‘Kevin Can F**k Himself’ Creator Previews The Final Season of her Genre-Bending Show: “I Am So Proud of Each One of Those 8 Episodes”

Warning: Spoilers for the first two episodes of Kevin Can F**k Himself Season 2 ahead.
Kevin Can F**k Himself is back for its second and final season, and creator and executive producer Valerie Armstrong has countless reasons to take pride in her latest batch of ambitious episodes.
It’s been more than five years since Armstrong was struck with the idea for a genre-bending show that alternates between multi-camera sitcom and single-camera drama. While listening to an episode of The JV Club podcast that touched on women auditioning for the invariably disappointing role of sitcom wife, Armstrong imagined how much those wives must hate their obnoxious main character husbands. She wondered what the sitcom world would look like from the wife’s perspective, and essentially set out to tell the story.
The AMC series follows fed up sitcom wife Allison McRoberts (Annie Murphy), who’s just had an epiphany. She hates her lazy, emotionally abusive, immature jokester husband Kevin (Eric Petersen) and wants to kill him. With help from her neighbor Patty (Mary Hollis Inboden) she sets her plan in motion, but by the end of Season 1 it fails spectacularly. Season 2 picks up as close as humanly possible to Season 1’s end. Kevin’s best friend and Patty’s brother Neil (Alex Bonifer) just overheard his sister and Allison say they tried to kill Kevin. Neil tries to choke Allison, so the women bash him over the head are left to figure out their next move.

At times, Season 1 of Kevin Can F**k Himself felt like two different shows. While each format always informed the other, Kevin and his boys lived in multi-cam sitcom land, and though Allison and Patty visited, they largely resided in the realistic single-cam world. In Season 2, as the two friends scramble to clear up their mess, those formats bleed together more than ever before.
In honor of Kevin Can F**k Himself‘s final season, Armstrong spoke to Decider over Zoom about Kevin’s controversial “Worcester Wild Dude” ad, why she decided not to kill off Neil, and how it feels to say goodbye to her one-of-a-kind show.

DECIDER: We really see a different side of Neil this season in single-cam, and Alex Bonifer is such a powerhouse in these episodes. I know at one point you considered killing his character off, so I’m curious when you changed your mind and how it felt seeing his growth this season.

VALERIE ARMSTRONG: So, it was written. I believe that last page existed where he’s dead on the floor. And we were green lit, we were going. But we had just cast everybody when I was writing the end of [Season 1] Episode 8. And we knew a Season 2 was possible, if not likely. And I remember Craig [DiGregorio], my show runner, saying to me, “I don’t think we should kill him.” And I was like, “No, that’s the ending. It’s been the ending and I like it and it’s big. And I don’t know what else it would be.” And he’s like, “Valerie, we don’t want a dead body in Season Two.” And I was like, I don’t, that’s true. I don’t. But still, I was a little little dug in for like two days, and then I heard him. And I thought, “Alex is so good, we can’t do it. We can’t kill him.” And I didn’t want a dead body anyways. Dead bodies are such a bummer in TV.

So I told Craig if I could figure out an end that I liked better, we’d do it. And I went to my kitchen table and was like, “Oh, what if he loses the benefit of the doubt, and in doing something so serious and so horrible he has to face consequences for the first time kind of in his life.” And that generates story to me, whereas the dead body closes a ton off.  So the minute we came up with that, I was excited about it. And I knew Alex could handle it — whatever we threw at him, I knew he could handle it. And god, did he. I mean, filming those basement scenes in [Season 2] Episode 1. He just brought it every time. And it was such a thrill to see and to know that I could truly write anything for the rest of season for him to do and he would nail it.

At the start of Season 2 Kevin is continuing his run for City Council. Allison helps him make this hilariously unhinged Worcester Wild Dude political ad that ends with him lightly body checking a photo of Osama bin Laden. I need to ask: How fun was that creation process?

