June 2020: Never Have I Ever + RUN
Never have we ever not gone long on Substack! [Except maybe…the first time we were on Substack? Don’t fact-check this.] Same deal as last month, if you’re reading this in gmail, at the very bottom you’ll see a note that says “[Message clipped] View entire message” and by clicking that link you’ll be able to see the whole thing, and you can also always access the newsletter on the Pop Culture Pen Pals Substack website by clicking on the title. Thanks for reading!
Dear Kelsey,
To say that the last two months have felt like 2 years feels like a massive understatement. In fact, May and June were so long that when it came time to write this letter, I had to revisit the last episode of each of our shows because I wasn’t sure I even remembered what happened; something I’ve never had to do before. But that’s how long the last 2 months were.
Never Have I Ever and RUN are both very light and very thirsty, which honestly is the perfect way to take a breather from the past events of the last few months. The thirsty dynamics are totally different in each of them though: NHIE is about teen enemies turned friends turned lovers; RUN is about adult lovers reuniting after nearly 15 years apart.
gif: Devi and Ben high-fiving in a closet in Never Have I Ever
gif: Ruby and Billy facing each other while lying down in RUN. Ruby strokes Billy’s face.
I feel like being in my mid-twenties has uniquely equipped me to feel like both of these love stories could have been mine; like a ghost limb that can still sense movement. I’m just old enough that the possibility of reuniting with a high school or college sweetheart feels nostalgic and romantic (even though I married my college sweetheart, lol). Simultaneously, I’m young enough that the awkwardness and cluelessness of sexuality in adolescence feels painfully familiar to me and still all-too fresh. Both of these shows capture a vivid awkwardness to our sensuality in every stage of life, whether you’re a teenager or a mom rapidly nearing both middle-age and the crisis of self that seems to usually come along with it. Both Devi in NHIE and Ruby in RUN are cursed with a youthful self-consciousness and playfulness, and both bleed into their sexual encounters in equal amounts. And they both find themselves drawn to somewhat obnoxious, entitled men with a hard outer shell protecting an inner softness that we love so much in portrayals of men in television.
gif: Devi in Never Have I Ever sitting on a couch and saying, “I’m ready to bone.”
And that’s pretty much where the similarities between the two shows end. Never Have I Ever is about a teenage Indian-American girl named Devi (played by Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) who has recently lost her father and has never fully addressed her grief, or the psychosomatic ways it occasionally manifests—like being unable to walk for nearly a year after her father’s death. Devi is determined to lose her virginity and finally become “cool”, but her pursuit of one of the coolest guys in school, Paxton Hall-Yoshida (played so well by Darren Barnet), is largely unsuccessful and instead jeopardizes her friendships with some of her closest friends. Along the way, Devi also struggles with her relationship with her mother, Nalini; her cousin who lives with them, Kamala; and her conflicted relationship with her culture as a second-generation Indian-American.
gif: Devi in Never Have I Ever standing outside, wearing a blue sari, saying, “Where do I start?”
I’ve long enjoyed Mindy Kaling’s work, and when she announced that this was her new project I was really excited to see what she would do with it. I loved the direction she took with this show. It’s much sadder than anything she’s ever made, and I think it’s much more in touch with its heart. Kaling works her nearly-patented two-protagonists-who-aren’t-always-likable-but-we-still-like-them-because-they’re-good-for-each-other trope in her classic way, but these characters inspire the audience’s compassion more explicitly than what I’ve ever seen before in her work.
gif: Ben in Never Have I Ever wearing a button down, looking worried, standing in front of a window saying, “I need every loser I can get to make me look smarter by comparison.”
Let’s talk about Ben Gross for a minute. Ben Gross is, at first glance, a total douche. He’s a smug little SOB who is fiercely competitive and loves reminding Devi how uncool she is. But the ways his character unfurls over time and how we get to see behind-the-scenes into his life (in an episode beautifully narrated by Andy Samberg)? *Chef kiss*. Jaren Lewinson acted his ass off in this role and he was perfect for it.
