectations and her mother’s rules.
Never Have I Ever is a show that understands that to be a South Asian American woman means to navigate the tension between the patriarchy deeply embedded in South Asian culture and the agency so many South Asian women are claiming for themselves both within and beyond South Asian communities. How, then, does it fail to factor this dynamic into its sole portrayal of a queer South Asian girl?
The problem is that NHIE wants to push the South Asian community — and specifically the Indian community — but only so far.
We see this through the relationships that the South Asian characters pursue throughout the series. Kamala is exerting the right to choose her own relationship but the man she’s dating is, conveniently, a Brahmin, on par with her own family’s status. Devi’s primary love interests, though not South Asian, are white or white-passing and come from comparable wealth and social capital. The show also introduces an Indian love interest for her in season three, and I have to imagine that this decision was made at least in part to quell any grumblings within the Indian community that Devi never pursues “one of her own.” Nalini’s brief relationship with her Black colleague Dr. Jackson in season two has been completely written out of the show: there are no references to it and season three opens with the declaration that Nalini leads a boring friendless life, as if her tryst with Dr. Jackson never happened at all.
In other words, all of the lasting and sanctioned relationships involving South Asians in Never Have I Ever are ones that upper caste Indians with sanskaari values — undoubtedly a core part of the show’s audience — will approve of. To that demographic, really exploring and developing a queer South Asian character who truly embodies all of those identities would be one step too far, in the same way that they believe certain lines in straight South Asian relationships simply cannot be crossed. So, the show cannot and will not show an inter-caste relationship; its only reference to a Hindu/Muslim relationship was in the context of a cautionary (and Islamophobic) anecdote from season one; and it seemingly walks back both the notion that a Hindu widow is allowed to move on and its only serious South Asian/Black interracial relationship. (Aneesa and Fabiola were, of course, the other South Asian/Black interracial couple, but the show turns their relationship into a bust before it could even take off.)
In season one, Nalini casually makes a deferential reference to India’s Hindu supremacist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has spent the last eight years enacting a Hindu fascist agenda that promotes a casteist, Islamophobic, misogynist, racist and homophobic worldview. Indian Americans are divided enough on Modi that NHIE doesn’t make the mistake of referring to him again. But the show also clearly wants to play both sides and appeal to audiences who fall all along the American and Indian political spectrums.
And so, Never Have I Ever’s brief flirtation with portraying a queer South Asian character is a lukewarm attempt to appease fans with competing sets of interests across its queer and Indian American audiences. The question I’m left asking is: what about those of us who actually straddle both of those identities?
It’s Time to Talk about It, “Never Have I Ever” Has a Race Problem
Never Have I Ever has returned to Netflix with a new season, and, much to my surprise, the series improves substantially in season two. It’s clear that Mindy Kaling and the show’s creative team took much of the criticism about the first season to heart, re-examining and removing some of the most offensive elements and adding much-needed depth to many of the characters. But while the season pulls off some incredibly touching and thoughtful stories, it continues to badly mishandle the issue of race.
Season two of NHIE portrays Indian communities with much more nuance than season one, but it takes some time to get there. It starts by making some of the same mistakes as its predecessor: barely two minutes into episode one, Nalini shares an instance of her “emotional exuberance” when she once hugged a stranger after hearing about a discount on a damaged printer. It’s an unnecessary moment, dripping with stereotypes about Indians being cheap and emotionally detached.
Her visit to Chennai is similarly full of racist presentations of India: for instance, the ridiculous notion of winning favors with family through Trader Joe’s snacks and the dig about losing power don’t square with Nalini’s wealthy family. As with season one’s depiction of Indian community, the writers scatter kernels of truth here and there, but they’re unexamined and not properly fleshed out: taking just one example, Nalini’s family probably would have servants — but also, so would the ostensibly middle-class Nirmala. However, as the season progresses, the show thankfully moves away from making sweeping statements about Indians (that are pretty much always offensive) and focuses on developing the characters instead.
