Kevin Can Fuck Himself S1
May. 1st, 2023 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanI’ve been watching more TV than usual lately - I usually watch almost none. Which is nice, because I’ve been able to get to stuff I’ve been meaning to watch for ages.
I watched Our Flag Means Death. I enjoyed it but didn’t love it - probably my expectations were too high. I liked Oluwande, Frenchie and Lucius best and it was a lot of fun in general. Also omg, I know Ed’s heartbroken and all but Stede’s books! Noooooooo!!!
My favourite sitcom of the last year remains, unequivocally, We Are Lady Parts, a hilarious Channel 4 programme about an East London heroine who a) wants to find a nice boy and get married and b) joins an all-female all-Muslim punk band despite her crippling stage fright. So good <3
But the most interesting programme is definitely Kevin Can Fuck Himself, whichjanuarium turned me on to, mostly via her brilliant recruitment vid (on AO3 here):
It’s about a ‘sitcom wife’, beautiful and intelligent and lumbered with a stupid, lazy, often drunk husband who does nothing round the house and says mean things to her and always wins through, a hero who's made an artform of weaponised incompetence. And she’s sick of his shit and decides to murder him.
It’s really clever: basically Allison, the wife, is in a prestige drama and her husband’s in a sitcom, and the show changes lighting and soundtrack and adds a laugh track based on where they are. It’s not just a meta joke, imo: it reflects how Kevin, and his emotional abuse, warps the world around himself. She always gets pulled into his world, the rules based on what’s funny and leads to his eventual victory; he’ll never see things from her perspective. And the whole show is incredibly intelligent and insightful about emotional abuse, and does really nuanced characterisation and some great twists.
Under the cut is like... more meta & a bit of Patty/Allison squee than review? And should be understandable if you haven't seen it, I think.
So I was already really enjoying it, pulled along by the performances and characterisation, but when I really sat up and went OH is when Patty joined the prestige drama and we saw things from her perspective.
Up until that point, it’s been Allison versus her husband, his dad, his idiot best friend, and his idiot best friend’s sister - snarky and sarcastic and ‘one of the guys’. Allison reaches out to her over and over and Patty rejects it every time. She finds Allison’s cheerful, incredibly constrained and clearly frustrated persona grating and annoying. She also clearly recognises that her position as one of the boys is precarious and conditional, and that Allison’s implicit invitation to form an alliance would make her one of the girls forever. Even though she finds the guys annoying, and she does warn Allison (very belatedly) about how Kevin’s fucked her over financially, she’s not willing to be friends with her. Allison reaches out over and over, and Patty rejects her - “you’re wallpaper”, ouch - except she also starts to help her.
The scope of the show widens so interestingly once we see another woman’s approach to all this, and get a glimpse of what’s under Patty’s snarky, closed-off persona. You’d think she’s the one who doesn’t care what people think, versus Allison’s worry about what the neighbours might think, but Patty’s capitulated to it a lot more imo - she pretends to like beers and men she hates for the sake of having a crew. I mean, Patty’s actually incredibly generous and tough, I don’t say that with scorn, but it’s a really interesting element.
When Allison tells Patty she’s in danger, she helps her. And that episode’s fantastic - it’s where their friendship really begins, and it’s also where we really start to see the dangers the men pose to Patty and Allison and why they’ve been behaving that way.
Basically they went on a roadtrip and bonded and committed crimes. There’s a moment when Kevin calls and Allison goes to answer, despite it being a terrible time, and Patty, in a very audience-surrogate moment, says she doesn’t need to answer every time. And I was totally on board with Patty - just train him that you won’t answer every single time! Being busy is reasonable! And I was sort of reacting to Allison as that harried sitcom wife, martyring herself. And then, off-screen, Kevin calls the police and reports the car as stolen.