(This is a small thing, but I absolutely LOVE when coming-of-age stories cast leads that are around the same age because I think it shows so much in the acting, and the fact that Jaren and Maitreyi are only a year apart in age [19 and 18, respectively] makes the chemistry of the show really soar.)
gif: Ben and Devi sitting next to each other in movie theater chairs in Never Have I Ever. Ben’s hands are out in front of him and Devi is saying, “Okay, now it’s weird. You’ve made it weird.”
I laughed. I cried. I cheered at the last episode when the show reconciled. This show really has it all—love, grief, romance, friendship, a complicated mother-daughter relationship that resolves beautifully. I hope this show gets the credit and attention it deserves. (Apparently it’s been renewed for a second season, which I am THRILLED about!)
gif: Devi high-fiving Fabiola and then Eleanor in Never Have I Ever
RUN, in contrast, is…..sort of a comedy? It’s technically a comedy-drama, but it doesn’t really have laugh-out-loud moments to it. In RUN, Ruby (played by my queen, Merritt Wever) receives a text from her college ex-boyfriend, Billy (Domhnall Gleeson) saying nothing but the word: RUN. This text begins a series of shenanigans that lead to Ruby and Billy taking a train across the United States from New York to LA. Secrets are kept, crimes are committed, and both must make the decision of what happens next when the train ends.
gif: Ruby and Billy sitting next to each other at a train bar in RUN. Ruby is looking at Billy, who gives a thumbs-up.
gif: Ruby and Billy standing next to each other in a train hallway in RUN. Billy looks at Ruby and smirks as she says, “Shut up…”
This show is SO HORNY. It is A Lot. I personally love a good horny show, but the entire premise of the show relies on how convincing the chemistry between Ruby and Billy are, of which I honestly remained ambivalent. Some episodes the chemistry was there, but in the next episode the chemistry might be gone. It also relies somewhat on both characters being hot, and while I’m fully in for Merritt Wever, I truthfully remain unconvinced about the hotness of Domhnall Gleeson. Is he hot???? I truly do not know. I did love him in About Time though. (And, as you can see in the gif below, they clearly do both know how to kiss.)
gif: Ruby and Billy kissing in RUN.
I really loved the first half of the season, but my ambivalence deepened after chaos ensues in a town in the middle of nowhere. (Kansas maybe?) It just felt very chaotic, especially since we start perspective-switching to the POV of the police investigation and other characters in the community. Would I watch a second season? Absolutely. But would I give the first season 5/5 stars? Hmmm. I remain undecided.
gif: Ruby in RUN wearing a blue button down, looking down at her phone, and than looking up worriedly.
Writing this was a welcome respite from grading student essays! I hope you all enjoy this slightly more brief newsletter from me this month. 😂 Take some time to rest in the days and weeks to come!
All my love,
Hannah
Dear Hannah,
It’s May and we’re still in lockdown, which means that I officially took care of my “okay it’s summer now get this hair OFF MY BACK” annual-ish chop myself! I’m actually pretty pleased with how it looks, though admittedly my definition of “pleased with how it looks” is quite different now than it was three months ago. Some other things I’ve been doing with my spare time has been reading pretty much anything by and about Shirley Jackson that I can get my hands on and giving even more thought than usual to the exploits of Carlisle Cullen, medical fraud.
gif: Edward Cullen looking concerned
(me thinking about how his career just DOESN’T ADD UP!!!!)
Okay NOW it’s actually June, but I didn’t want to delete the one paragraph I wrote in May, considering how challenging I have traditionally found introductory paragraphs. Anyway, both of our topics this month are about people making decisive moves in their romantic/sexual lives, which I love to see and also may be why I feel uniquely unqualified to write about both!
First lets talk about…..Never Have I Ever!
