#also everyone is welcome to scream at me in DMs if you're so inclined

[xoxoemynn]

omg you watched kevin can f**k himself! I was obsessed with that show when it was airing, definitely due for a rewatch. what did you think? the breaking of the sitcom with allison and kevin in the last episode has stuck with me since I saw it almost 2 years ago

YEAH IT WAS SO FUCKING GOOD. I've wanted to watch it for years but was too lazy to figure out how to and now it's on Netflix so there's that issue sorted!

I wanted to take my time watching and ended up binging it because I could.not.stop. so I know I missed things and I want to go back and rewatch, but I also want to let it simmer a minute.

Going to put some incoherent ramblings behind a cut just to be safe for spoilers (and yes I know it's been years but I know a lot of people are just hearing about it for the first time now that it's on Netflix).

The last 15 mins of the show HAUNT me. I had a feeling that was coming but actually SEEING it was terrifying. We all KNEW this was Kevin, we all KNEW the sitcom filter was obscuring how abusive his behavior was, but when we actually see him the way he REALLY is and how everything about him changes, it's just HORRIFYING. And it puts everything we just watched into a new perspective because the way he corners her, his tone when he asks her what she said to Molly, when he starts listing off things that happened in the show that even knowing all along that he was a narcissistic, abusive asshole you still might be tempted to think "oh, maybe he's just clueless to the fact he's being awful" and you realize no, he was AWARE and he knew exACTLY what he was doing to control Allison and keep her down...literally I cannot get that scene out of my head.

And then looking back on the series as a whole...

Just how JARRING the contrast was between the sitcom world and the real world? And how it faded away so slowly you almost don't even notice it at first until you get closer to the end of the series and you're mostly in the real world? How the sitcom filter obscures the bandages Allison wears. How dingy the house looks when it fades. How the women's appearances change, looking cute and put together in the sitcom world but in the real world we see Allison's roots are showing and her clothing is in worse condition and Patty's hair looks less TV ready despite being a stylist. How we start to see all the characters differently once Kevin begins to lose his grip on them. How we never actually see Pete in the real world?!

One thing the show does really well, and a reason why I'm so eager to rewatch it, is not outright revealing everything that's happening. Allison wears long sleeves for most of the show; when we see her in a hospital gown there are bruises on her arm that are never commented on. We'd never had any reason to suspect Kevin's abuse was physical, but especially after seeing the finale, I think it's fair to believe that. And then you look back on all the other times Kevin "accidentally" hurt Allison, like the time he slams the door into her face and we see her simply cover it up with makeup... yeah.

Just all the LAYERS to the show. Analyzing it from the lens of how sitcoms treat women, the wives in particular, who are shown as humorless, nagging shrews who are just expected to put up with their husbands who act like children and are engaging in all kinds of antics to the delight of a laugh track that would be horrifying in real life. (And the fact they brought in the actress whose character was killed off in between seasons of Kevin Can Wait and then barely spoken of again was a BRILLIANT bit of meta commentary.)

But then also what it's like to be in an abusive relationship with a narcissistic, charismatic alcoholic, and how isolating and desperate it can feel when nobody sees what you see, nobody understands what you're experiencing, because everyone else is content to live in this world where he's the goofy life of the party. And at the beginning you may be going "okay, girl, just LEAVE," but then as you learn more and more about just how controlling Kevin is, and what he's capable of, and also Allison's own childhood, you start to see why she was SO desperate she'd go so far as to fake her own death because she thinks it's the only way she can ever escape him.

It's just so. good. And intense. I wish they had gotten one more season because while the ending was brilliant, I felt like some parts in S2 were a bit rushed, particularly with Neil, but it was just SUCH compelling TV and I cannot get it out of my head.