Growth Asian-American, I do not harbor great hopes for representation in television. As a child who consumes voraciously TV in the aughts, I most often identified with Rory Gilmore and Willow Rosenberg that the one or two characters of color in Gilmore Girls and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My expectations for the representation does not trigger when the Asian has more functions. I was happy to see the Asian book of jobs, even if their stories were not my own.
This attitude, however, changed dramatically when I saw Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher really excellent I’ve Never. My takeaway from a blissful five-hour binge was that I should expect more significant of the diversity of showrunners. The series moves from the race very well, depicting it as something that informs the experience, while also allowing the characters have personalities and conflicts beyond its origins.
I’ve never normalizes diversity, instead of treating it as exceptional.
I’ve Never normalizes the diversity, instead of treating it as exceptional. By Hollywood standards, Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) the friendship trio with Eleanor (Ramona Young), and Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) seems utopian multiracial fantasy. For me, it was just my high school reality. I grew up in San Jose neighborhood full of Asians and Latinx immigrant families. Being an immigrant child, of course, has colored my experience, but I was not around to unpacking generational trauma, or become obsessed with being Asian.
In the show, Devi’s Indian heritage is, of course, a part of her life — she celebrates Ganesh Puja and faces judging aunts. But she is also in love with American gems like Nick Jonas and Riverdale. In the same way, my friends and I exchanged trash fanfiction of Harry Potter and wept over Sherlock. (OK, these are technically British, but still!) I will neither confirm nor deny if we have the eyes of the Paxton Hall-Yoshidas of our swim team.
Due to the fact that most of the characters in I’ve Never are people of color, will get a breather to be more than broad stereotypes or stand-ins for ideas about race. Devi and her friends have memorable quirks. They are not, as many shows have done before, the minority friends. Eleanor is a sensitive theatre child with the mom problems. Fab is a robotics nerd that is trying to get out. And then, we have the protagonist, Devi, whose thirst for the competition could be just the edge of his thirst for losing your virginity.
Specific characterization creates a foundation for the layers of stories about universal themes. One of the dominant themes in I’ve Never is the duel. Devi is not always a goody-two-shoes that sympathetic — she is often selfish and flaky. But Kaling and Fisher carefully pull the threads together to represent it as a realistic teenager who is facing the loss of their father and their troubled relationship with his mother.
Speaking of her mom, Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan) also emerges as a fully realized character. His immigrant origin is not set aside, but not singularly defined. Equipped with a sharp wit and the sick of the burns, she is not only a flattened, stern Asian parent. Nalini actual experiences of joy and sadness — we see happily riding her husband on a motorbike along the beach and with tenderness, and broke down its walls in the therapy.
Along with the projects, such as To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Half of That, I’ve Never I’m excited about the possibilities in the future for Asian-American representation. Because the youth of Asia girls deserve to see themselves as something more than just the minority shoehorned in a white cast. They should see themselves as the heroes of their stories — or, better still, to the rich and poor protagonists.