As someone who couldn’t watch past the first couple episodes of Sex Education (by all accounts a fantastic show!) because all of the teens having sex bummed me, an involuntary celibate, out too much, I approached Never Have I Ever with skepticism. One of the major premises of the show is that Devi and her friends are on a mission to bang the hot people they’re into, which I actually think was overemphasized in the trailer, but hey “teen sex comedy” is a genre ~the culture~ can disturbingly not get enough of! But also “teen grief comedy” is a market that 13 Reasons Why already has its disturbing hold on.
gif: Devi in Never Have I Ever sitting on a couch and saying, “I’m ready to bone.”
(yes okay we both used this gif but how could I pass up the opportunity to say “it me”? true before quarantine, even TRUER NOW)
Really more than anything else, I would say this show is about grief, not only the death Devi and her mother are trying to navigate through the loss of her [extremely hot] dad, but Eleanor’s grief about the mother who abandoned her, Ben’s grief about the parents who ignore him. It’s also about friendship, cultural and sexual identity, and anger. The portrayal of Devi’s anger reminded me a little bit of the anger in Dead to Me, though it’s handled much more gently here, because Devi is a child and her anger clearly stems from the trauma of her father’s sudden death. Nuanced portrayals of anger, especially by girls and women, are my absolute jam, and I appreciated the way the show carefully identifies Devi’s anger as both self-protective and sometimes destructive.
gif: Devi’s dad dancing in slow motion in the living room
(besides the point but this….is….Devi’s…...dad. I am too quarantined for this!!!!!)
I also appreciated the way the show embraced the multiplicity of romantic/sexual desire as both an end in itself as well as a vehicle for growth and exploration in other areas of one’s life. Growing up, I was taught a very flawed binary about sex: that what men are looking for in sex is physical gratification and that what women are looking for in sex is emotional intimacy and connection. (I don’t want to get into everything wrong about this, but point the first: the gender binary is fake.) Naturally life is….much more complicated than this, and what every individual is looking for in sex is unique and contextual, which makes it so frustrating! What I’m trying to say here is that that the show does a good job of recognizing the both/and of sex — that the pursuit of it can be about avoiding grief, and seeking emotional intimacy, and status or anxiety about feeling “behind”......and it can also be about getting horned up over some distracting pectorals! And sometimes all of it at the same time!
That actually leads me to addressing the 30 year old in the room, Darren Barnet, also known as Paxton Hall-Yoshida. There’s a grand tradition of people in their 20s playing teenagers on TV, but this show really just…….swings all the way for the fences. I don’t really have more to say, other than whomever carved his jaw out of stone owes me some COMPENSATION!
gif: Paxton saying “You’re a weird girl” to Devi in Never Have I Ever
(you can tell me I’m a weird girl Darren!!!!)
All that being said, I too was all the way on Team Ben, both because I love a good enemies-to-romance storyline, and because I have no illusions about how potent I have always found a cocky nerd. I’m also impressed with how the love triangle was managed; often women and girls in these types of storylines are punished for wanting the “hot jock” when the nerdy friend (or in this case, frenemy) is right there, but Devi’s desire for Paxton and then eventually Ben is handled pretty even-handedly, with serious considerations given to the attractions they both have.
gif: Ben in Never Have I Ever sitting at a table saying, “She, uh, truly obliterated the competition.”
I think there’s some room for improvement — there were several cringey jokes (I don’t think, “get it? he’s fat!” was ever actually spoken aloud, but it might as well have been), and I found the narrator pretty annoying (though I doubt that will go away AND I also delighted in the Andy Samberg-narrated episode). I also want to note its participation in a widespread TV trope in which black women [Niecy Nash in this case, who is always a delight and deserves all the roles] often play therapists for non-black characters. Writer Aisha Harris wrote about this on Slate a couple years ago, and there have been even more examples since then.