It’s such a chilling moment. And it’s part of a wider union between the format and central themes, which, ugh, god, I love well-constructed narratives so much. Because Allison decided she was going to kill Kevin, and did stuff like sneak out of her own house in the middle of the night. She doesn’t try to communicate with him or talk about divorce, and it feels like a problem of mindset. And then the show starts to reveal stuff like this, drip-drip-drip; and how Allison was doing well as a paralegal until Kevin made her quit; and how he hassled her about being a bad driver until she stopped driving, and said she was bad with money until she let him control their savings. And then when the women get home they’re sat down and intimidated by the three men standing over them. And you see why actually, Allison might be doing all of this crazy-seeming stuff for terrifyingly practical reasons. And how even those of us who think of ourselves as clued-up about abuse can dismiss what seems like an overreaction because we don’t have the context.
I mean, okay, it’s also thinking of a TV character as following stupid TV logic rather than communicating. But even so.
That episode also shows the men deciding they need “a new Patty”, and it’s pitch-perfect: a classic sitcom plot that also shows how painfully disposable she is to them.
There’s a lot of fascinating stuff around class, too, but I might post about that another time.
Patty’s bi awakening is so lovely. It fits so perfectly with how closed-off she is, and omg, her embarrassment over not having worked this stuff out yet, my heart.
That said, I’m not particularly into Tammy/Patty. Aside from the fact that it’s clearly going to end in disaster, and the whole ‘make the sympathetic cop character a black lesbian so we like her’ thing leaving me kinda cold… my Allison/Patty shipping is SO MUCH.
I mean, Allison thought Kevin was going to save her when they got together, and she tells Sam she doesn’t want him to save her, and then the episode ends with Patty saving her! And omg, Allison and Patty having this bad fight, and yet staring at each other so intensely. And when Patty questions their friendship Allison says, “you raised me from the dead” like oh god, how can you not ship a pairing with a line like that???
And then that ending, holy fucking shit. Such a genius, terrifying moment, and then Allison’s hand is cut and she’s in a whole new world again, just like in the first episode -- except this time Patty’s there, holding that hand.
I watched Our Flag Means Death. I enjoyed it but didn’t love it - probably my expectations were too high. I liked Oluwande, Frenchie and Lucius best and it was a lot of fun in general. Also omg, I know Ed’s heartbroken and all but Stede’s books! Noooooooo!!!
My favourite sitcom of the last year remains, unequivocally, We Are Lady Parts, a hilarious Channel 4 programme about an East London heroine who a) wants to find a nice boy and get married and b) joins an all-female all-Muslim punk band despite her crippling stage fright. So good <3
But the most interesting programme is definitely Kevin Can Fuck Himself, which
januarium turned me on to, mostly via her brilliant recruitment vid (on AO3 here):It’s about a ‘sitcom wife’, beautiful and intelligent and lumbered with a stupid, lazy, often drunk husband who does nothing round the house and says mean things to her and always wins through, a hero who's made an artform of weaponised incompetence. And she’s sick of his shit and decides to murder him.
It’s really clever: basically Allison, the wife, is in a prestige drama and her husband’s in a sitcom, and the show changes lighting and soundtrack and adds a laugh track based on where they are. It’s not just a meta joke, imo: it reflects how Kevin, and his emotional abuse, warps the world around himself. She always gets pulled into his world, the rules based on what’s funny and leads to his eventual victory; he’ll never see things from her perspective. And the whole show is incredibly intelligent and insightful about emotional abuse, and does really nuanced characterisation and some great twists.
Under the cut is like... more meta & a bit of Patty/Allison squee than review? And should be understandable if you haven't seen it, I think.
So I was already really enjoying it, pulled along by the performances and characterisation, but when I really sat up and went OH is when Patty joined the prestige drama and we saw things from her perspective.
Up until that point, it’s been Allison versus her husband, his dad, his idiot best friend, and his idiot best friend’s sister - snarky and sarcastic and ‘one of the guys’. Allison reaches out to her over and over and Patty rejects it every time. She finds Allison’s cheerful, incredibly constrained and clearly frustrated persona grating and annoying. She also clearly recognises that her position as one of the boys is precarious and conditional, and that Allison’s implicit invitation to form an alliance would make her one of the girls forever. Even though she finds the guys annoying, and she does warn Allison (very belatedly) about how Kevin’s fucked her over financially, she’s not willing to be friends with her. Allison reaches out over and over, and Patty rejects her - “you’re wallpaper”, ouch - except she also starts to help her.
