Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever is back for season two, serving up all the nerdy lesbian content once again!
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
For those of you who have followed the show, you probably remember that Fabiola’s coming out was a central secondary-character storyline last season. We loved to see Fab find herself and start to live her life more authentically; including starting to date her girlfriend, Eve. The first season focused a lot on Fab coming to terms with being gay and finding herself within her girlfriend — something a lot of us can relate to. However, season two centers more around Fab trying to find herself again.
Again?
Fabiola is struggling a lot with finding where she fits best in the lesbian world. Eve is a feminist who is very involved in the community in their town; while Eve never puts pressure on Fabiola, it’s clear that Fab wants to fit in with Eve’s more adventurous friends. At school, Fab is under pressure from the Cool Girls of the LGBT community to prove she’s queer enough to hang. They want her to do L Word trivia and have sufficiently woke politics. Fab has no idea what’s going on. Is she gay enough??
When the topic of homecoming King and Queen comes up, Eve decides she wants to take a stand and run for Queen and Queen. Even though homecoming court is hardly progressive, a Queen and Queen would be a first for the school. We love to see it!
Although, that means that Fabiola will have less time to dedicate to robotics club, which she’s president of. Because Fab wants to fit in so badly, she reluctantly agrees to run alongside Eve.
Throughout the season, Eve and Fab are working on their campaign. As the dance nears closer, you can see the other areas of Fab’s life start to fall apart. Fab dresses traditionally masculine and has a passion for robots unlike you’ve ever seen before. She gets demoted from her presidency of the robotics club because she has failed to show up, and shows visible discomfort with everything dance related. She does it all for Eve, who seems to be pretty nonchalant about the whole thing; Eve wants to make a statement about gay women being able to win Queen and Queen, and is so wrapped up in it that she doesn’t notice Fabiola is struggling.
At an outdoor event held by the school, Eve and Fabiola are spending most of their time together. However, when Fabiola sees her mom at the event, she tries to hide Eve from her. It seems as if she’s scared her mother will embarrass her because she’s being too much of an ally. Eventually, Fab’s mom and Eve do meet and have a very wholesome exchange. Fabiola’s mother was the first Black woman to win homecoming Queen, and gives Fab and Eve her full support running for Queen and Queen. It is honestly pretty cute.
Fast forward to the actual time of the dance, and the pressure is on.
Fabiola gets all dressed up and really starts to feel the intense pressure she’s put on herself to fit the mold of what a lesbian “looks like.” However, everything begins to fall apart when she decides to go fix her robot that the robotics team has changed completely. She spends so long in there working on her robot that she misses the beginning of the dance and the announcement of the winners.
We’ll let you watch to find out what happens in the end!
Fabiola reminds us that everyone’s coming out journey is different. As she came out in the first season, she learned a lot about herself and was so giddy to finally be out. However, Never Have I Ever shows that sometimes coming out doesn’t always mean that you change yourself completely. Fabiola knows exactly who she is — a robotics loving nerdy girl who’s head over heels for her girlfriend Eve. That’s okay. In fact, it’s more than okay.
The idea that every gay woman has to be the same, or have their relationships mirror each other’s is ludicrous. Fabiola reminds us that it is okay to take up space and exist as ourselves every single day. While she believes in taking a stand, being out and proud, and making her partner happy, she wants to do all of these things as the person she is — not the lesbian pop culture told her to be.
We can all learn a lot from Fabiola.
You can stream seasons one and two of Never Have I Ever on Netflix right now.
