Mindy Kaling’s new teen sitcom Never Have I Ever is an empathetic exploration of grief

If you told everyone exactly how high school would play out, odds are many would opt the hell out. High school in America is a bizarre and unkind time, a collective coming-of-age story that has as much room for variety as there are people who go through it. Never Have I Ever, a new Netflix sitcom from The Mindy Project creator Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, takes the broad strokes of high school and gives them new life by centering its story on an Indian-American girl. It’s an absolute delight, one of the most pleasant new binge-watches you can do right now.

That doesn’t mean the show is all sunshine — Never Have I Ever begins with a tragedy when protagonist Devi Vishwakumar’s (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) father Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy) suddenly dies, and shortly after, Devi inexplicably loses the use of her legs. (This is all in the first few minutes). As Devi is starting to get used to life without her father and with her disability, her mobility returns, just as curiously as it left. Never Have I Ever is the story of Devi’s attempt to return to a normal life, and Devi wants to return with a bang — literally, by losing her virginity to Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet) the hottest boy in school.

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