The scope of the show widens so interestingly once we see another woman’s approach to all this, and get a glimpse of what’s under Patty’s snarky, closed-off persona. You’d think she’s the one who doesn’t care what people think, versus Allison’s worry about what the neighbours might think, but Patty’s capitulated to it a lot more imo - she pretends to like beers and men she hates for the sake of having a crew. I mean, Patty’s actually incredibly generous and tough, I don’t say that with scorn, but it’s a really interesting element.
When Allison tells Patty she’s in danger, she helps her. And that episode’s fantastic - it’s where their friendship really begins, and it’s also where we really start to see the dangers the men pose to Patty and Allison and why they’ve been behaving that way.
Basically they went on a roadtrip and bonded and committed crimes. There’s a moment when Kevin calls and Allison goes to answer, despite it being a terrible time, and Patty, in a very audience-surrogate moment, says she doesn’t need to answer every time. And I was totally on board with Patty - just train him that you won’t answer every single time! Being busy is reasonable! And I was sort of reacting to Allison as that harried sitcom wife, martyring herself. And then, off-screen, Kevin calls the police and reports the car as stolen.
It’s such a chilling moment. And it’s part of a wider union between the format and central themes, which, ugh, god, I love well-constructed narratives so much. Because Allison decided she was going to kill Kevin, and did stuff like sneak out of her own house in the middle of the night. She doesn’t try to communicate with him or talk about divorce, and it feels like a problem of mindset. And then the show starts to reveal stuff like this, drip-drip-drip; and how Allison was doing well as a paralegal until Kevin made her quit; and how he hassled her about being a bad driver until she stopped driving, and said she was bad with money until she let him control their savings. And then when the women get home they’re sat down and intimidated by the three men standing over them. And you see why actually, Allison might be doing all of this crazy-seeming stuff for terrifyingly practical reasons. And how even those of us who think of ourselves as clued-up about abuse can dismiss what seems like an overreaction because we don’t have the context.
I mean, okay, it’s also thinking of a TV character as following stupid TV logic rather than communicating. But even so.
That episode also shows the men deciding they need “a new Patty”, and it’s pitch-perfect: a classic sitcom plot that also shows how painfully disposable she is to them.
There’s a lot of fascinating stuff around class, too, but I might post about that another time.
Patty’s bi awakening is so lovely. It fits so perfectly with how closed-off she is, and omg, her embarrassment over not having worked this stuff out yet, my heart.
That said, I’m not particularly into Tammy/Patty. Aside from the fact that it’s clearly going to end in disaster, and the whole ‘make the sympathetic cop character a black lesbian so we like her’ thing leaving me kinda cold… my Allison/Patty shipping is SO MUCH.
I mean, Allison thought Kevin was going to save her when they got together, and she tells Sam she doesn’t want him to save her, and then the episode ends with Patty saving her! And omg, Allison and Patty having this bad fight, and yet staring at each other so intensely. And when Patty questions their friendship Allison says, “you raised me from the dead” like oh god, how can you not ship a pairing with a line like that???
And then that ending, holy fucking shit. Such a genius, terrifying moment, and then Allison’s hand is cut and she’s in a whole new world again, just like in the first episode -- except this time Patty’s there, holding that hand.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 12:44 am (UTC)I am starting to wonder if there was a certain thing about old school m/m slash that is over now and that I just don't get newer canons? I feel sure there is a huge meta there that I will need to ponder.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 11:24 am (UTC)I'd read it!
D'you maybe not get into comedy in a fandom way?
no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 11:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 10:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 11:23 am (UTC)And yaaay I'm so glad! I loved it so much, I'm so glad Jan turned me onto it.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-05 10:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 01:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-02 06:07 pm (UTC)Re. OFMD, then I think a huge part of it is simply the fact that it's not queer bating - it follows through. Which no one was expecting.
I have seen episode 1 of Lady Parts and just never watched the rest. But I know others love it.
no subject
Date: 2023-05-06 04:49 pm (UTC)Ooh, Kevin CGFH sounds very interesting too...