![]() After floundering a bit, Fabiola finds the right place for her that she feels has that special spark. I fully support a character not choosing higher education as a path, but this seemed like a strange way to go about it. Huh? Is the message really that if one of the top schools in the country doesn’t want you, then you should just give up on formal education altogether? Why wouldn’t she look at other schools? Find one that’s a better fit? Why would someone who has spent so much time being so determined give up just because four people at one school didn’t like her particular style? I was troubled by the message. When Eleanor tries out for Juilliard and is told that she’s not good enough, she decides to bag the whole idea of applying to conservatories and instead graduates early so she can start auditioning for acting jobs. Devi has never been able to see anything beyond the possibility of Princeton, and the show does some work to balance the expectations and the realities of school without dashing her dreams entirely. Meanwhile, all of the kids are busy choosing their colleges, which, as you can imagine, turns into a hot mess, but they also learn a lot about themselves and what they need going forward. I wish that Devi had the opportunity to finally and fully choose Devi Vishwakumar. Look, I think both these kids have done a huge amount of growing and changing over the course of these four seasons, but they also still have a really long way to go, and I would have loved to have seen them realize that they share a special bond, and then move the fuck forward with their lives separately. Plus, I don’t believe Ben’s eleventh hour revelation about being in love with Devi is enough to overcome their just mountains of toxic baggage. I refuse to accept their easily hurled barbs as cute flirting because that’s just reasserting the long history of boys being mean to girls and the whole world treating it as a cute masculine way to express their emotions. They are ultra competitive, incredibly unkind, prone to shut the other out when angry, and show little ability to regularly communicate. In four seasons I have yet to be convinced that these Devi and Ben are actually healthy for each other in any way. How exhausting for everyone that arguments are still revolving around a boy and, because of that, the power still ultimately resides with him. ![]() Things then go down the usual route of miscommunication, Devi’s hot-headed antics, Ben’s lies, and eventually a mutual cooling off. She deflowered Ben just as much as he deflowered her! I’m not saying she doesn’t have a right to be angry about the way he treated her afterwards, of course! Or betrayed! Or generally gross and icky! Still, she keeps talking about how Ben “took her virginity,” and I keep waiting for someone to correct her, to at least say that the whole concept of virginity is a construct, or that Devi was a fully active and willing participant in the sex, which she should be proud of and own and not give him that kind of power. To put it mildly, FUCK THAT! By the time they’re back in school, Ben is dating Margot ( Victoria Moroles) and Devi is pissed, and rightfully so. Long story short, he ends up saying he’s busy all summer and doesn’t have time to see her. To make matters worse, Devi takes advice from Fabiola and Eleanor about what to text him afterwards, while Ben seeks advice from a pro-basketball player he corners at his gym about how to respond. ![]() ![]() Then Ben finally says he should probably “hit the hay” and offers to call her an Uber. Devi just lies there repeating how Ben was inside her. In fact, in the words of our trusty narrator John McEnroe, “it’s a shit show.” They are both otherworldly levels of awkward afterward. With Devi’s initiation, she and Ben Gross finally take the train to bone town and the results are less than awe-inspiring. Forewarned is forearmed, so know that spoilers will abound below. And yes, again, it’s totally normal to be this invested in the machinations of fictional teenage romance, thank you so much for asking. ![]() On the other hand, there’s no sugar-coating the fact that, even though I knew pretty much from the start that the show’s creators were likely going to give Devi a romantic ending I railed against, I was still John-McEnroe levels of enraged watching it play out. It’s been a joy to watch these four generations of women learn and grow together over the course of the series without feeling like they were constantly stuck in a position where they had to carefully explain their culture, traditions, and choices to a non-Indian audience. The highlight of this final season, like every season of Never Have I Ever, continues to be the dynamics, vulnerabilities, growth, humor, and cultural touchstones expressed through Devi Vishwakumar’s (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) matriarchal South Indian family unit. ![]()
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