I F**king love Kevin Can F**k Himself - Season 2

one of recommended Kevin can [ __ ] himself to people I've had mixed responses some have been similarly overwhelmed like I was when I first watched it others are more okay it's a fun premise to have it so when Kevin's on screen it's a tacky multi-camera sitcom but when he's off screen it's a gritty realistic drama about a woman in an awful marriage but where's the dimension to it once I've got the joke that this is a sitcom if it was real life where does the joke go from there to which I unfortunately have to respond with watch the whole thing which I usually hate when people do however with Kevin can [ __ ] himself I would argue in favor of watching the whole thing if you want to do something in any creative industry at all because it's the perfect demonstration of how to build on initial criticisms of your work when the show first came out critical reception was usually fairly warm because critics tend to appreciate meta premises more than audiences do but the analysis of it as being simply a ballad of an ignored sitcom housewife taking her life back was always half done whenever I saw it made I noted in my review of season one that by the end of the season Alison is just as bad a person as Kevin is she screws over her new friend Patty's relationship and this desperate bid to kill her husband and get away with it and her life in the gritty real world ends up mirroring Kevin's in the wacky sitcom World in that it turns into an episodic series of antics where she pays a Hitman to kill him painting Alison as purely the victim of her husband's wacky sitcom [ __ ] would make a statement but it wouldn't make a character so they've used the basic outline of Alison as victim of her husband's [ __ ] as a jumping off point and season two Builds on this in the best of ways by making Alison essentially worse than Kevin by its effective usage of Kevin's best friend Neil last season Neil only existed in the multicameral world where he's basically barley Gumball to Kevin's Homer Simpson he's slow stupid childlike and never allowed anything in the way of depth but by breaking him over to the single Camera World when he finds out that Alison tried to kill Kevin we've now got another perspective on events in this world that doesn't align with Alison's Viewpoint at all Patty had been taken in by Alison's view of her husband and so the pushback that she offers Alison's deranged plan is quite mild in terms of drama and she only starts pushing back at Alison when her actions start affecting Patty's own life Neil on the other hand is completely traumatized by this Revelation while he did always drink too much for comedy's sake in the first series which helps characterize him as an overgrown Man Child seeing him in the single camera gritty World changes the context and having him flip out into these fits of Rage makes it so much sadder and the performance Alex bonifer gives in this role is just show stealing it's just how Stark the contrast is between this Neil and season one Neil this is what I mean when I say it's such a great example of building on initial criticism because when the show was first pitched to the public you see it as an obvious critique of gender roles in American sitcoms but the show then takes that instantaneous reaction to What could just be a one note joke where you treat a sitcom as a serious drama and it's expands on it to further be a critique of the roles that people take in the lives of others that mirror static TV formats because when you realize what your role in someone else's life is and how low status that makes you it can be devastating Neil can't go back to being Kevin's sidekick now that he knows that Alison tried to kill him even the relationship he has with his own sister will never be the same again and he starts to genuinely despise Kevin as much as Alison does when he realizes that nothing he says or does makes the tiniest bit of difference he can even openly tell Kevin that Alison tried to kill him but Kevin won't listen Alison tried to kill you oh that oh yeah I know about that what I mean yeah What is marriage if not a death sentence right the format won't let him be anything but a [ __ ] up Alison felt like a puppet in Kevin's world now Niels ended up feeling like a puppet in hers hold on yeah and two kids I met on the bus Jesus I told Kevin when I found out what he laughed he didn't listen to me at all no one listens to me I'm not a problem for you I've never been a problem for you the show seems like a statement about the roles that specific archetypal characters take on in sitcoms but it's so much more than that it may have started Life as a specific parody of the show Kevin can wait but what it's actually ended up being is a show about the stories that we tell ourselves about our own lives and the roles we cast ourselves in Alison has spent all this time seeing herself as a victim of Kevin's [ __ ] but that's a story she's told herself and that painter is someone with no agency when that's