The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Never Have I Ever' | TV Concierge

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

Mindy Kaling's latest project is a sweet and sincere teen comedy series that pulls from many of her own experiences as a first-generation Indian American teenager. Hosts: Liz Kelly and Kate Halliwell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to TV concierge. This is a daily podcast where ringer staffers help you navigate the crowded TV landscape. I'm Liz Kelly, and today I am joined by my wonderful tea time co-host, Kate Hallowell, to discuss Never Have I Ever, which is the latest Netflix teen comedy from the mind of me Kaling, starring newcomer Maitreya Ramachrishnan. Kate, give us your quick pitch on Never Have I Ever. I'm going to do this in the form of a Never Have I Ever because all of the episode titles are in this form. Smart. Here's my pitch. Never have I ever cried so hard at a U-2 song, snorted at so many questionable Priyanka Chopra jokes,

and related so hard to a teenage nerd, just trying to have what she thinks is a normal high school experience. Beautifully said. Thank you. So this follows a first-generation Indian American teenage girl with storylines drawn a lot from Mindy Kaling's own adolescents. She's trying to be popular. She's trying to date the cutest boy in school, lose her virginity, deal with her. her father's death and also get into Princeton. So she's got a crowded, crowded schedule. It's a lot. It's a lot for anyone. So yeah, Davy is really going through it in her sophomore

year of high school. Yes. Liz, why are people talking about this show? Why should people watch this show? So before we even get to that, I just want to give a quick disclaimer. Obviously, Kate and I are two white women and we will be discussing the show through that exact lens, because that's all we know. But I read a really great review on the show on the cut. written by Sanjita St. Kurtz, and she talks about her experience watching the show as a young Indian-American woman watching. So I definitely encourage you to read that as well. Okay. People are talking about the show because I feel like everything Mindy Kaling does is just Buzzy.

I love her personally back from her office days. I feel like that's where she gained a lot of her popularity in following. And we saw through the Mindy Project. We've seen her through late night. We've followed her through a lot. So people just love Mindy Kaling's projects, maybe not necessarily in content, but just what she does. Sure. And I think, yeah, anything she does is good. I think that there are levels to it. You know, I really liked the Mindy Project. I liked parts of Late Night, and I think that's what a lot of people are saying about this show, is there are certain sort of like Mindy Kaling Hallmarks that make it great. And there are certain Mindy Kaling hallmarks that you don't love and that kind of come with the territory. So I think it's a mix of those things.

Yes, it's very buzzy everything she does. I'll give her that. So the first thing that got a lot of attention way back in April 2019 was Mindy tweeted out basically a worldwide casting call for the main role of Devi. And so she just tweeted like anyone can audition, send in your tape, blah, blah. Basically around 15,000 girls auditioned. It went to, I think, my favorite part of the show, The Lead, My Trey, like we said. And I think that way of going about it, plucking a newcomer from Canada, She'd never have a professional acting role before was really, really well done. And I like that about a lot of the kids on this show.

They seem very not necessarily new. I think you can see that with Maitre and as Davy. But a lot of her friends, like they just look like real kids and they act like real kids. And like even like if the writing was, you know, questionable at times or whatever, like, I think I had no problems at all with the acting. I thought they were all super likable, super realistic and just like very fresh. And I think that really came across that they weren't like really. seasoned actors. Yes. And then additionally, there's not a lot of teen comedies that aren't like really scrubbed for language and plot and stuff like that. Like obviously being on Netflix, you have a little

bit more freedom. She says fuck and Jesus and all types of curse words. They can kind of talk about her virginity and sex a little bit more blatantly than you can, like let's say on ABC. So I think that's also buzzy. So let's talk about what the show got right. We liked a lot about it. It was a very sweet show. Kate, do you want to start? Yeah, it was a really fun binge. And likeless, said, you know, it had kind of those edgier moments, but it also was very wholesome and very heartwarming. And, you know, it's not like one of those Netflix shows where, like, they make it edgy just because they can and because they're Netflix. Like, it's still something that I would tell my cousins to watch or, like, I would feel comfortable watching with younger siblings or something

like that. Like, I feel like across the board, it was very light, very, just very fun binge. That is true. Actually, I think the last teen TV show I watched was Euphoria. What a Pallet comes to this is. You're right. This is just a fun amount of edgy where it's actually not really at all if you think about a show like that. It's just more realistic. Yes, these teens aren't like shooting up and, you know, like in these raves until four in the morning. Like, this is real shit where she like gets drunk accidentally with the popular kids and like falls into the pool and like things like that which feel a little bit more in the realm of the everyday teen, I would say. Right. Yes. And yeah, to piggyback off what you say, casting 100% thought was great. I think her mom,

who's played by Pornah Jaggonathon, just really beautiful performance. There's a lot of serious moments in the show, we'll get to later, which worked really well. She acted the shit out of this role. I loved her in this. She was so good. And I'll get to things that I didn't like in a minute, but the adults were very hit or miss for me on the show. And the fact that I think she came across so well was unusual.

