EchoBlog

It is a truth universally acknowledged that medical professionals shouldn’t watch Grey’s Anatomy and lawyers shouldn’t watch Suits and therapists shouldn’t watch Shrinking because no one wants to be in a room with a person screaming THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN at the screen. Which is why I, a college admissions counselor, should probably not have gotten as invested as I did in Never Have I Ever, a Netflix series about Devi Vishwakumar, a high school student who wants more than anything to get into Princeton.

Of course, the show is about more than that. It’s about grief and rage and yearning and the weirdness of being a teenager. Devi’s father collapses and dies at her ninth-grade orchestra concert in the opening episode, and for the next four seasons, Devi struggles with the aftermath, tries to lose her virginity, feuds with arch-rival Ben Gross, and butts heads with her mother. (Let’s pause here briefly to gush over admire her mother, the iconic Dr. Nalini Vishwakumar. Nalini is a widow who, after the sudden loss of her husband, is tasked with raising an angry, grieving teen, keeping an eye on her drop-dead gorgeous niece Kamala, who is getting a PhD at Caltech and the attention of every red-blooded male in greater Southern California, and caring for her (also) widowed mother-in-law, all while running a busy dermatology practice. The woman is legend. Did I mention she is always impeccably turned out? Did I mention that I covet, desperately, her ability to combine murder eyes with withering politeness?

Now for the grievances, aka the part where I yell THIS WOULD NEVER HAPPEN at the screen:

In an early episode called “(Never Have I Ever) …felt Super Indian,” Devi meets with Ron Hansen-Battarchaya, a sought-after college counselor famous for the fact that 90 percent of his students get into Ivies. Ron tells Devi dismissively that she’s just another hardworking Indian kid with good grades and high scores (which is mean but true—ask any admissions officer wading through a sea of applicants the vast majority of whom have good grades and high scores). But then he remembers: she’s the hardworking Indian kid with a tragically dead dad, and he’s like, “Aha! Write about losing your dad and you’re golden,” and Devi, who hasn’t even come close to making sense of the magnitude of her loss, fires back, “I don’t need some washed-up white dude who leases a Tesla telling me what makes me special.” Snap!

So Devi submits an essay to Princeton that, as Admissions Officer Akshara tells her in a phone call (WOW, SERIOUSLY? NEVER HAVE I EVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING, BUT FINE, WHATEVER), is very well-written. Very academic. Remarkable for its frequent use of the word “dichotomy.” In other words, it’s an unremarkable, try-hard essay in which Devi fails to show who she really is (Akshara’s words).

I’ve worked as a college counselor for 18 years, and I’m here to tell you that nothing strikes more terror in the heart of a young person than being asked to show who they really are, especially with so much at stake. I mean, who wants to be vulnerable and exposed? In a college essay, of all places? Like, is Devi supposed to share that she misses her dad and envies/loves her drop-dead gorgeous cousin and spent the first half of high school lusting after Paxton Hall-Yoshida (whose collegiate swim career she derailed, btw) and recently had a cringe-fest of a hook-up with her arch-rival, and doesn’t know whether she’s Indian or American or what, and has only recently begun to understand how hard and lonely it’s been not just for her, but also for her mom? Of course we know all that because we’ve been watching the show. But how is Devi supposed to tell that story and convince Akshara (who, it would appear, single-handedly runs Princeton’s admission office) to let her in?

Encouraged by Ben, former arch-rival and now her biggest champion, Devi writes a “better” essay (we know it’s better, because it works! Devi is admitted to Princeton off the waitlist! Confetti emoji!). We viewers are satisfied, because what is this if not the perfect culmination of the hero’s journey? Devi’s quest for a Princeton acceptance is successful only after she has been humbled, visited the underworld (which, at Sherman Oaks High, means the dark place you go to after being rejected or waitlisted at ALL the Ivies after foolishly (hubristically!) applying only to the Ivies), and emerged appropriately chastened.

Except that the new, “better” essay is not about Devi at all. It’s a tribute to her dad. It’s a series of softly-lit flashbacks to Mohan Vishwakumar being great, and it makes the argument that Devi should be admitted because Princeton would be admitting her and, in effect, her dad.

Don’t get me wrong. Devi’s dad is great. He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s playful, he’s eternally optimistic, he perfectly complements the more guarded, more skeptical Nalini. He leaves a gaping hole after his untimely death. He’s the dad we all want (witness this brilliant mashup of Devi’s imagined conversation with her deceased dad and what most actual dads are like):

not because it would never happen, but because it happens ALL. THE. TIME. I’ve seen it in my practice over and over, and it’s called Foisting Parent Dreams on Children Not Old Enough to Know Better. I’m talking about a scene that comes right after Devi’s therapist, played by the incomparable Niecy Nash, asks Devi to consider that maybe her Princeton dream, with such power over her self-worth, might not be serving her, and Devi flashes back to this:

It’s the first day of first grade. Little Devi and her dad are having breakfast, and the dad starts a totally normal and not at all troubling conversation that any parent might start with a seven-year-old:

The first-grade-to-college pipeline! Because you need to start preparing early, as all parents seeking college advice for children who don’t yet have all their adult teeth know.

And then the next question:

WTF, Devi’s dad? Why would you ask your seven-year-old kid where she’d like to go to college? Where do you think she’d like to go? To Baskin-Robbins, to the park, to Chuck E. Cheese (ew, but please note their slogan: WHERE A KID CAN BE A KID). Of course sweet Devi wants to go to Princess College (which, btw, should totally be a thing).

But no, says Mohan. There’s no such thing as Princess College. There is, however…

…a Princeton College. (Ahem, university.) Good to get clear on that when they’re young!

‘Nuff said. I mean, why would you even want to go to a number two school?

And why would Devi say anything other than “ ‘Kay, I’ll go there” to the man she loves more than anything else in the world?

Watch what happens next: the shift where just like that, Princeton becomes Devi’s idea:

DEVI IS NOT AIMING HIGH, MOHAN! DEVI IS TRYING TO PLEASE YOU BECAUSE SHE IS A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WHO LOVES YOU AND THINKS YOU’RE THE MOST KNOWLEDGEABLE, MOST AMAZING HUMAN BEING THAT EVER LIVED!

aaaand it’s all settled. “I’m glad we came up with this plan before the bus came,” says Mohan, and then he goes and dies and now Devi is left holding the Princeton dream because it’s a way to hold on to her dad.

And here’s the twist: Devi’s realization that Mohan will be a part of her forever, Princeton or not, is ultimately what gets her in. (We all know this is true: you have to renounce the dream to have the dream.) Princeton is the happy ending. But I still want to know: what is Princess College? Why isn’t there one? What if little Devi were given permission to chase that dream? And will grown-up Devi foist her dreams on her children, or will she let them find their own?

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