Nalini, in particular, undergoes a complete transformation between the two seasons. Throughout season one, Nalini was the type of emotionally abusive Indian parent who only ever berated her child. In season two, she shows much more willingness to see things from Devi’s perspective right from the start. Multiple times in the first few episodes, Nalini lets Devi off the hook without any real punishment or lecture for breaking the rules. I’m not convinced that the type of parent Nalini was in season one changes so easily or quickly into one who can admit her own faults or when her daughter is in the right. Honestly, though, I think this shift is for the better because the show is actually able to develop a storyline of Nalini’s own, as we learn more about her office, see her interact with her professional colleagues and grapple with the challenges of being a single parent.
Kamala’s arranged marriage storyline also gets a much needed reckoning. The show had previously presented arranged marriage in a shallow way by having Kamala dump her East Asian boyfriend to date Prashant, the man her family was arranging her marriage with, because he turned out to be hot. But in season two, Kamala starts to reconsider her relationship with Prashant as he continuously downplays the rampant misogyny at her research lab. The problems she faces at the lab and what that tells her about Prashant become the main tensions of Kamala’s story in season two, offering a thoughtful re-examination of the sexist expectations placed on Asian women in both American and Indian culture.
Never Have I Ever also broadens its representation of Indian community with the addition of Devi’s classmate Aneesa in episode four. The writers make a point of stating Aneesa is Muslim when she’s introduced in class; other than that, her religion is mentioned only one time when she shares with Devi and her friends how she struggled to fit in with the cool kids at her previous school as the only Muslim brown girl. These references feel pointed: it’s clear that Aneesa was added as a specifically Muslim character to correct NHIE’s poor handling of Indian Muslims in season one, which had no Muslim characters at all and portrayed the latent Islamophobia in Hindu communities without actually calling it out as a problem. But what would it look like for Aneesa’s religion to be more fully integrated into her character? Honestly, I don’t know, because I can’t speak to the experience of being Indian Muslim and American. The way NHIE handles it currently definitely feels tokenizing, though.
This question of how to incorporate racial, ethnic and religious identities of non-white and non-Christian characters into their stories is one that Never Have I Ever has to tackle repeatedly because of its diverse cast. In some ways, it’s hard for me to not hold this show to a double standard because plenty of American media that centers white characters fails to address the racial identities of side characters in any kind of convincing way. But seeing Devi as both clearly Indian and clearly Hindu (even when the show does this poorly) makes the gaps in the other characters’ identities stand out even more.
In season one, Devi’s best friends Fabiola and Eleanor were two of the most obvious examples of nonwhite characters whose racial identities are completely ignored. In season two, we briefly see Eleanor perform with her Chinese acapella group; much like the references to Aneesa’s being Muslim, it feels a little like a token. Fabiola’s Afro-Latina identity, however, remains unacknowledged, and, in the context of Fabiola’s season-two story, this becomes a glaring omission.
Out of the closet and dating Eve, Fabiola is engaging more with queer community, but she’s struggling to fit in. Eve and her friends casually reference queer media and celebrities all the time, leaving Fabiola lost asking questions like, “What is a Vilanelle?” and wondering if King Princess is a play. Eve’s friends don’t hide their dismay at Fabiola’s ignorance. Eve herself is the embodiment of every woke white lesbian trope you can think of: she’s a leather-jacket-wearing vegan, her leftwing political views are buffoonishly on display constantly and pretty much the only thing she and her friends talk about is white queer culture. But in the story that unfolds, Eve also represents The Queer Community that Fabiola feels like she doesn’t have a place in.