And also just, she's such an important part of this story. And she's such like kind of a foil for Davy as she's just like blundering through her way. And she could have come across as a villain. I think if she wasn't written well and wasn't acted well. And instead she's just this very sympathetic figure who's. trying her best. And yeah, I love, she was my favorite character in the show. The mom was. For sure. Also, I want to give a quick shout out to the narration for the entire show. Narrated by John McEnroe, the very famous tennis player. It makes sense in the story and actually

is a really satisfying payoff at the very end of the show. But really surprising, just absolutely amazing decision on the writer's part. It was so random. It's right in the very beginning. You get this from him and he narrates the entire show with like very little explanation, but you just kind of get used to it and accept it and it end up being this very satisfying bit. But yeah, super random, super great. And one episode was narrated by Andy Sandberg the entire episode. And he makes fun of it. I feel like they're a little more self-aware than the average TV show, which again is super, super fun.

And you wanted to talk about the high school nerd dynamics. Please take it away. Davey is not a cool girl. She really wants to be a cool girl. But she's like, you know, she's smart. She's in all these extracurriculars. Her friends are nerdy. And it just really nailed kind of my own experience of like being in all the activities, doing all the things needing to get straight days and like technically being a nerd, but also like wanting to have the cool girl high school experience or like what you think that is.

I just found that so relatable to be like, oh, she's at Model UN one day. And then like the next day she's like trying to get drunk for the first time and like just beat like this very confusing sort of era of your life. But like wanting it to be a little different than it is. Also, very relatable. As a teenager, you mess up so much. There's entire episodes, it's like, never have I ever pissed off everyone I know and never have ever been a big, fat liar. Like, she makes some brutal errors. And it was cringy only because I was like, God, like, I've been there and I've done that. And it's true. As a teenager, you just fucking fumble your way through your days. And I think she did that in a really charming but relatable way. She makes a lot of mistakes, but it's all. You got to do it. Yeah. Okay, so favorite moments. We obviously love the mom. And I always think, I think surprisingly for this show, the serious moments, especially in the second half of the season, has like a little bit more weight and depth to it. And I think it did that so well, which I was not expecting. Yeah. You were ahead of me while you were watching this and you texted me and you were like, I can't believe I just cried this hard at this show. And I was like early on still and I was like, what is she talking about? Like what did she have cried at? But it did. It got me so hard. There's a certain YouTube song. that is played to devastating effect.

And I can't believe now I'm going to associate it with this extremely sad moment, but great moment in this show. Guys, I started this show, honestly, a little skeptical, rolled my eyes at a few of the, like, humorous jokes. By the end, I was absolutely sole. And I think it'll get you too. It's quick. You go from being like, I guess I'm still watching this to being like, I'm in.

Like, towards the end. Yeah. Stick with it. So briefly, certain things that we struggled with, obviously the show has gotten mixed reviews. Do you want to start with some of your problems? Yeah, obviously we liked a lot just to pick a few nits. I call it the Booksmart problem.

And we noted a lot of similarities to the movie Booksmart that Olivia Wilde did this year. The adults in this show and in Book Smart have the same problem, which is that the writing, like, you can have adults in a teen story and have them be boring and have them just be adults and be there. It seems like Mindy Kaling did this. I think Olivia Wild did this where like they try to make their adults these wacky, like relatable, like comic figures. And I'm like, it doesn't have to be about them. Like, they don't have to be dabbing and they don't have to be on TikTok. And like, you know what I mean? Like, they can just be there also.

Yeah. So the adults really bug me, except with a few exceptions, including the mom. And the next, next picking it. There's this very random storyline that's in the first five minutes of this show where it's revealed that Davy, when her dad died, which is, again, a major plot point in the first five minutes, she was struck with this, like, psychosomatic disorder where she can't walk for three months. And it never has any relevance to the story beyond that.

Yeah, I looked this up. Mindy did an interview with NPR. And apparently the brother of the co-creator, Langfisher, this actually happened to. So her brother, Langfisher's brother, after her parents got divorced, had that for about four months where his legs were just paralyzed, went to doctors, no one could figure it out. And then, like, mysteriously, it just got better. But I will agree with you, there was no through line for that in the show. is just really odd, just aside.

And that makes more sense that it was based on a story, because it was so random. It does feel like that in the show. It had such little relevance to the story that I was like, why is this here? So it does make more sense, actually. But still, I think that perhaps could have given a cut.

Agreed. And then also a lot of egregious product placement. Don't need to talk about it for long. Just Microsoft Surface got away with murder in this show. Every shot of a computer was just like, just this zoomed-in shot of Microsoft Surface. Doritos, Seas Candy, I could go on. But anyway, a lot of weird product placement. Yeah, Netflix is tough with that. It is. All is that to say is that me and you actually found

ourselves really enjoying it by the end. Obviously, we were sold, crying at the end. It's extremely enjoyable, easily to watch as family or friends. It's also just like a nice, easy watch on the brain in these times, I'll say. It's a light, light binge. Yes, light binge. We encourage you to watch it for TV concierge. I'm Liz Kelly. Thank you, Kate Hallowell, and thank you for listening. You know,