‘Kevin Can F*** Himself’: I, Too, Want to Murder Kevin

I don’t consider myself a violent person, but I felt nothing but absolute joy watching one of the final moments of Kevin Can F*** Himself‘s first episode. After nearly an hour of watching Annie Murphy‘s wistful Worcester housewife Allison take emotional and physical abuse from her husband Kevin (Eric Petersen), she snaps. A glass beer mug shatters in her hands and she plunges the sharp handle into Kevin’s throat. The sitcom world that Kevin rules fades away and the dark multi-cam show that frees Allison takes command. Kevin is dead.

Except, he isn’t.

Like many things in AMC’s Kevin Can F*** Himself, this moment is revealed to be a dramatization of Allison’s innermost fantasies. Kevin Can F*** Himself flits between television conventions — a crass multi-cam sitcom where Kevin reigns as incorrigible king, a bleak prestige drama where Allison slips into despair, and a misty-eyed nostalgic trip where Allison and Kevin live out a suburban fairytale — to deconstruct the gulf between how people want to see themselves and how they truly are.

However the show’s most scathing commentary is on the conventions of old school domestic sitcoms. Kevin is a pampered man-child, beloved by friends, neighbors, and an adoring studio audience. Allison is the shrewish wife who drags everyone down with her literal dreams. What Kevin Can F*** Himself does so beautifully is reveal Kevin’s character to be an utter villain, sucking the hopes out of everyone around him for power and control. By the end of the first episode of Kevin Can F*** Himself, I, too, wanted to murder Kevin.

As a character, Kevin is meant to stand in for the decades of male sitcom leads who milked laughs by demeaning the women in their orbit. Kevin Can F*** Himself creator Valerie Armstrong has shared that one point of inspiration for her was realizing how many talented actresses she knew were auditioning for these thankless supporting parts. “The dialogue for the wives were almost entirely Whadda ya mean?’ and ‘Yes, honey’’ It was all set up. Nothing about their roles was funny or had any depth,” Armstrong said. In the world of these traditional sitcoms, the audience has been groomed to root for the hilarious male lead and to overlook the “wife” character.

Kevin Can F*** Himself gives itself the task of switching up who our empathy lies with. Instead of rooting for the playful scamps who just want to have fun, we find ourselves relating more to Allison’s patient partner. Her dreams of moving to a better neighborhood? Relatable and realistic. The constant slights she has to put up with? Infuriating. The idea that Allison — a beautiful, caring woman who has compromised so much — is with Kevin? Obscene.

While a lot of this shift in our perspective is thanks to how Kevin Can F*** Himself‘s script moves us in and out of the sitcom world, actor Eric Petersen deserves kudos for playing Kevin as so damn gormless. Petersen has the thankless task of portraying a pop culture paradigm as a one-dimensional villain. He has to be both recognizable to us, and revolting. It’s impossible to believe his character has anything approaching an inner life, which makes the revelation that he’s been secretly siphoning funds out of the couple’s savings account all the more upsetting. He’s selfish, disgusting, and, yes, begging to be murdered.

Kevin Can F*** Himself is a chilling takedown of domestic sitcom tropes. And the place where it succeeds the most might be in letting the audience live in Allison’s rage. If you can watch Kevin Can F*** Himself and not want to murder Kevin, did you really watch Kevin Can F*** Himself at all?

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