Much like season one, what NHIE portrays as The Queer Community is limited to white queer community, and the addition of Eve’s friend Sasha as the only other queer character of color makes that even worse. Played by none other than Niecy Nash’s daughter Donielle Mikel Nash, even the very cool, very queer Sasha never once mentions a single Black queer celebrity. It’s hard not to watch season two without seeing the substantial disconnect between the diverse cast of queer and trans actresses (including Lee Rodriguez as Fabiola, Jasmine Davis as the nurse in Nalini’s office, Alexandra Billings as the school’s college counselor and Niecy Nash herself as Devi’s therapist) and the show’s entirely white and cis depiction of queer culture.
In many ways, I can relate to Fabiola’s struggles. Before I started writing at Autostraddle, I had peripherally heard of The L Word but had no idea how iconic it was and certainly couldn’t tell you anything about the show beyond, as Fabiola says, “the ‘L’ stands for lesbian.” So I understand how it feels to realize you’re gay and then realize that there’s an entire culture and history that seemingly everyone assumes you also must be immersed in simply by virtue of being gay. I’ve also seen how knowledge of these cultural markers can be used as a shorthand measure of a person’s queerness, even within the queer community. And while some of my experience has been tied to having different interests (for instance, I’ll never be into bar culture or astrology), most of it is about race.
With Fabiola’s story in season two, Never Have I Ever is putting a spotlight on the narrowness of mainstream lesbian culture, but the show fails to address how race factors into that narrowness. NHIE repeatedly shows Fabiola being alienated by her queer peers because she’s too nerdy and not cool enough, and the person constantly driving that point home is Sasha. The show erases the racial identities of its two Black queer characters and yet uses them to tell a story about exclusion. This story plays out in a predominantly white space and participates in the fallacy of whiteness as the unstated default culture in a post-racial world. So a story that, on its face, feels somewhat relatable to me as a queer person of color instead ends up denying the existence of racism as part of the experiences of queer people of color.
Ultimately, Fabiola’s white classmate Jonah encourages Fabiola to be herself (fulfilling the trope of the gay fairy godmother — the writers also fail to give Jonah’s character real depth, though they toned down some of his stereotypical flamboyance). The crux of Jonah’s motivational speech involves comparing Fabiola’s attempts to fit in with the queer community around her, to being in the closet. If Fabiola’s struggles over the course of the season had even peripherally involved her racial identity, I would have had no problem with this comparison. As a queer South Asian woman, I often think about the similarities and also overlaps in how racism, sexism and homophobia have shaped my life. But what should have been a profound moment fell completely flat because the very real issue of the othering of people of color in queer spaces has been completely side stepped. It’s hard not to feel like Never Have I Ever has inadvertently elevated “making fun of nerds” to the level of systemic oppression, instead.
Fabiola’s story tapped into a real dynamic in queer communities, but the show couldn’t bring itself to actually identify the problem for what it truly is: racism. And this brings to light an issue with NHIE as a whole. Like so much mainstream media, Never Have I Ever flirts with the existence of racism but doesn’t want to seriously confront it.
This even applies to the show’s South Asian characters. We see Devi experience the occasional microaggression but, beyond embodying the model minority, systemic racism isn’t something she really has to deal with: her unpopularity at school is chalked up to the excesses of her own actions, instead. (John McEnroe, narrating Devi’s internal monologue, actually says this explicitly when Aneesa is introduced: “[Devi] had always assumed her unpopularity was because of racism, but this new kid was proving that Devi might just be objectively lame.”) Racism is stated as the reason why Aneesa had previously developed an eating disorder, but the show treats the racism as a problem of Aneesa’s past, left behind at her old school. Instead, as Aneesa’s mother points out, the only other Indian girl at the school is the one to spread a rumor about her (in some ways echoing the ongoing dynamic between Sasha and Fabiola) and effectively denies the existence of race-based bullying.
The issues in Kamala’s research lab are also more about gender than race. Kamala makes one passing reference to having been forced by her boss to play a woman kidnapped by a maharaja in multiple LARPs, but her colleagues don’t say they can’t understand her accent and her boss doesn’t allege that her “poor” writing skills are the reason why she was left off the journal publication. The fact that what Kamala’s going through is not about race is further reinforced by the fact that Prashant clearly can’t relate to her experience at all.
