YMMV / Kevin Can F**k Himself

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • How cognizant is Neil of his and others' actions, considering his immaturity and mental issues? In "Fixed", did he deliberately attack Allison with the intention to harm or kill her, or did he just want his phone back and didn't know his own strength? Or was it some combination of the two?
    • The second season reveals it's a mix of both - while Neil isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, he is more insightful than he seems and he wasn't aiming to kill Allison, but it's also revealed he's genuinely had issues with not knowing how strong he can be since he was a child.
  • Allison is clearly Not So Above It All herself and even has a lot of similarities with Kevin, namely in that she's just as prone to being as self-absorbed and impulsive as him (and to say nothing of the Reality Warper theory). Are those attributes an innate part of her personality (perhaps making her and Kevin a twisted form of Birds of a Feather) or just simply the result of her clear Sanity Slippage and being lonely and isolated for so long? Could it be part of Kevin's toxicity rubbing off on her?
  • It's undeniable that Kevin is an awful person, but to what extent? Is he a full-on sadistic abuser playing stupid to get away with his horrible and hurtful actions? Is he a dangerous, selfish idiot who isn't actively cruel but simply doesn't care if he hurts people? Is he somewhere between the two, a dimwitted bully performing crude acts of malice? Or is the sitcom imagery more than metaphor, and he literally sees himself as the main character of the world, and everyone else exists to cater to that? The show largely goes more along with the "dimwitted bully" interpretation, showing Kevin is reckless and doesn't necessarily go out of his way to be cruel but generally doesn't care about the destructive or harmful consequences of his actions. However, there is evidence throughout the series to lend credibility to the first interpretation as well, as Kevin does admit to playing up the "silly oaf" persona so he can get away with his cruel actions, and in the final episode, when the "sitcom filter" is taken off, it's shown that Kevin fully knows what he's doing and is more than capable of getting vicious and violent at the drop of a hat.
• Catharsis Factor
  • In "The Unreliable Narrator", it is extremely satisfying to finally see people get pissed off at Kevin for his cruel, petty behavior in this episode. Even Neil gets upset with him, shouting "Kill him!" when Diane declared she would beat his ass. In the same episode, Sam finally sees firsthand just how bad Kevin is and realizes Allison has put up with this every day for a decade and he had been unfairly harsh towards her when he never bothered to understand her situation.
  • In the series finale, everyone has wised up to how horrible Kevin is and Allison reveals to him that she hasn't loved him in years and is going to divorce him, causing even his own sitcom studio audience to turn against him and start cheering for Allison, which finally pulls him into the real world at last. After seeing him be an utterly toxic and abusive lout who never had to be held accountable once in his life, it's practically therapeutic to see Kevin losing his once vice grip hold on everyone, including his own sitcom-like view of the world.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Though nothing is ever outright stated, it's generally agreed that Neil suffers from some form of mental disability, given his incredibly childish and obliviously self-destructive behavior, to say nothing of his severe dependence on Kevin's approval.
• Epileptic Trees: There's a school of fans convinced Kevin is a small-scale Reality Warper. Some of those fans believe that Allison is also one and her resentment of him stems from how his worldview asserts itself more over hers.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While Patty/Tammy and Allison/Sam aren't disliked and have their supporters, Allison/Patty has emerged as the most popular ship in the fandom as their relationship has deepened and become more mutually supportive. Even Patty's actress, Mary Hollis Inboden, ships it.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Alex Bonifer, who plays Neil, got a good deal of positive reviews for his performance in the second season, showing Neil's Sanity Slippage and Hidden Depths while pulling off the transitions between the sitcom framing and the drama framing seamlessly.
  • Eric Petersen gets to show off some real chops during the finale, when we finally see Kevin outside the sitcom setting. He effortlessly switches from the cliché sitcom goofball, to a legitimately intimidating and unsettling abuser. Petersen even remarked in interviews how much he had been looking forward to playing the "real" Kevin and that his co-star Annie Murphy, knowing this, was very supportive of him.
• Informed Wrongness; The town hailing Kevin as a hero for killing Nick when his firearm is unlicensed is understandable, but the narrative expects you to vilify him. While it's not wrong that Alison wants him dead, Nick did break into the house giving Kevin valid reason to shoot him. Having an unlicensed firearm is a far less severe crime than breaking in with attempt to murder. To think the town is wrong for seeing Kevin as the good guy in this situation just because his firearm is unlicensed comes off as nothing short of cartoonish.
• Jerkass Woobie: Neil is an insensitive jerk to Allison and his younger sister Patty, who has been taking care of him since childhood, but he's also a feckless and possibly mentally disabled man who just wants Kevin's (very conditional) approval and is clearly as much a victim of his abuse as Allison and Patty. This trait increases in Season 2 as he struggles with the trauma of getting attacked in self-defense by Patty and his growing realization that Kevin doesn't care for him.
• Les Yay: Patty and Allison's growing friendship has developed shades of this by the end of Season 1. In "Broken", they share a tender moment while cuddled in the bathtub, with an explicitly romantic song ("Unchained Melody") playing in the background; in "Fixed", Allison expresses discomfort with Patty's relationship with Tammy but cannot articulate why, and Patty later smashes a bottle over her own brother's head to save Allison. The season ends with the two of them holding hands and presenting a united front against Neil. Allison certainly considers them a unit, remarking that she considers the bad things they do to be okay because they do them for each other, and comments that sometimes, she can't even remember who did what. Their vow to "die alone together" in "Allison's House" can also be read as their own little Love Confession to each other.
• Moral Event Horizon: Kevin has multiple potential actions that qualify. Onscreen, he truly crosses it when he cuts Patty off from the friend group (which includes her own brother) and further isolates her by breaking her up with her boyfriend just because she didn't get him a burger when she went to a fast food restaurant. Even worse when you consider that she didn't even get herself a burger — the wrapper was left in the car by Trevor, the kid in Vermont who was meant to be showing her how to find the drug dealer. But then, Kevin doesn't know that part of the story.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • While it doesn't get nearly as depraved as that film, the show's deconstruction of Dom Com tropes can come off as a great TV adaptation of the "I Love Mallory" scenes in Natural Born Killers, in which a clear-cut case of Domestic Abuse is Played for Black Comedy and dark satire by framing it as a sitcom, complete with a Laugh Track that gets a lot less appropriate as the viewer realizes how ugly the situation is.
  • Despite the fact that the content in the series isn't too disturbing, it has similar elements of disturbing elements being played for dark comedy like Visitor Q and Dogtooth. Both these movies are dark comedies that focus on a weird nearly sociopathic family doing evil deeds and getting away with it. And similar to the latter film, Allison and Patty also hatch an escape plan to experience the outside world, away from the sitcom.
• Unexpected Character: Patty herself is this, as most of the trailers and promos for the show barely featured her, hiding the fact that she is the real Deuteragonist of the series.
• The Woobie: Allison and Patty are respectively the biggest and second-biggest victims of Kevin's abuse and it has taken a heavy toll on their lives as he actively makes it impossible for them to get away from him or move on from him.
  • The second season reveals Diane as one. Turns out her husband has been cheating on her for the past decade despite everything she's done to keep him happy.

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