Oh my god. Okay, so it started with one of the writers in the room, Sean Clements, who would basically just do things to make me laugh so we wouldn’t have to work. One of his bits just gets me so that I can’t work for about 10 minutes. And we were talking about the Worcester Wild Dude, I don’t even know how we came up with that name. I’m sure it was him. And he just started singing “Wild Thing,” but with “Wild Dude” and changing the words to be so stupid and doing the guitar mouth noises on his own. And I was like, “You…That’s it. That’s the whole ad.” I made him record it to give to Eric. And we started coming up with things that he could be doing. Later on, I remember there was a props meeting to talk about whose face should be on the elliptical that he hits. And I texted Craig and I said, “Is it Osama bin Laden?” And he was like, “It’s definitely Osama bin Laden.” And filming it, our director Anna Dokoza actually became camera operator for the day. She took the camera, because she wanted it to look really terrible and like Allison was drunkenly doing it. She said camera operators are too good [even when] they try to make things look bad.

Oh yeah, you have to get that authenticity.

I remember her one of her notes, I said it all season long to Eric, was “Okay, now get on the floor be a bug!” [Laughs] And I just thought it was a great day.

Very early on in the season, Allison decides that the way to escape Kevin isn’t by killing him, but by faking her own death. Was that always the way you saw this story playing out?

No. I always sort of knew the feeling I wanted to have at the end of the series. But I’m glad that I was flexible. Some people say they have four seasons planned out. It’s like, “That’s great. Congratulations.” There are so many things that can change, you know, and you have to kind of be ready for it. And we were told that we would end with this season, so I knew the endpoint I wanted to go to, which was very, very helpful. And we’d had this storyline for the second season for a while, but we’d considered a lot of others.
Why did you end up choosing this one?

What made this story worth telling to me is that first of all, I knew I never wanted to have her try to kill Kevin for the second season. It’s just, it feels like Charlie Brown with the football. I wouldn’t have been interested in it as a viewer. And so the idea that she’s basically trying to kill the old version of herself is a great story and proxy for talking about self-loathing to me, and what it is to embrace who you actually are, and get rid of the narratives that you’ve been telling yourself, or that people have told you about yourself for your whole life. And to me, that was a story really worth telling for Allison and to enter on.

Speaking of Allison, we see a real wedge between her and Patty this season. It’s partially fueled by Neil, and Tammy, and this looming fear that if she does fake her own death their friendship will end. Annie Murphy and Mary Hollis Inboden are phenomenal in these scenes, so could talk a bit about the shift in their dynamic?

It was important to me that we not forget how Season 1 ended, which is Patty coming very close to talking about how she actually feels about Allison, and pulling back. And Allison maybe having used it a little bit without really being conscious of it. But I wanted to start them off on this road of being in it together and Allison kind of fucking up and having Patty say, “You know what? I’m done.” And meaning it. I wanted to start Patty off on this journey of breaking her codependent streak, first with Allison, so [at] the end of Episode 1, she’s sort of done with her.

But Episode 2 and beyond, Allison goes to great efforts to be a better friend. She tries to learn, and that’s like the first place where she tries to be better. I think that grows throughout the season, so to watch Allison know that she messed up and try to fix it, check in with Patty, be more respectful, and be her cheerleader, that was really lovely to write and really, really lovely to watch Annie and Mary Hollis perform. They did it so well. And they always had that in mind when reading scenes between them. They always kept me focusing on that, making sure that they were good to each other when necessary.

These final eight episodes are very ambitious, but so masterfully executed. How does it feel to have successfully brought such a unique, genre-bending show to life.

My goal was always to create eight episodes that I could stand behind and be proud of. I don’t know how to make something everyone likes. If I did, I would be endlessly employable. And you know, that stuff filters into your brain sometimes, and you want to please everybody and make something that everyone will love as much as you. But I don’t know how to do that. So I just tried to focus on making stuff I was proud of. And I am so proud of each one of those eight episodes. They do what I wanted them to do, which is they tell an overarching story. They get to a point. Every one has an arc, but also it’s not an eight episode movie, you know? I feel there are no filler episodes…There’s an identifiable thing about each one that makes it fun to watch. So I’m very proud of that.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Kevin Can F**k Himself airs Mondays at 9/8c on AMC.