starring Annie Murphy, Kevin Can F**k Himself is an AMC series that is premised around a sitcom wife breaking television conventions by escaping her confines and taking charge of her own life. It follows Allison McRoberts (Murphy) as she slowly begins to realize that her husband, Kevin (Eric Petersen) is manipulating her.
The series, which consists of eight episodes, primarily utilizes two different formats. Viewers are first introduced to Allison in the style of a multi-camera sitcom. Overburdened and the punchline of jokes coming from Kevin and his friends, Allison handles the situation with a smile. Once she exits the room, away from Kevin and his cohorts, the sitcom style of Kevin Can F**k Himself changes to a multi-camera dramedy to indicate that Allison’s life and perspective are more complicated than the self-centered Kevin realizes. This is also done to take aim at multi-cam comedies such as The King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Still Standing, all of which utilize the trope of a selfish husband that’s married to a very patient wife. But there’s one very recent sitcom that Kevin Can F**k Himself evokes in particular.
The title is a reference to Kevin Can Wait, a CBS sitcom which premiered in 2016. It starred Kevin James, airing for two seasons. The show is forgettable on its own merits, though it gained attention for killing off Donna (Erinn Hayes), the lead character’s wife, between seasons. Although it’s hardly unusual for shows to kill off characters, Kevin Can Wait was heavily criticized for Donna's death, due to both the reasoning and method. The character’s death was never explored with any depth, even being utilized as a punchline. To make matters worse, Leah Remini was quickly promoted to a series regular after a guest appearance. The actress had worked with James before, on The King of Queens, and it was widely-viewed that Remini was essentially chosen to replace Hayes as an eventual love interest.
Donna’s off-screen death continued to generate negative reactions when James explained, to Medical Police. But even looking beyond that, there were plenty of avenues that would have allowed for both Hayes and Remini to be regular cast on Kevin Can Wait. It would have been interesting, for example, if James’ character gained feelings for someone else while still married.
But the fact that the writers of the sitcom simply opted to kill off Donna, only occasionally mentioning how her death affected her husband and children, speaks to how superfluous wives can be on certain kinds of multi-camera comedies. It also indicates that these comedies can only tolerate the presence of one prominent female co-lead at a time. It’s the trope of the sitcom wife at its very worse, proving exactly what Kevin Can F** Himself proposes with its premise: the sitcom wife is too often ignored, though she can be a worthy character to examine in her own right. Certainly, the AMC argues, she’s more worthy of examination than yet another comedy focused on an egocentric husband. It’s one meta-aspect that makes Allison’s story a little more interesting.