With the Summer I Turned Pretty (2022-2025) not living up to the hype I expected, it led me down the rabbit hole of another rewatch of Never Have I Ever (2020-2023). I am an infamous hater of the love triangle trope. I have never met one I haven’t hated until Never Have I Ever. The characters, even the love interests, were complex and meaningful, and they didn’t just accept getting played by the protagonist who was deciding between the two of them, and they didn’t crawl back to Devi when she messed up; they made her work to fix her mistakes. Devi Vishwakumar was messy, but she was real. And I think I yearn so deeply for real characters, with real storylines, and painfully relatable plots. I love Devi Vishwakumar because she is problematic, but she feels so deeply. Some plot lines have always stuck out to me that make her especially real.
DEvi’s Dad’s Death and her Therapy
Devi’s therapist may single-handedly be my favorite character in the series. She calls out Devi when she makes mistakes and supports her when she is struggling. She is there for Devi’s growth and helps her confront the trauma of her dad’s death. I think many watchers forget that Devi was paralyzed for a while after her father’s death. She was traumatized, and the show doesn’t just move past that. We see Davi’s struggle with playing the harp again, as well as the memories of her father and her imagining him in real life. The pain of that will never go away, but Devi learns to manage it better. The show is true to the fact that trauma does not disappear; it does not go away after a week, but may stay with you for years and years to come.
Devi’s Relationship with Nalini
Nailini’s struggles raising Devi are honest. She is not a perfect mom, but she is a good one. She also has a hard time after Devis’ dad passes, and she is trying to deal with that trauma while also raising a teenager. She and Devi fight, but would this be a realistic teenage experience if a daughter and her mother didn’t fight? Their relationship was raw; it was harsh at times, but it was needed. Their fight after the night that Devi’s dad died was real, Nalini made a mistake by saying she wished Devi had been the one who passed, and Devi obviously showed the impact of that on her. If Nalini were a perfect television mother she would have never said that. Nalini learns and also grows on her own, getting through her trauma and dating again, being a huge step for her, as well as Devi being okay with her dating again. Nalini and Devi rebuild their relationship throughout the show, and the viewers get to see it in real time.
Paxton and Ben
As I mentioned before, I love that the love interests (at least the two main ones) are not two-dimensional. While not all love triangle interests are flat, I feel like we get to see all the issues and their resolution for both Paxtona and Ben through their voice-over episodes. Nearly every season, Ben got an episode voiced over by Andy Samberg, and Paxton got one voiced over by Gigi Hadid. Through these episodes, we get to see Ben’s parental issues, his fear of never living up to the pressure, and finally a heartfelt scene of Ben and his father, with his father expressing his love for him. Through Paxton’s episodes, we get to see his identity struggles. We see him having issues with college as he learns he cannot swim anymore, and see him working to get up his grades. We then see him dropping out of college, and then reenrolling in college and figuring out his career path as a teacher. We get to see their innermost conflicts, but also, we don’t just see them let Devi do whatever. When she hurts them, they take time away. They show when they are upset with her, and tell her when they want distance. They take time to forgive her and work to rebuild their relationships/friendships with her. They are very real characters, the same way Devi is.
DEvi’s college issues
While this was painfully real for me as a student waiting on her college acceptances, I needed that. It was almost refreshing to see Devi fail, struggle, and have to express herself to achieve her dreams. This contrasts characters like Rachel Berry in Glee (2009-2015), who makes mistakes but ultimately everything works out for her, like her NYADA audition. Rachel Berry was written to be perfect, Devi was written to be flawed. They aren’t just handed to her. Granted, when we found out she applied to only Ivys and then lied about getting into them, that was a pretty tough watch. But Devi needed to fail to succeed. It helped her open up in her essay to Princeton and show who she really was. This completed the storyline in Season One, where she screams at the college admissions counselor because he wants her to write about her father. She finally realizes that she must write about her father, because he was a part of her. To tell her story is to tell his, and she does exactly that to make her dreams a reality.
Devi’s Sexual Journey
The entire show feels based around Devi’s sex life. She starts the show by declaring she will lose her virginity, and basically begs Paxton to take it from her. But the actual progression is not some magical fairytale, but and slow and steady learning curve. She dates, but does not have sex, opting to go slow with Paxton when they eventually start dating. They never end up having sex, which leads her to lose her virginity to Ben. But of course, this is awkward for both of them, as losing one’s virginity is for most people. She needs to learn more, and it takes a while. She dates a more “experienced bad boy” who helps her learn what she likes and how to vocalize that. This teaches her more about herself, so when she eventually has sex again with Ben at the end of the show, she is more ready and knows more about herself. It isn’t perfect, but learning about sex is a journey rather than an earth-shattering first time for most people.
DEvi’s acceptance of her culture
I feel like the biggest part of the show for me was Devi’s arc. She is messy, but she learns so much throughout the course of the show. We get to see her grow into herself. The greatest example of this is Devi accepting her culture. In Season One at Ganesh Puja where Devi runs away from every aspect of her culture. In one scene, she tells a random Starbucks woman that she does not feel “at home” in her choice of clothing. She then judges the girls who are traditionally dancing, and complains to her friend how lame it is to be there. She does a complete 180 by season four. In the final episode, she partakes in almost all these activities with no shame. She wears a sari more comfortably, and it appears to fit her better and is more tailored to her. This is the costume department showing us how she’s more comfortable through her clothing. She then performs a traditional dance, similar to the one she was making fun of in season one. She also performs this with her cousin, Kamala, whom she is spiteful to in season one for being the “perfect Indian girl.” Her comfort at Pati’s wedding shows how much more comfortable she is within her culture, and how much she has grown throughout the show.
I grew up with Devi; every year of high school for me was a new season. I sobbed when she graduated high school, because I was graduating high school. I cheered when she got into Princeton, because I got into college. I felt her pain of packing up and leaving her home for the first time, because I was too. The biggest struggles in my life and the most pivotal years of my life were lived with her, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.