Mindy Kaling’s “Never Have I Ever,” a comedy-drama series about Indian-American teenager Devi Vishwakumar navigating the aftermath of her father’s death, released a third season this August. The attention given to mental health taboos has been a striking strength of the series, only deepening this season as the stigmas on-screen parallel many realities of South Asian experiences. Against a backdrop of excessive family involvement, viewers see how judgment can easily morph into prejudice. The season depicts how rigid definitions of career success and anxieties about cultural preservation are used to shame mental unwellness while making a compelling case for more individuals to invest in mental healthcare.
In the first two seasons, Devi had a psychosomatic reaction following her father’s death, causing paralysis in her legs. At school, she is constantly entangled in friendship drama and love triangles while coming to terms with her immigrant family’s cultural expectations. Soon, she is nicknamed “crazy Devi ” for her impulsivity and overwhelming feelings.
The mysterious resolution of Devi’s paralysis drew negative reviews for being ableist. The show has also been rightfully criticized for being stereotypical: Devi’s upper-class, upper-caste family of educated overachievers (who work primarily in STEM fields) fixate on traditional social values. The show regularly caters to a White audience and allows North Indian hegemony to overshadow Devi’s Tamil culture — leaving a gaping need for more nuanced portrayals of South Asian diasporic diversity.
Still, the first season was applauded for introducing therapy as something that is not just “for White people ” as Devi’s mom, Nalini, initially comments before eventually allowing Devi to go. Despite losing her husband, we haven’t seen Nalini go to a grief counselor because of this very taboo. She is portrayed as a self-sufficient and successful dermatologist responsible for three other women in the household, a nod to a culture of collectivist caretaking.
A backdrop of judgment
The three women are united too by a culture of passing, receiving, and fearing judgment as they navigate trauma. In an interview with the HPR, clinical psychologist Jyothsna Bhat commented that Nalini’s failure to probe for the source of Devi’s anger with the expectation that they both would “soldier on” with unspoken grief, felt accurate, based on her own experience with clients. Nalini and Devi do not set aside dedicated time to grieve over their loss, and each is siloed while processing their emotions.
Reviews have praised that Devi has the support of a therapist to break free from this silo. She even consistently attends sessions as a form of emotional maintenance, as opposed to only being a reprieve necessitated by trauma. By depicting the complexities of South Asians seeking therapy, the season makes a freshly relevant observation: The claustrophobic nature of family involvement — and judgment — is a necessary prerequisite upon which mental health stigmas manifest.
For example, at one point, Devi’s grandmother points out that Nalini has “no husband or friends” matter-of-factly, comically citing her own cliques from the temple, mall-walking, and neighborhood-watching. Fueled by a well-intentioned — but ultimately overzealous — need to improve Nalini’s life, the grandmother arranges for Nalini to meet Rhyah.
Initially, there is something subversive about Nalini and Rhyah — both middle-aged, single parents — doing fun things together. It was refreshing to see older South Asian women building their schedule around getting makeovers — a quintessential symbol of platonic friendship and girlhood — as opposed to servicing themself to solely to homemaking or career-chasing.
But soon, a more insidious tension became to undergird the friendship: Nalini shares how Devi has been acting out — sneaking out to parties, getting suspended, fighting with her — since her father’s death, and Rhyah responds that she’s grateful that her son, Des, never had any problems. The women’s relationship provides a glimpse into the constant judgment underlying even seemingly innocuous interactions between South Asian parents.
“There is this tendency for Rhyah to provide immediate solutions for [Nalini] to feel better,” says Elora Chowdhury, a Professor of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston said in an interview with the HPR. “The friendship begins to seem transactional.”
As this uncomfortable dynamic settles between the two women, Des and Devi begin to date, bonding over experiences such as using debate practice as an excuse to sneak out of home. Eventually their moms discover the duo, mid-makeout session. Though Nalini would have preferred her daughter wait “until she has an advanced degree” to date, she allows the relationship to proceed because Des is well-mannered and academically successful.
The two clearly fit into a trope that transcends race or ethnicity — Devi as the hysterical woman and Des as the coddled momma’s boy. But the surprisingly large role each of their mothers take in the relationship provides a glimpse into how romantic relationships often cannot exist outside the confines of familial expectations in South Asian households. Eventually, it is these exact expectations that lead to the demise of the two’s budding romance.
Becoming too much
Viewers see how these expectations intensify as the relationship progresses. After all, when Rhyah first worried that Des was lonely, she asked Nalini and Devi to include him in their life, revealing an admirable frankness and humility to seek help. But once she could see that her son was actually quite taken by Devi, she got cold feet. It just becomes too much,” shared Professor Rochona Majumdar from the department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago in an interview with HPR.
After comforting a crying Devi, who believes she saw her dead father at an orchestra concert, Rhyah returns and tells Des he needs to stop seeing her because of these “emotional issues.” Though a step up from South Asian parents who are dismissive or incredulous of mental unwellness, Rhyah just represents a new breed of prejudice repackaged — a well meaning, educated, progressive parent who cared for a child’s emotional instability until it was too close to home.
Bhat says Rhyah’s sudden proclamation to end the relationship was heavy-handed, but believable in the show. She explains that she has noticed a similar trend among her clients: when someone has a mental health issue, “we see them as doing something that’s out of line from the South Asian mindset of keeping it together, of not being hysterical, of not showing any kind of ill adjustment.”
