How “Kevin Can F ** k Himself” Subverts Our TV Expectations of Female Friendship

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Once he realizes that “Kevin Can F ** k Himself” is a moving showcase of subversion of tropes, Allison McRoberts (Annie Murphy) ‘s bizarre relationship with Patty O’Connor (Mary Hollis Inboden) must have meaning. Patty is Allison’s neighbor, and under unwritten sitcom law, one would assume the two would automatically be friends, if not best friends. It has been that way since the days of Lucy and Ethel.

But Patty sees herself as the partner of Kevin McRoberts (Eric Petersen) worthless husband Allison, not Allison. In fact, Patty barely conceals how much she despises Allison, flouting her optimism, ridiculing the other woman’s fashion choices despite her own sense of style.

Allison doesn’t have real girlfriends in her neighborhood, or anywhere in Worchester, Massachusetts. His former colleague at the liquor store undermines his self-esteem every moment. Even the employees of the luxury cosmetics store she loves to visit look at her with utter contempt. The only woman who is really nice to her is the wife of her high school friend Sam (Raymond Lee), who currently has no idea that Allison recently had sex with her husband.

If Allison’s lack of female support rubs you the wrong way, it is a testament to the effectiveness of female-to-female relationship messages on TV. “Kevin Can F ** k Himself” swims against the tide made up of archetypes that stand the test of time: Mary and Rhoda, Laverne and Shirley, Carrie and Samantha and Miranda and Charlotte, Dorothy and Rose and Blanche and Sophia .

All of these real blues teams live in comedies, which isn’t to say dramas don’t have their own sets of linked women. The strongest of these relationships survive conflict at some point in their history. Cristina Yang may be Meredith Gray’s persona in “Grey’s Anatomy,” but they have a lot of history, which includes such severe fallouts as Issa and Molly in “Insecure.”

Television comedy, by its nature, involves a level of assurance and low stakes, which is why so many simpler examples neglect to solidify or focus the strength of all relationships beyond those that have an impact. direct impact on the main character.

The cruel Allison joke is written in the DNA of the sitcom side of “Kevin Can F ** k Himself,” dictating that the only people Kevin (and the public by proxy) need to care about are his family and brothers. How much he views his wife as family is also part of the joke as sitcom men constantly fail their wives or treat them like surrogates, the punchline that gets the show going.

Within this ecosystem, Patty is an unusual player: one of the guys, never on Allison’s team. She’s not entirely gender neutral, which the comedy side implies. In the drab, sickly drama, Patty has a romantic life, demonstrated by glimpses of her beta-male fiance; she is also a stylist when she is not using her business as a front for her drug dealing.

It wasn’t until Allison got Patty on a road trip that she tightened the screws on their partnership. During their journey, Allison reveals her wacky plan to murder Kevin, and Patty’s initial shock isn’t in the confessions themselves, but in the fact that the adorable widdle Allison thinks she’s capable of a cold-blooded homicide.

Events led Kevin to exile Patty from the gang once he realized that the two had gone to his favorite hamburger restaurant outside of town and had brought nothing home for him, which happened. produced at the exact moment when Patty needs to be distracted from her. problems, which is all Kevin, Neil and the rest of the gang are up to to her.

The cops revolve around Patty’s opioid trade, especially a particularly curious female detective. Sure she doesn’t want to be Patty’s friend, right? But it gives Patty an idea that might fix Allison’s problems as well – they can pin the drug dealing racket on Kevin and him at the same time.

Dramas have their own double standard when it comes to women, which we saw in the hatred that erupted towards Skyler White when she dared to oppose Walter’s meth business on “Breaking Bad.” Men can be difficult in high-profile dramas; women have more trouble. That’s why we remember Edie Falco more as the long-suffering Carmela Soprano than as the addicting and tart-tongue main character of “Nurse Jackie”.

Then again, “Sex & the City” writer Carrie Bradshaw was also no angel to other women, betraying lovers’ wives and judging friends. But that doesn’t make her terrible, just flawed – a spiritual model, of sorts, for characters like “Never Have I Ever” protagonist Devi who, among other mistakes in this new season, erases another’s reputation. young woman out of envy.

Devi is adorable for many other reasons, of course, and some of them are in common with the selfish but adorable Alexis Rose of Murphy’s “Schitt’s Creek”. I’m not entirely sure she or “Kevin” creator Valerie Armstrong or showrunner Craig DiGregorio are intending to make us love Allison, the sitcom’s traditional audience expectation. Very few other people do this other than the character’s crush in high school.

It makes her an interesting experience, doesn’t it? The sitcom woman who not only lacks female companionship, but in her current state, is impossible to befriend. You almost can’t fault Patty for keeping Allison close the way we’re supposed to with our enemies.

The bifurcated nature of the show could make a full connection to Allison impossible. Her personality remains constant between the comedic side of the show and the drama, and in both worlds she’s a bit unstable, the kind of person who is happily watched from afar without empathy, drinking schadenfreude.

She’s a catharsis creature ready to huff with no one to hold her hair as she vomits her pain. He might not be an entirely new character on TV. But if Murphy and the show’s creators wanted to build a story around a character who challenges the story, the expectations of how women behave towards each other and in the world of television, they found something.

“Kevin Can F ** k Himself” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC and airs a week earlier on AMC +.


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