Plot: Allison McRoberts is a woman we all grew up believing we knew: the prototypical Sitcom Wife. She’s beautiful and can take a joke (though she’s usually the butt of them). And she’s married to a guy who must’ve won some sort of marriage lottery because she looks the way she does and he’s…funny. But what happens when we follow Allison out of her husband’s domain? When she finally wakes up to—and revolts against—the injustices in her life?
Review: The multi-camera sitcom is a relic of a much different era in network television. Earlier this year, Marvel Studios paid homage to the golden age of such comedies in the early episodes of WandaVision, harkening back to the wholesome work of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. In the new AMC series Kevin Can F**k Himself, we get a much darker and brilliantly twisted foray into network sitcoms, this time skewering contemporary shows like Everybody Loves Raymond and Kevin Can Wait. Blending the formulaic style of these shows with the darker reality happening when the main character isn't on screen, Kevin Can F**k Himself is one of the most original shows to come to television in a long time.
The first project for star Annie Murphy after Schitt's Creek, Kevin Can F**k Himself is vastly different than that fan-favorite series. From the opening scene, Kevin Can F**k Himself looks exactly like a cliche sitcom down to the set which is eerily similar to Ray Romano's house on his long-running CBS show. Allison McRoberts (Murphy) is the attractive spouse to the far less attractive Kevin (Eric Peterson), a cable repairman in Worcester, Massachusetts. Allison suffers her husband's zany schemes while his best friend and neighbor Neil (Alex Bonifer), Neil's sister Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden), and Kevin's father Pete (Brian Howe) look on. Formulaic hijinks ensue as a canned laugh track constantly plays over everything. That is until Kevin is no longer in the room. Once alone, we see Allison's world as a much starker reality with muted colors and no more laughter. It is in this shift that this series finds a balance that sets it apart from other shows.
Creator Valerie Armstrong (Lodge 49) and executive producers Rashida Jones and Will McCormack look into a dynamic that gives this series an added boost. It has always been apparent that the husbands on sitcoms land wives way out of their league and it is never acknowledged on screen. We also have a suspension of disbelief as to how all of the zany shenanigans can occur with minimal repercussions. This series imagines the emotional stress put onto Allison as she endures money-making schemes, wacky circumstances when the boss comes to visit, and all of the weird foibles of the supporting players. Once the cameras are off, Allison concocts a plot to escape from the rut her life has become and that is when things get really, really dark.
Annie Murphy looks the role you would expect on a network sitcom wife to be and she shines in the multi-camera sequences, but when the focus is put on her reality, she shines. Murphy is very talented at playing the dramatic as well as the dark comedy aspects of her character. The series takes on a serial narrative that connects the four episodes made available for this review while the sitcom plots vary from week to week. The balance between the two worlds shows the strength of the writers as scenes can shift abruptly but the show never loses momentum. Every time Kevin's sitcom world is on screen, you would think you are watching an actual sitcom. When it shifts outside of that world, the comparison between set design and character behavior is impressive.
Kudos goes to the entire cast here, especially Murphy and Inboden, the two characters we see in both the sitcom and real-world scenes. Both actresses are given some solid character building, something rarely afforded to female characters in traditional sitcoms. The downside is that while the series opens with aspirations to skewer sitcom conventions, it begins to get mired in the formulaic details of cable drama series. There are drugs, ex-lovers, and self-discovery all wrapped up in heavy Boston accents. Many times through the series I was reminded of the accents and small-town populace of HBO's Mare of Easttiown. Both that series and Kevin Can F**k Himself create a working-class setting that sets up more than it delivers.
Kevin Can F**k Himself utilizes the shifting formats well and it keeps the material moving along, but each world on it's own falls prey to the cliches of television comedy and drama. I was never bored watching the show and many times I got laughs from the non-sitcom scenes thanks to the dichotomy of the two genres. But, occasionally I began to feel that the writers were aping elements of shows like Ozark and Breaking Bad. This could be due to only seeing the first half of the season but I will reserve final judgement until I have seen the entire season. When considering the two styles together, the show becomes something original and unique, but I worry that it will lose some novelty if the narrative doesn't try something different than being a satire of blue-collar life or a revenge fantasy. Luckily, the cast and gimmick elevate Kevin Can F**k Himself from a high concept joke to a series worth watching.
Kevin Can F**k Himself premieres June 13th on AMC+ and June 20th on AMC.