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But the actual love story that anchors everything is between Devi and her mom, Nalini.
Her mom, meanwhile, hardens in the absence of her dad.
Neither Devi nor her mom are particularly literate in the handling of their own trauma.
Both scoff at therapy as a practice, though they grudgingly benefit from it.
Theyre students of a textbook that might be familiar to fans of Mindy Kaling, who co-created the show.
Kaling also foretold the brusqueness of Devi, a character loosely based on her younger self.
I like to move forward, she said then, about her reaction to her moms death.
I dont know how much it would help for me to think about things too much.
It just seems so fucking unfair.
Devi throws tantrums, breaks windows, screams into the air.
She views the loss of her virginity as a challenge equally important as admission into an Ivy League school.
Shes steely and unforgiving.
Its more affecting when it appears perhaps, because of how rarely its verbally expressed.
Cultural mores might limit affection, and, counterintuitively, heighten it.
Onscreen, daughters often fall short of mothers expectations.
The Disney movieBravecame to mind as I watchedNever Have I Ever.
Of course, the daughter is to some degree a copy of the mothers younger self.
Why dont you raise her?
Nalini asks Mohan, in a private conversation Devi overhears.
Because I give up.
Shes too headstrong and doesnt listen.
Whoever this child is, I am through with her.
Shes no daughter of mine.
I just feel like Im really struggling to raise you, Nalini says.
I understand why youre struggling to raise me, Devi responds.
Its because you dont like me.
She unloads a confession: she heard her mom disavow her that terrible night.
Whats not fair is that I lost the only parent who cared about me, she continues.
Nalinis face registers the reasonableness of Devis logic.
Yet their incompatibilities seem born out of how similar they actually are.
Devi closes the episode with a haunting line: I wish you were the one who died.
It rings instantly with the sound of regret shell surely wish she hadnt said it and of truth.
Devi begins the episode having run away from home to camp out at Bens house.
By the end she has reunited with her mother.
They say sorry, and confess, finally, in words, that theydolove each other.
Still, Nalinis love is tinged with a conditional pragmatism.
