It’s no secret that most sitcoms centered around a married couple are pretty terrible. The husband is usually an out of shape, immature man-child with the intellect and humor of a 12-year-old. The wife is usually beautiful and thin and long-suffering. According to Jim, Everyone Loves Raymond, Last Man Standing, and The King of Queens are examples of this genre of sitcoms. The man follows every childish impulse he has, and the woman is forced to be more like a mother to her husband than a wife. She’s always the straight man to his buffoon, the adult to his child, the responsible one to his irresponsibility, and the boring one to his fun-loving, happy-go-lucky self.
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It is infuriating and misogynistic.
In the aforementioned sitcoms (and so very many more), the wife has every reason to hate her life and her husband, but she’s never allowed to be anything more than sweet, loving, and kind. She’s never allowed to be truly human and three-dimensional. If she delivers some well-deserved sass at her husband or his fellow man-child buddies, the men react with shock that quickly devolves into mocking and borderline harassment. And God help her if her TV husband’s parents are part of the equation. Not only will her husband and his friends demean her, so will his parents. No matter what she does, she cannot win.
Kevin Can F**k Himself’s Allison (Schitt’s Creek’s wonderful Annie Murphy) is married to Kevin McRoberts (Eric Petersen). She works in a liquor store (until she quits to take a job at a diner, a slight Kevin takes way too personally since that means he lost her discount on booze as a result). Kevin is a cable company repairman. They live in working class Worcester, Massachusetts. Kevin is an idiot and Allison hates him and her life, and in this show, she’s allowed to express that with every ounce of murderous rage she feels for being tied to such a loudmouthed buffoon.
Kevin Can F**k Himself Deconstructs the Sitcom Format
AMC
AMC’s Kevin Can F**k Himself is two-shows in one. The first is a traditional laugh-track backed multi-camera sitcom couple in which the wife is only there to cater to her husband. The other, is a perfect dark comedy with very morbid undertones. During the laugh-track backed part the sets are brightly lit, and the entire world revolves around Kevin – a fact he will point out multiple times an episode. If Kevin is inconvenienced in the slightest, the world will know it. If Kevin isn’t made to feel like the most important man in the world, the tantrums he throws are toddler-like in their fury and uselessness. Everything has to be Kevin’s idea and Kevin’s preference. Kevin is the center of attention. Kevin is the most annoying man in the world.
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In Allison’s storyline, there is no laugh track and the sets are dark and drab – like someone turned the lights off. And that’s exactly what happened when she married Kevin a decade earlier. When Allison leaves the room or the show focuses directly on her, the lights dim and everything appears depressing, monochromatic, and quiet; her life looks like a dark drama, akin to Breaking Bad. In her storyline, she’s allowed to hate Kevin and her life openly. She’s allowed to befriend the drug-dealing beautician next door. She’s allowed to have an affair with her high school boyfriend. She’s allowed to be a real, messy, flawed, three-dimensional character. She is the exact opposite of the traditional sitcom wife.
Kevin Can F**k Himself Exposes the Misogyny in Sitcoms
Kevin Can F**k Himself doesn’t have to work hard to expose the latent chauvinism in many sitcoms. In the very first scene Allison is in, she enters the room in a drab, shapeless cardigan carrying a laundry basket to find Kevin drinking and hanging out with the nextdoor neighbors, Neil and Patty. Kevin puts his dirty dishes into the laundry basket Allison is carrying and demands that she bring him and his buddies more beer. Allison turns to walk back into the kitchen from the bright lights and laugh tracked living room. The kitchen is dark. She smashes a glass beer mug and cuts her hand. Her frustration is palpable.
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When Allison is plotting to either murder or frame Kevin as the drug dealer the cops are seeking, she sets up an alibi of the dutiful, loving wife by visiting a fertility clinic. Neil finds the pamphlets and paperwork in the trash and freaks out that Kevin is going to abandon him by starting a family with his wife. Kevin is incensed and betrayed by Allison’s visit to the fertility clinic. And then, in typical Kevin fashion, he makes it all about himself. He convinces himself that she’s going to blame him for not getting pregnant, so he goes to have his sperm count tested, discovers it is in the highest percentile, and brags about that to everyone he encounters. He then starts patting Allison’s stomach patronizingly, causing her to repeatedly say “there’s nothing in there.”
Kevin is infuriating, and that’s exactly the point this show is trying to get across. He is far from the most interesting character on the show. In fact, he’s the least interesting person on the show.
Kevin Can F**k Himself’s Most Interesting Characters are the Women
Kevin and Neil are doofuses. They are men in their mid-30s who take pride in their immaturity. They pride themselves on humiliating and denigrating Allison. They are uninteresting and, as people, have very little to offer. Allison and Patty on the other hand are basically the Thelma and Louise of this show. Allison hates Kevin and the life she has with him. Patty initially tries to be one of the boys and mocks Allison right alongside them, but their relationship changes when Allison walks into her beauty shop on a tip that she could get oxycontin there (which she plans to use to kill her husband) and finds out Patty is the dealer.
The viewer is treated to the backstory of how Patty got into selling the pills, and the two women bond together to help each other solve their problems. Especially once the cops start looking for the local drug dealer. They concoct a plan that would free Allison of Kevin and keep Patty’s involvement in the oxy distribution secret. They’d both win for once.
Kevin Can Fk Himself’s second and final season premieres on Monday, August 22 on AMC. The first season was the most popular show on AMC+ and was popular with young, female, upscale viewers, Deadline reported. Created by Valerie Armstrong, Kevin Can Fk Himself is set to continue its attempt to smash the patriarchy, and we can’t wait.