There is also a concerning double standard when Des’s close friend Parker throws himself into partying to cope with a difficult divorce at home. Parker often drags Des along, even asking to spend the night with his family. Des is continuously supportive and almost unreasonably understanding — even when Parker drunkenly trashes a tennis racket that Devi’s father gave to her.
Though Rhyah’s opinion on the boys’ friendship is not made explicit, its absence sends a message. It’s alright to be friends with someone with mental health issues but not to date them. In that sense, the show depicts an age-old anxiety: the overwhelming parental desire to control a child’s future partner, reminiscent of mother-in-laws featured in “Indian Matchmaking,” “Wedding Season,” and even “Crazy Rich Asians.”
Majumdar hypothesizes that “the inscrutability of mental health” is what intimidated Rhyah most. She suggests that the unknowable nature of grief, paired with Devi’s fierce independence, made Rhyah especially protective of her family. Perhaps Rhyah worried that mental illness can spread — that Des is more likely to be sad if Devi is — or perhaps her fears were more practical, about the time and energy investment required to support someone’s health when there is no definite end in sight.
Eventually, Des avoids Devi until she confronts him and then breaks up with her saying, “dating you is not worth pissing my mom off.” Given his age, Bhat expected Des to be more open-minded and not play into Rhyah’s neuroses. “This goes to show how intergenerational scripts are just so strong, and they’re so entrenched,” she said. “Rhyah looks at it as taking on a pain and a burden for her family … for her son.”
Underlying anxieties
Rhyah’s behaviors and the underlying beliefs that might fuel them are not uncommon in the real world. “I have noticed [that] South Asian households often try to explain mental health problems through a lot of sociological explanations … so-and-so is acting out because they had a divorce or because they had a death,” Majumdar said.
By this logic, there is also a simple social fix: Cut out the draining friend or break up with the crazy partner, rather than investing yourself in helping them find therapy or access medication. The quick fix conveniently places all of the blame on the individual for their unwellness, while ignoring how social support systems can be important, for everyone — regardless of gender, race, or mental well being.
While Nalini, a dermatologist, would never shame someone for having dermatitis and Rhyah, a nutritionist, would never look down upon someone whose diet is constrained by diabetes, it’s clear that their attitudes are much less open-minded when it comes to Devi’s anger, depression, or grief. The show depicts how mental unwellness can be weaponized so easily due to deeply ingrained anxieties about status and the future that plague every one of its characters.
Devi’s anxieties pertain to her popularity, sexual inexperience, and chances of getting into Princeton. Nalini worries about her perceived failures as a single parent and what constitutes success and virtuosity in Devi’s life. The grandmother is obsessed with preserving her family’s culture and respectability. She chases after a social clout that is perhaps no better than Devi’s high school drama — she must make the prettiest Golu, a display of dolls during a Hindu holiday, among other aunties at the temple and be the first to have her next-of-kin married off successfully.
“I see the mental health stigma within the broader narrative of intergenerational families,” Chowdhury said, pointing to Devi’s cousin, the Caltech-PhD-holding Kamala. Kamala navigates questions about her independence after leaving a near-finalized marriage, unleashing an onslaught of dismay from her family. Their judgment intensifies when Kamala begins to see Devi’s English teacher, Manish, who hasn’t visited the mainland, can’t speak any Indian languages, and has divorced parents who run a nightclub and Etsy store.
Ultimately, this anxiety-turn-prejudice also underlies Nalini’s initial approval of Des for being “far better than the riff raff” Devi has been with before. In the past, she has been with Paxton, who struggles to establish himself as more than a pretty face, and Ben, her wealthy academic rival who pushes himself in school to the point of medical unwellness. Though flawed, both have cared for Devi — Paxton sits with Devi when she cries over the trashed tennis racket, and Ben first informs her of the impending breakup. However, their genuine care takes a backseat to Des’s ability to check off a box: Nalini praises him for being “a polite Indian boy with a bright future” who has been a “good influence” on her daughter.
In fact, it is this exact line of reasoning that empowers Rhyah to say her Stanford-bound son is too bright and too young to deal with Devi’s problems.
Moving forward
Bhat says she has South Asian clients who are agonized by the fear that someone outside the family will learn of their domestic issues, mental health concerns, or some other shortcoming in their personal life. She says people are often afraid that if someone knows they are in therapy, they will be ostracized.
“That is part of the deep state of the South Asian diaspora,” Bhat said. “The parents will say to me: Is the fact that my child has depression going to affect their job prospects down the line? And I’m like, ‘They’re 12.’ We will have to figure that out, but why are we worrying about that right now?”
Clearly mental health stigma cannot be resolved until pervasive anxieties related to virtue and respectability are addressed and definitions of success and careerism are tweaked. Intergenerational scripts need to be rewritten, and more authority figures, such as medical professionals, should advocate for the mind-body connection —after all, as Bhat points out: “South Asians listen to doctors … they have a halo effect”.
Eventually, Nalini comes to her daughter’s defense, and asserts her own self-worth, by letting Rhyah know that Devi’s grief is not a problem, and that their family is not a charity case. By the end of the series, it’s clear that every character’s flaws come from places of fear and generational trauma rather than malice. And who is to say if Nalini’s reaction would be any different if Devi and Des reversed roles, given her own deep-seated judgment and prejudice?
Until these tense conversations challenge long-held stigmas, perhaps Nalini’s affirmation to Devi can suffice: “You are never too much and always enough.”
Image by freestocks is licensed under the Unsplash License.
