One of the most innovative and conceptual shows on television, one with a myriad of in-worlds and winking references to canonical fantasy series of the past decade, finally returned this week. No, I’m not talking about House of the Dragon. I’m referring to something much more groundbreaking and ingenious: the Annie Murphy-led sitcom skewerer Kevin Can F**k Himself.
The second and final season of this novel sitcom/dramedy (sit-dram-com-edy? dram-com-sit-edy?) aired its premiere episode Monday on AMC. Though it arrived to seemingly zero visible fanfare, it still feels as fresh as ever. Even if you happened to miss Season 1, you may recognize the title as a parody of the short-lived CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait, which similarly only ran for two seasons after it couldn’t overcome the controversial and absurd decision it made going into its second season.
A month before the second season was due to air, it was announced that series regular Erin Hayes, who played Kevin James’ wife on Kevin Can Wait, would not be returning for the second season. Her character would, instead, be killed off to make way for Leah Remini, who was joining the show as a series regular in an attempt to save it from cancellation, capitalizing on James’ and Remini’s successful formula proven with The King of Queens. The cause of Hayes’ character’s death was never revealed in the show.
Spawned from that controversial decision, Kevin Can F**k Himself follows the private life of Allison (Murphy), the beleaguered wife of a conventional, bumbling sitcom husband, aptly named Kevin (Eric Peterson). When Allison interacts with Kevin, she’s a part of his sitcom—a brightly lit, multi-camera world where everyone around laughs at his bad jokes, gets roped in with his ludicrous plans, and joins in to quip at Allison’s expense.
But the genius of Kevin Can F**k Himself is that whenever Allison leaves the poisonous orbit of her husband, the style instantly flips into a single-camera dramedy. The switch worked exceptionally well in Season 1, allowing the audience to feel the exhaustion that was deep-set in Allison’s bones. Trapped in her dead-end marriage without the resources to fall back on with a divorce, Allison hatches a plan to kill Kevin, but, by the end of Season 1, it’s clear that was never going to be as simple as she hoped it would be.
It would be easy for a show like this to use this gimmick as a crutch. A show can only last so long running on the fumes of its initial novelty. But with a final season that moves further into Allison’s broken psyche and her attempts to navigate it with her best friend Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden), Kevin Can F**k Himself proves that its ambitious concept was a springboard to create one of the most defiant and powerful stories on television.
Season 2 picks up right where the first left off, with Allison and Patty standing over Neil (Alex Bonifer), Kevin’s best friend and Patty’s brother. Moments earlier, Neil had his hands around Allison’s neck after overhearing her plans to kill Kevin, until a beer bottle whopped him in the head, courtesy of Patty. Faced with the reality that their scheme has been found out and that they’ve just committed assault, Allison and Patty have to act fast by coming up with a plan to keep Neil silent when he regains consciousness.
Neil’s discovery of their grand plan also means that it has to be retooled. Allison’s attempts to kill Kevin have gotten her and Patty into far more trouble than they bargained for—that is, if you count two assaults (one across state lines), drug dealing, and conspiracy to commit murder as trouble. With too many loose ends to maintain and Patty’s police officer girlfriend Tammy sniffing around the case, Allison has to find another way out of her own private hell before it's too late.
Allison decides that taking the Gillian Flynn route might be her only forward, resolving to try to fake her own death. But that’s an endeavor nearly as lofty as killing someone and not getting caught. To pull it off, she’ll need Patty’s help once more. Plotting your own fake death is hard enough as it is, but doing it alongside the person you love the most in this world is nearly impossible. Staying means being tied to Kevin forever but leaving means never seeing Patty again—and Allison is dead either way. It’s that constant emotional pull, and all of the internal hardships that come with it, that Kevin Can F**k Himself pulls off masterfully.
Few shows have been able to examine how hard it is to be an active participant in changing your life as well as this one. It’s not remotely easy by any means, especially when, like Allison, you’ve spent over a decade unwittingly digging yourself deeper into a rut. Kevin Can F**k Himself deftly depicts the consequences of being so weakened by the world that you’re forced to concede.
What remains indisputably true this season just as much as the last is that this show would not work without Annie Murphy. She shines like a supernova that refuses to stop radiating. Even when the sitcom scenes become grating, Murphy holds them together by reminding us that this is all grating by design. Her entrances back into Kevin’s sitcom are intended to feel bleak; we’re supposed to want her out of there as soon as possible, to get back to her own life, and to return to Patty, the one person who really loves her.
After all, this is as much a story about being trapped as it is being set free. With Patty by her side, Allison learned how to stop walking on eggshells. She discovered how to stick up for herself and how to put her foot down; how to laugh and how to slowly regain control of her own life, just by having one that didn’t revolve around Kevin. Allison and Patty have given each other that mutual gift of freedom, but as long as Kevin is in the picture, Allison’s can’t last forever.
The biggest question for a show like this, one that takes huge, impulsive creative swings, is if it can stick its landing. At the end of its 16 episodes, can Kevin Can F**k Himself turn its clever concept into an actual point?
In its finale, the show rounds us back to complete the circle and look at what we’ve seen as a whole. Kevin Can F**k Himself argued against those who might claim that the backlash against chauvinistic sitcom tropes is now so pervasive that it’s no longer relevant, in turn reaffirming their relevancy by ripping apart those tropes that still very much exist. I mean, Tim Allen’s latest sitcom just ended last year.
While I won’t dare say anything more, I will say that I was startled by just how much the finale affected me.
Instead of just crafting a series finale that neatly places a bow on all of Allison’s problems somehow—which would betray the entire conceit of the show—it effectively frames everything in a new light, one that’s not so tidy but a hell of a lot more thoughtful. What the show manages to recontextualize in its last 20 minutes is nothing short of remarkable.
Though it’s airing against a TV landscape overrun with series considered to be “lofty, prestige television,” Kevin Can F**k Himself manages to maintain an air of modesty. It’s focused on using its clever and completely original premise to amplify its storytelling. Its nature may be unassuming, but that doesn’t make its impact any less powerful.
