That collective sigh of relief you heard last summer? It was the internet learning that Never Have I Ever’s Paxton Hall-Yoshida – the dreamy high school senior with high-set dimples and a jawline that could cut diamonds – is actually played by 31-year-old actor Darren Barnet. Yes, we may have fallen for the brooding jock with unprobed depths as he roamed the halls of Sherman Oaks High on the Netflix hit, but his real-life age gave our crushes a plausible veneer of respectability. We must have sensed this man’s much older soul. If anything, we were responding to his Duchenne smile, and what child star could achieve such crinkly eyed warmth?
In truth, it was still kind of creepy. He was playing a teenage heartthrob after all. But in the season three finale to Mindy Kaling’s sensationally funny coming-of-age sitcom, Paxton finally crossed TV’s undeniable threshold into adulthood: he graduated from high school. And – as is his way – the swim team captain whose classmates voted him “most likely to succeed… at hotness” did it with the grace that befits a man old enough to have a retirement account in place.
One of the delights of Never Have I Ever is how reliably the series subverts expectations – not of actual high school but the high school genre, which insists cool kids will get their comeuppance and nerds will inherit the earth. In sunny California, though, realism rules the halls. The goody-two-shoes protagonist Devi – whose main goals in life are to attend Princeton University and lose her virginity to Paxton – is cruel to her parents. Teachers are exactly as ludicrous as their students think they are. And popular guys finish first, just as democracy literally demands. So it’s hardly a surprise when Paxton’s classmates vote him in as graduation speaker, a distinction that lands him in illustrious teen TV company.
Who can forget Rory’s tearful valedictory ode to Lorelai, the single mum who raised her on Gilmore Girls? Or Zack Morris, who wasn’t even supposed to graduate on Saved By the Bell but somehow ended up delivering a supremely sweet and entirely impromptu salute to childhood friendship? My personal fave is Joey Potter’s savagely unsentimental address to her classmates on Dawson’s Creek: “The truth is, in time, that’s all that we’re going to be to each other anyway – this population of memories.” It’s a far cry from chanting “seniors rule”, which is what actually happens at graduation ceremonies.
To be fair, graduation episodes are tough to nail. TV tends to lean hard into the metaphor that this one particular day is a momentous goodbye. But in reality, even the kids heading off to college have to bum around the same small town for one more summer. Instinctively understanding that the day rarely lives up to the hype, the writers of high-school shows combine graduation with other kinds of bombshells – Haley going into labour on One Tree Hill, say, or Topanga proposing to Cory on Boy Meets World. Though when it comes to underscoring the life-shattering potential of high school graduation, there’s no cautionary tale like The OC – RIP Marissa Cooper.
But true to Never Have I Ever’s rejection of teen TV’s sensationalism, graduation day is a total bore and the speech Paxton delivers is only quietly rebellious. “For the longest time, I never really had to work that hard,” he tells his classmates, who, like many a viewer, were 100 per cent hoping he’d perform a shirtless prank from the podium. “And honestly, things came really easily for me because I was dope at swimming and according to the yearbook, I’m kind of pretty.”
Paxton goes on to thank Devi for helping him push himself even when there was no actual reason he needed to change at all, but it’s that first admission that was so refreshing. Armed with a mic and an opportunity to demonstrate that even cool kids have their own hardships, Paxton admits that he didn’t really have any. Devi didn’t save him, because he didn’t need saving. She modestly improved his already charmed life, which is something she was motivated to do in the first place because she really liked his attractive face.
It was so pitch-perfect, I almost wish it was the end of the run for Paxton Hall-Yoshida, who is set to matriculate at Arizona State next year. However, Never Have I Ever co-creator Lang Fisher has already confirmed that Sherman Oaks High’s resident teen idol will in fact return for the show’s fourth and final season, at which point the actor who plays him will have achieved the uncontroversially lusty age of an average first-time homebuyer.