The show’s non-South Asian and non-white characters don’t even get the microaggressions; for them, racism is a historical artifact. I was touched by Paxton’s storyline of connecting with his grandfather and learning about his Japanese family’s history of internment in the U.S. for a school project. But, Paxton also doesn’t have to navigate racism in the day-to-day. There are a couple of passing references to the erasure of his biracial identity, but the larger story about people failing to see his interiority is that his family and friends assume he’s not studious. Once again, the show is side-stepping race.
The only time the topic of anti-Blackness is skirted is when Fabiola’s mother shares that she and Fabiola’s father were the first queen and king of color of their high school dance. While I appreciated that this became the impetus for Fabiola and Eve nominating themselves to be the high school’s royal couple at this year’s dance, I was also disturbed by the implication that racism against Black and Latinx people is squarely a thing of the past. And, this is yet another instance where the interplay between racial and queer identities within queer community and culture is completely white washed.
I don’t believe that every story about people of color has to be about our traumas. If Never Have I Ever wanted to center positive stories about people of color, I could understand that. In some ways, it pulls this off most successfully with Nalini’s storyline, which was one of my favorites in season two. The show glosses over many things, like the anti-Blackness that is persistent in far too many Indian communities and Nirmala’s easy acceptance of Nalini dating (and dating a non-Indian man at that), but we also get the rare joy of seeing two non-white characters of different backgrounds connect with each other over their shared experiences and not be bogged down by racism. (Arguably, though, Dr. Jackson’s Black identity is also nonexistent.)
But in so many of the other plot lines, Never Have I Ever walks right up to the line of racism and then makes the story about something else. It makes for an unsettling viewing experience as a person of color. All of these characters of color are trying to find their place and come into their identities in ways that really deeply resonate with me. And then that connection slips away because, in the real world, these struggles would be very clearly related to the characters’ racial identities, but the show insists that what’s happening is really not about race — a claim countless white people have made in my life. I do recognize the feat of representation that NHIE is pulling off, but it’s hard to watch a show that’s so much about race — that clearly wants to engage with racism — repeatedly undermine the reality of structural racism, instead.
11 Newish TV Shows With New Lesbian and Bisexual Characters
When we did our Spring 2020 TV Preview approximately 85 years ago, we were prepared for some of what was to come — but not all of it. In addition to triumphant new seasons of beloved shows like Vida, Killing Eve and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, this spring saw new lesbian, bisexual and queer female characters popping up like popcorn inside a popcorn bag inside a microwave oven! There are so many new queer TV shows for you to feast your eyes upon if you have not already done so.
1. Mrs. America – fx on Hulu
full series available to stream now // read Heather’s review of the first two episodes
Photo: Sabrina Lantos/FX
If you asked yourself how a fictionalized history of the second-wave feminist movement could possibly not involve some gay characters, you should be pleased to hear that yes indeed it does! We meet black lesbian feminist Margaret Sloan-Hunter (Bria Henderson) early on in the series as she copes with persistent sidelining of women of color amongst white feminists. Episode five introduces Jules, a lesbian photographer played by my beloved Roberta Colindrez, who strikes up an affair with activist/author Brenda Feigen (Ari Graynor) whose marriage to her husband has been elevated by the movement as a feminist ideal. Yet another cadre of lesbians emerge in episode eight as a feminist lesbian couple fight for their inclusion in The Feminist Agenda in a story focused on the National Women’s Conference. Also, Sarah Paulson and Cate Blanchett are in it.
2. Run – HBO
entire series available to stream now
Two heterosexual humans follow up on a decades-old promise to each other and end up on the run from all kinds of things in this dark romance. Eventually, they cross paths with lesbian taxidermist Laurel Halliday (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and Babe Cloud (Tamara Podemski), a local policewoman who is also GAY.
