Never Have I Ever . . . Thought I'd Write a Blog Post About Mindy Kaling

And Velma.

Mindy Kaling is the driving force behind a new "adult" cartoon take on the Scooby Doo characters, minus Scooby, called Velma and centering on a character called Velma Dinkley, beloved nerdy member of the Mystery, Inc. gang.

Mostly, people hate.  I've watched a few episodes and I am not a fan.

SOME of the criticism comes from dude-bros who decry it for being too "woke":  Velma's Indian, Daphne is Asian (with two moms), and Norville (not called Shaggy in this show) is mixed race (black mom, white dad).

I could give a fig about their races.  I'm cool with these originally white characters being a different race.  They come from an era where white was the default and any other race was exotic, at best, and a comic relief caricature, at worst.  It's high time that we have people of other races and cultures in our stories as just regular people.  Regular people aren't always white.

My beef with the show is deeper than the epidermis.  The characterization of Velma, Daphne, Fred (who remains white), and Norville bear no resemblance to the original characters in the countless iterations of Scooby Doo over the past fortyish years. The Velma in this show is not a confident nerd who employs her intellect to foil the villains, but an insecure, unpopular, obsessive, and, honestly, kind of mean girl. She's not even the smartest of the bunch anymore, asking "Norville" for help with math at one point.  The others are equally out of character.  This is not so much a "fresh look" on the old characters as a gutting and remodeling, like a 1920s bungalow in a gentrifying neighborhood.  Outside, looks similar to the original.  Inside, unrecognizable.

But this Buzzfeed article attempts to cast Velma as the next iteration of Mindy Kaling's self-loathing portrayals as an Indian-American female.  The writer says that Mindy Kaling has "a long career of writing and performing a specific kind of Indian woman:  dorky, self-absorbed, insecure, obsessed with attaining the romantic validation of caustic white guys, and eager to fling cultures under the bus to get it."  The Buzzfeed writer says, "More damning than her characters' obsession with white guy is their casually racist self-hatred" and notes the "collapse" of Kaling's characters into her actual self, or vice versa.  Essentially, the author is saying that all of Kaling's characters are about Kaling's own self-loathing as an Indian woman in America. Quite a casual and distant psychological analysis.  Quite an indictment of her work too.

I'm no expert on Mindy Kaling's career.  I’ve only ever actually seen her in the American version of The Office, and wasn’t taken by or offended by her character.  But I didn’t watch much of the show either because I found it sub-par to the British version. And I never watched The Mindy Project or Sex Lives of College Girls because everything I read about them suggested to me that they weren't my style.

I have watched Never Have I Ever, every single episode.  Mindy Kaling doesn't actually appear in it, but is the show's creator and executive producer.  It's a show about a teenaged Indian girl named Devi Vishwakumar, growing up in suburban Los Angeles.  She's dealing with the death of her father at a young age and generally growing up and being a teenager.  It's hilariously narrated by John McEnroe (and occasionally other people).  Devi has some rage issues, partly stemming from the death of her father and partly stemming from teen angst.  So the choice of McEnroe to be the one to tell her story is inspired. I love the show.

I feel that Never Have I Ever is NOT just a show about an Indian-American teenaged girl.  It's about an American teenaged girl, who is culturally Indian.  Distinction without a difference?  Maybe, but Devi Vishwakumar IS an archetype.  She's not an archetypal Indian teenager, but an archetypal American teenager, who is culturally Indian.  Devi’s repeated lapses in judgment and in the same general direction are infuriating sometimes.  WHY does she keep being so stupid?  But that’s a teenager thing, continually making the same or similar dumb mistakes and then, finally, FINALLY learning from them.

I saw Devi not as an archetypal ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) teenager, but as a confused teenager who happens to be Indian. She often rebels against her culture, and other times embraces it. I completely relate to that, even though I am definitely not an ABCD.

However, I was a smart teenaged girl once.  I could relate to Devi's desire to fit in, her being proud and feeling weird about being smart, her competitiveness competing with her laziness.  I even related to Devi alternately rebelling against and relating to her culture, only my culture was Southern-American-Cowboy, not South Asian.

Anyway, the idea of a smart teenaged girl, struggling to fit in and trying to distinguish herself from her cultural heritage is a universal theme everyone can embrace.  I do not see Devi Vishwakumar as a manifestation of one Indian-American woman's self-loathing, but a smart take on what it's like to be a teenaged girl in America.  As I said earlier in this post, it's high time that we have people of other races and cultures in our stories as just regular people.  Devi is a regular teenager who happens to be Indian.  We need to normalize the idea that not being white is normal. Never Have I Ever does that brilliantly.

Because I haven't seen the entirety of Kaling's oeuvre, I can’t speak to the larger point the Buzzfeed writer makes of Velma fitting neatly into Kaling’s own self-loathing.  But I can say this, I do not think that Devi Viswakumar is a manifestation of Kaling's self-loathing.  So I am not sure that Kaling even hates herself in the way the writer thinks she does.

But back to Velma . . . .

