Never Have I Ever’s Devi could be the next major piece of BPD representation in the line of Rebecca Bunch or Bojack Horseman if Mindy Kaling wanted her to be.
By: Matthew Ramsey
Tags: Netflix, Film, Mental Health Awareness, Mental Health, TV

Never Have I Ever’s Devi could be the next major piece of BPD representation in the line of Rebecca Bunch or Bojack Horseman if Mindy Kaling wanted her to be. Matthew Ramsey Jul 15·4 min read

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Never Have I Ever Isabella B. Vosmikova/Netflix

SPOILERS AHEAD FOR BOTH SEASONS OF NEVER HAVE I EVER

Let me start out by saying that I adore this show.

I really do. In a world of overblown, dramatic teen shows like Riverdale and artsy, complex teen dramas like Euphoria, Never Have I Ever is a down-to-earth teen comedy that balances between the genre it’s in and the dramatic, artsy styles of its contemporaries. The lead cast is diverse, and the writing feels like the most relatable for any teen show on the air right now. It’s also been a wonderful showing of what teen mental health actually is. Or at least, it’s trying to be. Main character Devi, played excellently by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, is a bold, self-thinking teenage girl who goes through the regular stories of high school.

We learn that her dad died before the first season started, and she almost moves to India by the end of it, all throughout going to her therapist. But Devi has one major problem, and that’s her compulsive, risk-taking behavior that normally ends up being self-destructive, a la her almost life-ruining desperation to be with Paxton Hall-Yoshida, or most recently, dating two boys at once, getting a nose piercing at a tattoo parlor in the middle of the night, or being determined to tear apart her ex Ben and his girlfriend Aneesa (who recently moved from her old school after being bullied for her anorexia), the latter of which ended up in Devi accidentally letting loose the fact that Aneesa has the eating disorder (which she did not know at the time). Her decisions happen frequently, even though she constantly realizes they end up being the wrong choices. She also suffers from anxiety, anger and what seems like mood swings. Most of these decisions from season 2 are to win one of the two boys over.

She all and all seems very similar to one character that was on television before her — Rebecca Bunch from Rachel Bloom’s Crazy Ex Girlfriend. Bunch talked to Josh randomly in NY, (who she had dated at a summer camp in high school), then moved from NY (where she just got a promotion at her job) to California (where she gets a brand NEW job), became friends with Josh current girlfriend, kissed that girlfriend, became friends with his entire family, eventually becoming a BRIDESMAID at one of his sister’s weddings, and tries to move back to NY (even after both the jobs) when she finds out Josh doesn’t feel the same, then in season 2 gets into a love triangle with him and his friend, only for his friend to move and then for her to get into a love triangle with her new boss and Josh, only for her to do even crazier things that escalated even MORE when she chooses Josh and he proposes, leading to him abandoning her at the altar, which leads Rebecca to try to get revenge on him, which ends up with her completely cutting off everyone she knew, becoming dangerously suicidal, flying to her emotionally abusive mother’s home in New York, and eventually cutting her off too after she realizes what she was planning, and overdosing on the plane ride to god knows where. When she gets back to California and she goes to the doctors, he diagnoses Rebecca with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), which is a mental health disorder that is commonly associated with all the things that Devi is plagued with. To sum it up, Devi essentially is a younger version of Bunch in a sense, with lesser extremes and less emotions. When you think about it, it’s more or less what this show seems to be leading up to be. Yet there is almost no foreshadowing of that happening.

As a show that proclaims to be a forefront for advocating teen’s mental health, not taking the big step with giving Devi BPD seems like a person not being truthful to their campaign promises. There are have really been only 2 confirmed characters in TV with BPD in the past 5 years, those being Rebecca and Bojack Horseman from the Netflix original series. The amount of noise it would make would be huge. And, it would push positive representation for BPD in media. It seems like a win win, so it’s baffling how Mindy and co. haven’t come to that conclusion yet. Devi even has a therapist similar in character to Dr. Akopian in Dr. Jamie Ryan (which could also just be a bi-product of the sassy yet comforting black woman therapist, which could stem from the early 1800s racist “mammy” caricatures,) who could easily diagnose her in a poignant scene. In a show full of representation, this would be some of the biggest TV had seen in a long time.