After a banger of a set-up that played out over the first 3-4 episodes of AMC’s clever “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” one could almost see the air coming out of the high-concept balloon. The second half of the first season doesn’t feel nearly as confident, as if one could sense the uncertainty in the writer’s room as to what exactly to do with their concept. It’s a show that set up so many interesting ideas only to get cold feet when it came to exploring them. And so, news that the impending second season would also be the show’s last wasn’t too surprising, although it’s disappointing that the finality hasn’t really cured what ails this show. At its center is still a committed, engaging performance from Annie Murphy, but the writing continues to have no idea what to do with these people, letting them down as much as the shallow sitcom structure that the show seeks to satirize.
The first season of “Kevin” introduced the show’s set-up: a hybrid of sitcom and ‘Prestige Drama’ styles. The very structure of the program is a comment on the lives of its characters and even toxic masculinity to a degree. Guys like Kevin McRoberts (Eric Petersen)—a clear riff on the Kevin James brand of comedy television in shows like “The King of Queens”—can get away with anything, brushing off serious issues with the laugh track that they carry around in their minds. Women like Kevin’s wife Allison (Murphy) are the ones who have to not only clean up the mess but struggle with the honest emotional fallout that Kevin ignores. And so the show spins into a multi-camera sitcom aesthetic, complete with canned laughter, when Kevin is on-screen joking with buddy Neil (Alex Bonifer) and dad Pete (Brian Howe), but looks more like “Breaking Bad” era AMC when Allison is plotting with Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) how to literally murder her husband.
The first season climaxes—well, just barely since it actually happened off-screen in a truly disappointing development—with shallow bad guy Nick (Robin Lord Taylor) trying to kill Kevin at Allison’s behest and getting shot himself for the effort. The cliffhanger after that featured the generally clueless Neil overhearing Allison and Patty discussing their failed plan to kill Kevin and attacking his BFF’s wife before getting knocked out by Patty. Now what?
“Kevin Can F**k Himself” is a show that seems constantly afraid of the potential of its own ideas. Neil getting literally thrust out of the safety of his sitcom life should be a fascinating way for the program to explore what happens to ignorant men when they can no longer afford to be ignorant, but the writers don’t do enough with the character or his new predicament, making him into more of an afterthought, competing with the other early-season plotlines. Allison’s new problem is that Kevin decides to run for local office, giving him more opportunities for sitcom hijinks but also putting a much brighter spotlight on him, which makes murder more difficult. Again, the idea that people like Kevin McRoberts could turn an act of violence into a dumb opportunity seems rich for social commentary, but the writers here are almost always willing to throw out an idea without digging into it for actual insight.
So what does Allison do now? She has to get out of this nightmare situation and so she decides that if Kevin can’t die, maybe she can. She works with Patty to fake her own death while the McRoberts neighbor gets closer to Tammy (Candice Coke), the love interest who also presents a danger to everyone involved because she happens to be a detective too. Allison’s love interest Sam (Raymond Lee) hangs around the fringe to start the season, another character, like Tammy, that felt more like a concept than a human being.
Despite too rarely being given anything interesting to do, the supporting cast of “Kevin Can F**k Himself” isn’t really to blame for its failures, especially the totally committed-to-the-concept Petersen, someone who sometimes feels like he’s doing a Kevin James impression but never quite enough to make it feel cheap. He captures not just the sitcom stereotype of the awful husband but embeds it with just enough truth to remind people that dim dudes like Kevin exist outside of TV shows too. He’s not been given enough credit for what he brings to the show. At the same time, Inboden has been a solid performer since the beginning but she’s often inconsistent due to writers who can’t seem to figure Patty out. It will be interesting to see where Petersen and Inboden land next.
However, the show has always belonged to Annie Murphy, who proved in the first season that she could escape the shadow of “Schitt’s Creek” and succeed in other projects too. In fact, the most disappointing thing about “Kevin Can F**k Himself” has been how much it’s wasted the range that Murphy seems willing to explore in her career. Every time the show threatens to get legitimately dark and thrilling, Murphy looks ready to go for the ride but gets left at the starting line by writers willing to circle the same themes instead of going anywhere with them. There’s a certain irony in how a show about a woman who was underestimated her entire life did the same thing to its leading lady. [C-]
“Kevin Can F**k Himself” Season 2 begins its run on AMC on August 22.