3. Never Have I Ever – Netflix
entire series available to stream now // read Himani’s review
Your mileage may very on this coming-of-age comedy is centered on Devi Vishwakumar, a Tamil Indian-American teenager growing up in Sherman Oaks grappling with her father’s recent death and her burning desire to be cool. (Believe it or not, I related!) She’s got two best friends, and one of them is named Fabiola, and she’s Afro-Latinx and also SHE’S GAY. (However, be warned that the first episode of Mindy Kaling’s otherwise delightful series kicks off with some truly unforgivable material around Devi’s temporary disability and subsequent use of a wheelchair.)
4. Hollywood – Netflix
available to stream now // read Carmen, Drew and Riese’s conversation about Hollywood
Reviews of Janet Mock and Ryan Murphy’s revisionist Hollywood fantasy/history series are mixed and mostly negative, but some of us kinda liked it? Queen Latifah shows up as bisexual actress Hattie McDaniel, the first Black woman to win an Oscar, and the famously sexually adventurous Tallulah Bankhead drops in for witty quips and threesomes. Bisexual actress Anna May Wong plays a minor role in the story but her sexuality is never addressed.
5. Betty – HBO
premiered may 1 for a 6-episode season // read Drew’s review of Betty
“Girls skateboarding is cool and watching girls skateboarding is fun,” says Drew in her review of Betty, a new show from HBO that follows a group of badass girls skating in a boys world in New York City, with “dreamy cinematography,” loose wit and an intoxicating energy, filled with queers and/or tomboys and/or both.
6. Hightown – Starz
premiered June 7th, finale airs July 5 // read Kayla’s review of Hightown
Jackie Quiñones is “a proud dyke, an addict, a fucked-up fish cop (okay, National Marine Fisheries Service agent), a hard partier who blacks out on the regular,” writes Kayla of this new drama on Starz, starring Monica Raymund, who she also describes as “an emotionally unavailable top with control issues” and “exactly the kind of messy queer character I’m drawn to.” Set in class-stratified Provincetown with a focus on the opioid crisis and its casualties, Hightown delivers a twisty plot surrounding an episode one murder and our favorite thing of all: a lesbian lead character.
7. Homecoming Season Two – Amazon Prime
full series available to stream now // read Natalie’s review of Homecoming
Season One, based on a Gimlet podcast, starred Julia Roberts as a caseworker for veterans at a live-in transition center for veterans sponsored by a giant corporation with some sinister secret intentions. It’s a watch-in-one-night binge: eerie, intense, winding and worth it. Season Two opens with a new protagonist, played by Janelle Monáe, waking up in a rowboat in the middle of a river. I can’t really tell you anything more than that without spoiling the plot, but rest assured that her character is as GAY as the day is long and so is another character!
8. Snowpiercer – TNT
premiered may 17, finale airs july 19
The entire world froze seven years ago and the only souls left living on this planet are in a high-speed train that goes in circles forever, sharply divided by class. So far we know that Zarah Ferami (Sheila Vand) is bisexual; a “Third Class” passenger in a poly relationship with a personal investment in a murder investigation. The series, based on Bong Joon-ho’s 2013 South Korean-Czech film and the 1982 French graphic novel that inspired the film, was stuck in development for ages and was in the process of shooting Season Two (which also features queer actress Rowan Blanchard) when COVID shut down production.
9. Defending Jacob – Apple+
Entire series available to stream now on Apple TV
I predicted in the Spring TV preview that Cherry Jones’ character looked incredibly gay in the trailer for this slow-moving meditation on a family who finds their teenage son accused of murdering his classmate. So when she mentioned her “wife” in oh, episode seven, I sang a song to my dog that went like this: “I was right, I was right, I was right she is so gay!” However, her gayness has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the plot of this program!