Because I'm not onboard with the idea that Kaling in some Freudian way repeatedly creates characters manifesting her own self-hatred, I can't say the Velma fits into that mold.  But I can say that the only resemblance the Velma TV show shares with Scooby Doo are the character names and character wardrobe.  There’s not a hint of the classic characters’ personalities.  They’re all loathsome and self-absorbed, except for “Norville,” who is now apparently the smart one.

Also, the idea that this cartoon was apparently made for grown ups is ridiculous.  It's filled with sexual innuendo, unfunny political jabs, and references to drugs, sex and violence. It’s the very essence of what children think adulthood is all about.  What makes Velma bad is not Mindy Kaling’s alleged self-loathing, which I take issue with, but that it thinks that puerile jokes about sex etc. is what amounts to adult humor.  It's not smart.  It's not funny.  And it's not even fun nostalgia because it makes these beloved characters unrecognizable.

Also, there’s no dog. 

Downtown Abbey

Imagine our surprise when we were watching The New Normal last week and one of the characters referred to it as"Downtown Abbey." That's what we call it! Has Ryan Murphy been spying on us?

Anyway, so now that everyone knows that Matthew and Sybil have joined the choir eternal (you didn't know?  Sorry! Spoiler Alert!), I figured I might as well delve a little into the Masterpiece Theater sensation, Downton Abbey.

When it first aired in the US, a couple of years ago, The Working Dad and I were all a'twitter. It was right up our street: Edwardian British costume drama. And the fact that it was written and produced by Julian Fellowes -- author of perhaps my favorite movie ever, Gosford Park -- was even more reason to tune in. And Maggie Smith! Professor McGonagall has never looked better.

So, of course we did tune in, and it did not immediately disappoint. It starts with the loss of the last male heir to Lord Grantham, squire of Downton, on the Titanic. Oh dear!

But in those days of entailed estates, it was a serious matter. So, here, Lord Grantham found himself with a distant cousin, a lawyer, son of a doctor, as his next male relative. A major part of the storyline deals with the ersatz romance of Mary, the Earl's eldest daughter, and Matthew, the new heir. (And I should say at the outset that this pairing has never captivated me, nor have I found it believable. Mary is a cold fish and Matthew should have gone for Lady Edith instead and left the haughty Mary a spinster.)

Still, there were things to keep my interest: the Bates/Anna romance was sweet (if not somewhat weird and uncomfortable), and Lady Sybil's political interests and her kindness to Gwen the housemaid who wanted to be a secretary are stand-outs for me.  Also, Thomas and O'Brien's machinations were classic moustache twirling soapy fodder. Somewhere in there, we learn that Thomas is gay and has had a dalliance with one of Mary's potential suitors. Oh and Mrs. Patmore's cataract surgery.....

But then: Oh, Julian, you nearly lost me!  Mr. Pamuk and Mary.

Really? We were really supposed to believe that such a vibrant, randy young man would just collapse and die whilst taking Mary's maidenhead?  (Or even that she would give it up to a virtual stranger, however hot, so easily?)  But, however improbable, it was certainly possible, so I went along with it. And I mean, look at those lovely dresses! So Season One ended with The Working Dad and me mostly still on board and more-or-less looking forward to Season Two.

So Season Two begins with World War I.  Matthew, having been spurned by Mary, gets engaged to Lavinia Swire and goes off to war.  Thomas, the evil footman, and William, a lesser footman also join Matthew in France, somehow all conveniently assigned to the same regiment. Thomas gets himself intentionally injured, so he can return home. William and Matthew are also injured, William fatally, but in a slow way so that he can return home to be a source of anguished guilt for Daisy, the kitchen maid, who likes him but doesn't like-him-like-him and who eventually marries him on his deathbed for pity (or friendship or both).

During the war, Downton Abbey is turned into a hospital/convalescent home for wounded soldiers, and Matthew, Thomas, and William are returned there.  There's some vague power struggle between Matthew's mom, the former nurse whose name escapes me, and Cora, Lady Grantham.  (A potentially interesting character:  she's one of those American heiresses known as Buccaneers, who were spirited off by title-rich-cash-poor young English noblemen in crass efforts to save the family manse with an infusion of American capital via their wives' fat dowries.)

Lady Sybil becomes a nurse and Lady Edith generally hangs out with the injured officers playing book-reader and secretary, while Mary pines unconvincingly for Matthew.  (Also Sybil falls in love with and eventually elopes with the chauffeur, the brooding Irishman Tom Branson, but more on them later.)

But what of poor Matthew? Lest you forget that this is a soap opera, Matthew sustains a back injury that has left him paralyzed from the waist down. This worries all concerned for, if Matthew cannot reproduce, Downton lacks an heir and the estate is doomed . . . again.  Matthew attempts to release Lavinia from the engagement, but she stands by him, like a good plot device and soon enough, with the help of a little physical therapy, and the sang froid sort of love that only Mary can provide, Matthew walks again!

But that's not the only heir excitement that our aristos experience at Downton Hospital. A mysterious Canadian officer, face covered in bandages, claims to be the true heir, presumed drowned on the Titanic!  Yes!, he has no British accent, but somehow, Lady Edith is convinced it must be he.  Alas, he hoofs it when people start to question his veracity.  So Downton is safe for Matthew and Lavinia!