One final thought on this before I move onto the Thirstiest Topic Of All — Poorna Jagannathan as Nalini (Devi’s mom) absolutely stole every scene she was in. Complicated mother-daughter relationships onscreen are also my jam, and Jagannathan encompassed every bit of the humor, love, and depth needed to balance out the mother part of the equation, and made me want to go watch everything she’s ever been in.
gif: Nalini sitting at a table saying, “Why do you let that Ben Gross rile you up so much? He’s like 5’2”.”
Okay now onto RUN!
If Never Have I Ever was a pleasant, escapist nod to the yawning maw of my horniness, the existence of RUN is a direct affront, pouring lemon juice right into the gravelly scraped knee. Margaret H. Willison described it on Appointment Television as, “An aggressive attack of horniness on me in these trying times,” to which I can only add a hearty “hear hear!!!!”
gif: Ruby in RUN yelling and pumping her fists in a field while holding a bag
The dark magic of this show and the potency of the sexiness of both leads [for me it is BOTH I am VERY bought in on both of them] is that Merritt Wever, in her depth of wisdom and charisma, consistently moves her tongue around in her open mouth but it IS VERY SEXY?? Yes, Merritt. Yes.
gif: Ruby in RUN nodding while looking at Billy and moving her tongue around in her open mouth
(how is she doing this??????)
I have also been deeply devoted to Domhnall Gleeson ever since the 2013 time travel romantic comedy About Time, and he’s only gotten hotter since!!!! For me the two of them have absolutely STUNNING chemistry, and honestly I am surprised that that train didn’t catch on fire every time they looked at each other. (For that matter, I’m surprised that I did catch on fire every time they looked at each other!!!) I think it’s honestly a real fact that there is more sexiness in one (1!!!!) shared eye contact between them than I have experienced in my entire life but honestly I feel grateful to have even witnessed it????????
gif: Billy (shirtless) and Ruby in a train berth. Billy is kneeling when the top bunk falls open and hits him on the head
(HBO refusing to give me a full on sex scene even thought they’re HB-FUCKING-O!!!)
That chemistry is the most potent thing the show has going for it, and admittedly the show…..dissolves a bit in the back half. Romantic-comedy-thriller sounds extremely compelling, but for this plot at least I think they needed more than 7 half-hour episodes to really carry it off. (I know! I’m shocking myself by even saying this! MORE episodes??? Who am I!!!!!!) Maybe even one more episode would have been able to restore balance to the plot, but the beats of trying to thwart Billy’s former assistant Fiona ended up overpowering the subtle and devastating beats of their relationship.
Glen Weldon’s NPR review of the show (and on Pop Culture Happy Hour) pointed out something really fascinating about the use of flashbacks on the show: “they're to moments that, doled out over the course of the series as they are, directly affect our perceptions of these characters in the current moment. They don't fill in tedious backstory, they change our understanding of what we're seeing.” Every flashback really felt like a twist of the knife, and ironically as the show got more twisty plot-wise it clouded over the impact of the regret, hurt, and hope both of the leads are trying to manage throughout the show.
gif: Billy in RUN wearing a dark blue button-down in a darkly lit room smirking, raising his eyebrows, and nodding
(lets out low chuckle)
Maybe it’s that mingling of regret and hope that makes the show so intoxicating in the first few episodes. Ruby and Billy embody more than just a craving for the escapist “what if” — they carry the weight of past decisions made and the fear of decisions ahead of them. That spark of recognition and hope is a lovely, exciting feeling for them, but it’s also dangerous and painful because it doesn’t confirm what they’ve told themselves for years: that they were better off without each other. It reignites their desire, but it also reignites their doubt, and the show is at its best when they’re both trying to find some balance on that seesaw.
Turns out that my talent for making fun, sexy things be sad remains undefeated!!! It’s getting late and I still need to find some gifs for this thing, so let me just say that I hope your sparks of hope this month burn bright and steady, and that you’re presented with all the Merritt Wever gifs you deserve,