10. Dead To Me Season Two – Netflix
full series available to stream now // read Valerie’s review of Dead to Me
So this is not technically a new show, but it is a new season of a show, which counts, but fitting “season” into the headline of this post was really gonna push it over the edge. InSeason Two of “Dead to Me” Is Flirting With You Via Natalie Morales, Valerie sings the praises of this dark comedy series from lesbian showrunner Liz Feldman about the friendship between two women who meet in a support group after Jen (Christina Applegate)’s husband dies in a car accident. Judy (Linda Cardellini) ends up moving in with Jen and becoming a second Mom to her kids as they get wound up in some pretty sketchy and f*cked up shit! In Season Two, it turns out that Judy is queer when she starts up a thing with a chef played by bisexual actress Natalie Morales. THEY’RE GAY and it’s GREAT.
11. Unorthodox – Netflix
entire series available to stream now
This German-American drama tells the story of Esty, a 19-year-old Hasidic Jewish woman who flees her ulta-Orthodox Williamsburg community for Berlin, in search of a secular life free of the beliefs and constraints of her home life. She’s also in search of her estranged mother, who left her family and moved to Berlin some years earlier because she is, you guessed it, a lesbian! She’s not a main character, but what we learn of her struggle and her relationship is resonant and an experience we rarely see reflected on television.
Looking for more lesbian TV shows you can watch right now? Here you go:
As a Queer South Asian, “Never Have I Ever” Been So Let Down
I watched the trailer for Mindy Kaling’s Netflix original Never Have I Ever with trepidation. I have a love-hate relationship with high school dramas. When they’re done well, I adore them; when they aren’t, I’m forced to relive the misery of high school while gaining nothing in return. Now, here was this genre with… a South Asian protagonist. I would either cherish or loathe Never Have I Ever. Given how close this show was going to hit home, there really was no room for anything in the middle.
Never Have I Ever tells the story of fifteen-year-old Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). In the previous year, Devi’s father suddenly died from a heart attack. Her mother, Nalini, is now raising Devi as a single parent. Living with them is Kamala, Devi’s cousin from India, who is completing her PhD at CalTech. The family is clearly well-to-do, and their community betrays all the markings of the wealthy: house parties at mansions, sixteen-year-olds driving expensive cars and parents hiring private counselors to get their kids into Ivy League colleges.
So… South Asian teen living in a well-off, college-obsessed suburban community. This show was tapping into more than a few aspects of my own high school experience.
As I progressed through the episodes, I found myself growing increasingly agitated. Kaling has a clear skill in creating a world I easily identified with, without hiding any of its shortcomings. But, she has no interest in examining those shortcomings for what they are. Instead, Never Have I Ever falls back on easy storylines that erase the painful realities of so many communities — including the one the series showcases.
Many critics found Never Have I Ever’s high school setting relatable, but Kaling’s depictions traffic far too heavily in damaging stereotypes for my taste. It seems like every character other than Devi and her two love interests are flat caricatures. What’s more, I can’t believe that in 2020 we’re still making fatphobic and ableist mobility jokes on TV, like the ones told about Devi’s classmate Eric and her entire backstory of being temporarily paralyzed.
I found the show’s queer representation to be full of problems. One of Devi’s best friends, Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez), comes out during the season. Fabiola’s growing awareness of her sexuality is handled thoughtfully enough, but her character is largely sidelined. In episode one, Devi picks out boyfriends for herself, Fabiola and their other best friend Eleanor as part of her quest to improve their social standing. As Fabiola goes through the motions of dating this boy she’s clearly not interested in, another classmate, Eve, catches her attention. In the first three episodes, Rodriguez masterfully shows Fabiola realizing the disconnect between her actions and her feelings, but these moments are eclipsed by Devi and her story.
Fabiola’s coming out to her friends and family in the next several episodes continues to be overshadowed, this time by the storyline with Eleanor’s mother and Devi’s abandoning her friends in pursuit of boys. While it’s refreshing that Fabiola’s central story isn’t about being rejected by her family for being queer, it’s hard not to feel like Fabiola is short changed. Fabiola and Eve eventually start dating, but NHIE does no work to develop their relationship, instead taking it as a foregone conclusion for the only two queer girl characters.