Yes, Matthew and Lavinia.  For even as he recognizes his love for Mary, and even as she covets what she cannot have (e.g., Matthew and the Downton estate that comes with it), Matthew is going to stand by Lavinia as she stood by him.  He will marry where he does not love because, after all, it's the right thing to do.

Good thing for him that the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 takes Lavinia out quickly and with very little fuss.

Hooray!  Matthew's free to marry Mary (I guess).  So after some hand-wringing on his part and a lovely Christmas episode, he proposes to Mary and she accept him.

I've got to tell you that the bandaged-faced heir nearly lost The Working Dad and me.  Actually, it did lose The Working Dad.  Combine it with the miracle cure of Matthew Crawley, and the framing (or not) of Mr. Bates for the murder of his estranged and charactaturely evil wife, and it's starting to feel a bit like One Life to Live, but in really fancy dress.  We swore we'd not watch Season Three.  It was getting to be too ridiculous.

But then . . . Season Three rolled around and, well, there wasn't much else on, even with Bunheads returning for a second season, so we set the DVR and started watching again.  In this season, I fear, Mr. Fellowes, you may have lost us for good.

Not because you killed off Matthew (thank you, by the way) and Lady Sybil (a shame, she was nice), but because your lovely program has wandered so far down Soap Opera Avenue as to become an unintentional parody.

First, the best thing about Season Three:  The episode in which Lady Sybil dies in childbirth of eclampsia.  It was affecting and gripping.  It was a great episode with excellent acting, but particularly by the man who plays Tom Branson.  Well done.

But one episode cannot make a season, but a lot of silly can ruin it.

For instance, it appears that the overarching theme of Season Three is "Lord Grantham is a puddin'-headed douche."  Don't believe me?  Here's a general run-down, of his increasingly stupid and/or destructive moves:

• Loses Cora's fat dowry in an improvident railway investment in Canada.
• Forbids his middle daughter from marrying/seeing the only guy who has ever given her a bit of attention (except for Bandages in Season Two), and succeeds in running him off in such a way that she is jilted at the alter.
• Having ensured Edith's spinsterhood, scorns Edith's efforts to be useful by becoming a journalist.
• Insists that a doctor even more toffee-nosed and douchey than himself treat Sybil during her labor, thus ensuring that she would receive inadequate treatment for her pre-eclampsia and ensuring her untimely death.
• Insists that Tom Branson not name Sybil's child after her departed mother and further insists that Baby Sybil be Christened Anglican and not Catholic like her father.  (Thankfully, Lord Destruction loses this battle.)
• Throws a hissy fit when Matthew points out that he might not be a good manager of money, and suggests investing with a guy named Ponzi.

I suppose that Fellowes was trying to illustrate that Lord Grantham was watching himself become a relic in his own lifetime and was not coping well with the rapid changes in his world, or his loss of power.  But did he really have to suggest investing with Charles Ponzi in one of the later episodes?

Other silliness in Season Three:

• Ethel, the former-housemaid-former-prostitute-turned-cook, is too proud not to put "prostitute" on her resume.
• The suicide by pie-crust by the late Mrs. Bates.
• The convenient inheritance by Matthew of Lavinia's father's money to save Downton, again, and then Matthew's even more convenient death at the end of the season leaving the run of the estate to completely and totally inept Lord Grantham.

I could go on, but you get my drift.  The series has steadily spiraled into "evil twin" territory.

Julian Fellowes says that he had to kill off Matthew Crawley and Sybil Branson when their actors did not renew for a fourth season because it was the only thing that made sense.  (Which I dispute . . . I think it was spite that killed the characters, but that's for another day.)  However, I wonder . . . could it be that he's setting up a Jazz Age resurrection plot for Season Five, should one of them wish to return?  I mean, why not at this rate?  Surely, it can be explained by the discovery of some forgotten identical twin cousin or something, like on The Patty Duke Show.

But before I leave it, I want to make clear:  Sure, it's all good fun, I guess.  But this series could have been so much more.  The Tom and Sybil relationship could have be so interesting in Ireland, had we been allowed to watch it there.  It would have been even more fascinating to see Tom hanging out with Patrick Pearse or, I don't know, William Butler Yeats and Maud Gonne.  It could have been so interesting.

But I suppose stories of political intrigue in Ireland during the fight for home rule aren't really the sort of upstairs/downstairs affair that Fellowes was looking to generate.

Anyway, I was disappointed at the end of Season Three, not because of Matthew's death.  (That came as a welcome relief.  At least we won't be tortured further by the literally unbelievable romance of Matthew and Mary.)  I was disappointed that the series seems to drift ever-more-cartoonish.

Will we watch Season Four?  Oh, probably, if there's nothing better on . . . but we won't like it.  Maybe we could make a drinking game:  every time Lord Grantham makes a ridiculous pronouncement, take a shot.  Every time Mary gives someone a withering look take two shots.  Every time a fellow gives Edith attention and then leaves take three.  Hate watching can be fun.