never really been true Alison was the one who made excuses for Kevin for years she was the one who decided to start researching means of getting away with murder Alison is the one who decides to fake her own death when you spend so much time engrossed in your own story it absorbs your entire identity Alison paints herself as a victim and so she essentially becomes a fictional character in the same way that Neil does as the comedy sidekick [ __ ] up and the same way Kevin does with whatever stupid wacky sitcom [ __ ] he's doing this week that's why it's so so interesting in season two when Alison starts slyly using Kevin's wacky sitcom Antics to get what she wants in the single camera gritty real world Sam and Jen are getting a divorce Jen's parents own the diner so this means the diner will be taken out of Sam's hands so Alison convinces Kevin to take out a lawsuit against the diner so they can relinquish the ownership she then uses Kevin's Antics to make it so Tammy the cop who's on to her about her scheme last season might get fired Alison and Kevin seemed like Polar Opposites when the show started and it seemed strange they'd be married so long and only Now Alison snapped how on Earth did Alison agree to marry Kevin in the first place was there some sort of intimidation going on here maybe outside of the sitcom framework Kevin secretly physically abusive this outwardly schlubby demeanor is there to hide the monster he really is when the studio lights go down and the audience isn't watching but that would Rob Allison of her agency even more and make it so the plan to kill her husband does come out of nowhere by demonstrating how Allison uses the people in her life to her Advantage from Patty to Kevin himself it makes her into a much more rounded character I've been watching you too she says we all the time like you're in this together but Patty where is she it shows how Allison and Kevin are essentially two different sides of the same coin they use their own personal stories where they paint themselves as the lovable schlub and the wronged victim to justify their actions over the course of season two Alison ends up realizing just how much he's hurt Patty and Sam and her plan transforms from I need to kill Kevin to I need to fake my own death so I can get out of this marriage by doing this Allison essentially ends up declaring herself to be the problem which might tacitly be an admission of her own flaws and it may kind of solve Patty and Sam's problems but it's not honest and it does still make Alison into the fictional character she always painted herself as where one specific trait defines her before she was the victim now she's the bad guy she might not be the wronged victim anymore now that she's run away faked her own death and changed her name but she is still the villain who's ruined lives to get here and she's taking on someone else's name and life that's not the end of her problems that's a continuation of this pattern of behavior she's demonstrated throughout the show and Austin is still a character in a story she's still a fictionalized version of herself she's not real the finale does exactly what I expected it to do and that might usually be an argument against a finale but it makes too much sense Alison returns to Worcester reveal she faked her death confronts Kevin and finally tells him that she wants a divorce I want a divorce no no uh Allison you you don't want to do this yes I do [Applause] I knew they were going to break Kevin out of the multi-camera world here I knew he was going to completely disrupt his character by use of a single f word which he never gets to use in the multi-camera world and the f word retains its power entirely by Kevin's first usage of it because I I can destroy you but this break is so powerful because it's representative of how Allison's broken the cycle of Storytelling if she's up front with Kevin about how dissatisfied she's been this whole time there's nowhere left for him to run there are no more stories to tell here Kevin can't paint himself as the schlubby goofball anymore Alison's not a victim anymore because she hasn't gone through their plan to kill him she hasn't run away she's finally stood up to him and made her needs clear and the fact she hadn't been doing that was the driver for the events of the entire show the show was always going to end here and it was always going to end with Kevin reacting with absolute horror that he can't be the king of his own pocket sitcom Universe anymore and lashing out that's why it's so utterly chilling to see this living cartoon character speaking with such raw unfiltered aggression no no this does not happen to me not from my wife this is the way I expected the show to end but it's the only way the show could have ended and I see why it ends here all in all Kevin can [ __ ] himself was a brief spark of experimental genius and I'm sad to see it go but it spoke to me in a way that few series have managed to and I'm gonna remember it so fondly for years to come thank you