The irony of Never Have I Ever breaking ground with its South Asian representation is that Kaling takes a largely colorblind approach to every other racial identity, and this, too, bogs down Fabiola. Even though Fabiola is Afro-Latina that aspect of her identity is never broached, even in passing.
With this omission, the show’s presentation of queer culture is incredibly white washed. The only other queer characters are Eve and Jonah (who Fabiola and Eleanor befriend after Fabiola comes out). Eleanor aptly describes Eve as “Kristen Stewart in Charlie’s Angels.” (The other option Eleanor gives Fabiola when she asks “her type” is “Kristen Stewart in Twilight” — as if the very white Kristen Stewart solely embodies the multitudes of queer women worldwide.) Jonah is your standard straight-person caricature of a cis white gay man — I’m not even sure in what universe Jonah’s character passes as a teen.
Even worse, by tokenizing Fabiola, NHIE perpetuates anti-black racism. From the first episode, we’re thrust into a years-long rivalry between Devi and her classmate Ben that is entirely predicated on the zero-sum game of college admissions. Fabiola is clearly a genius – she’s built an interactive robot and is studying Latin and French at the AP level as a sophomore (whether she speaks Spanish never comes up). Why, then, does Fabiola not factor into Devi and Ben’s competition? Like far too many black women, Fabiola’s brilliance goes unseen by her white and Asian peers.
In her real life, Kaling has a problematic close proximity to this relentless pursuit of elite post-secondary degrees that has led too many Asians to pursue the anti-black racist claim that race-conscious admissions causes colleges to discriminate against them. Overwhelming data points to the contrary, but the claims persist. (Swathes of underqualified white students are accepted as legacies, at the expense of highly qualified Black and Latinx students.) In fact, NHIE delves right into this mess when a college counselor tells Devi that “schools don’t want another Indian try-hard.” The show cleans it up by having the counselor deflect to “colleges want kids with unusual stories.” Kaling may not repeat the racist lie verbatim, but she certainly skirts it.
Kaling’s depiction of Indian community isn’t as superficial as her other representations, but it’s equally thoughtless.
Never Have I Ever portrayed a Hindu-Indian community I immediately recognized. It’s most apparent in episode four when Devi’s family attends Ganesh puja, which is part religious observance, part social gathering. Nalini is expecting pity from the other women because she is now a widow; her expectations are met in encounter after encounter. I found the community dynamics incredibly familiar: the back-handed compliments, the veiled braggadocio, the endless one-upping. But Kaling doesn’t stop there. She doesn’t shy away from laying bare the Islamophobic underbelly of Hindu-Indian community.
At the puja, the family runs into a woman who was ostracized for marrying a Muslim. Nalini’s disdain for Muslims and Kamala’s shock at that particular detail are clearly evident. Yet, the show moves forward without skipping a beat. Meanwhile, while NHIE was in production, India stripped the only Muslim-majority state of its constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy and implemented a communications blackout that’s lasted ten months and counting, started building Muslim detention camps and passed a citizenship act that could lead to the deportation of Indian Muslims.
That now-divorced woman’s assessment of her situation? “I wish I had just listened to my family and married the guy that they chose.” This is more than a missed opportunity. By showing a Hindu-Indian community engaging in casual Islamophobia while simultaneously erasing Muslim-Indian communities, Kaling is normalizing the bigotry that has led to increasing degrees of systemic violence over the past several decades in India.
Never Have I Ever similarly tramples through the minefield of arranged marriage. Arranged marriage is actively practiced by South Asians across socioeconomic classes. In an effort to sanitize the practice for a globalized world, many middle class South Asians point to matrimonial websites and the (relative) agency they provide. To me, this emphasis on “semi-arranged” marriages glosses over persistent and gendered problems that also transcend class.
