Never Have I Ever Season 4 Review: ...Had A Bittersweet Goodbye

The biggest problem I have with the final season of "Never Have I Ever" is that it introduces new characters that we've never seen before, but who were apparently there the whole time. For example, in the first episode Devi is intent on getting a teacher's recommendation, but we've never met that teacher (Jenny O'Hara) before, even though the woman is such a battle-ax that she tends to tell everyone exactly what she thinks of their shenanigans ... for a single episode. It defies credibility, and feels like the product of either a writing shortcut or budget constraints.

Even more egregious is the handling of the new Hot Pocket and Devi's eventual short-term boyfriend, Ethan (Michael Cimino). The Hot Pocket has been the group consisting of Paxton and his friends for most of the show, but this year it's a group of totally new boys, led by Ethan. We're told that Ethan and his friends have been there the whole time, Ethan's just now grown to be tall enough to notice. More importantly, after Devi realizes that Ethan, to paraphrase Devi, isn't just a bad boy, he's a bad person, we never see him again. That feels especially silly because he's in Devi's classes.

Ethan was a last-minute addition because they needed someone to be Devi's boyfriend for a couple episodes and nothing more, and therefore the relationship wasn't as meaningful. While Devi has previously had another boyfriend outside of Paxton and Ben, he was Indian as well and his mother was friends with Devi's mother, so they had more of a connection. Plus, he went to another school, so it made sense that he didn't appear again after she stopped dating him. Ethan, on the other hand, was a delinquent at her high school. While she learned from the experience that it wasn't worth dating a bad boy, it wasn't necessarily a lesson she needed to learn.