One of my cousins had an arranged marriage that was a “good match” (both families are incredibly wealthy), and the couple had some liberty (they went on a handful of supervised “dates”). It’s become increasingly clear, though, that my cousin has had to completely curb her playful enthusiasm to match her husband’s quiet reserve. It’s difficult to see her so changed; as my sister put it, “A part of her soul has to have died, right?”
In NHIE, Nalini is pushing Kamala into an arranged marriage on behalf of Kamala’s parents in India. In episode two, Nalini preps Kamala for an upcoming conversation with her potential in-laws by forcing her to present more traditionally feminine and emphasize her skills as a homemaker, rather than talking about her research. The show wants us to believe this is just temporary to reel in the catch. But I can’t help but think of my cousin: Will her act ever be up?
Later, in episode nine, Kamala dumps her East Asian boyfriend because the stranger her parents chose turns out to be hot. With Kamala’s story and the story of the woman who had married and divorced a Muslim man, the show reinforces the morals around marriage most of us are raised with: family knows best. Which really means: when children, especially women, exhibit independence and true agency in their relationships, they are setting themselves up for a lifetime of shame and misery.
Perhaps most upsetting, Kaling exposes the abuse that goes unquestioned in too many South Asian families but refuses to question it. In episode two, Nalini threatens to smack Devi for calling her a “bitch.” She immediately defends herself to her white neighbor, saying stridently, “Smacking is still an acceptable punishment in many minority cultures,” and the show moves on. While Nalini’s statement might be true, that doesn’t make it ok. This is an issue that divides the community, and Kaling clearly doesn’t want to take a stance. But not taking a stance is taking a stance when you only show one perspective.
Nalini’s emotional abuse gets passed off as an aspect of her personality, her exacting Indian standards and her coping mechanism for grief. The show makes clear that her behavior predates her husband Mohan’s death through a flashback of Nalini berating Devi. At one point, Devi overhears a particularly painful exchange between her parents:
Nalini: You are too easy on her.
Mohan: No, I’m not. I just have a different approach.
Nalini: Okay, great. Then why don’t you raise her? Because I give up. I am done. She’s too headstrong and doesn’t listen. Whoever this child is I am through with her!
Mohan: Nalini…
Nalini: No, no, no. That’s your child. She’s no daughter of mine.
First, I’m tired of watching the limited representation of South Asian families perpetuate the lie that South Asian fathers are kind and understanding while South Asian mothers are – in the words of Devi – “a bitch.” We see this play out in Bend It Like Beckham, I Can’t Think Straight, Ackley Bridge and Four More Shots Please. This dynamic isn’t as prevalent as Western media makes it seem, and it’s time for more narratives that show the reality of the patriarchy so many of us grow up with.
Second, Nalini never acknowledges how she’s hurt her daughter and, worse, rationalizes her toxic behavior. Nalini visits Devi’s therapist who asks Nalini why she thinks Devi doesn’t like her. Nalini replies, “Because I’m tough on her” rather than admitting those painful words Devi overheard. She then justifies her harshness as stemming from being “scared all the time [for Devi].” The show engages in the gaslighting that is characteristic of too many Asian families: I don’t have to show you that I love you. You should just believe that my yelling and being hard on you means I care.
The closest we get is at the very end when Devi and Nalini make up. Even then, Nalini fails to take responsibility for Devi’s pain, saying instead, “I know you think it was your father who was the only one who cared about you, but that’s not true. I love you. You’re my whole family.”
What do those words even mean after everything that’s happened between them that they still haven’t actually talked about?
In an interview with the New York Times, Kaling acknowledged that, with such limited media representation, her show would be expected to represent everyone in the South Asian community and that would, inevitably, lead to disappointment. But the reason I didn’t like Never Have I Ever wasn’t because I didn’t feel seen. It’s because Kaling and I are clearly looking at the same world, but Kaling is expecting me to overlook all of its pain.