Here we are. The season finale to Kevin can F*** Himself. With me being reasonably please with the penultimate episode 7, I had solid hopes for this one.
The best laid plans of mice and men …
We begin with the big reveal – Kevin isn’t actually dead. It’s Nick who was shot and is teetering on death’s door. This gives Allison and Patti the brilliant idea of framing Nick to be the drug dealer. They sneak into his house and plant some drugs – NOT WEARING GLOVES – so of course their fingerprints are going to be all over everything. Worcester police are fairly effective – this is going to be incredibly easy to figure out.
Kevin actually gets some moments of self-reflection, which his dad and Neil don’t understand. But soon enough, after a few drinks, Kevin is back to normal.
Allison gets Patti to betray her cop girlfriend. Kevin decides he wants to run for city council, and holds a party at Sam’s diner. Sam tries to apologize to Allison about not supporting her more, Allison treats Sam as if he’s ‘barely better than nothing’, and pretty much everything is a mess.
And then Neil overhears Patti and Allison talking about how they’d tried to kill Kevin, and everything unravels. Neil is going to tell Kevin, Patti beans him on the head, and they have reached a moment of crisis. At which point of course the curtain comes down on season 1.
If anything, as happy I was about the previous episode’s Worcester references, this one was sad. It turns out the Worcester Ice Cats shirt I was so happy about is actually a Rhino shirt which doesn’t seem to have ANYTHING to do with Worcester. There’s a Woo City Sports tshirt which also seems fake. Even more bizarre, in the background of the hair salon you can see a George Aiken’s restaurant . The only George Aiken’s I can find is in western Pennsylvania and hasn’t even been there for a number of years. It’s as if they took an old restaurant storefront and used it as a fake set background.
I did track down the Sunnyside Cafe in Randolph (used to be a Friendly’s) as the Bev’s Diner location. However, the photos of the inside look NOTHING like the TV show so they must have done some serious remodeling or the online photos are old. I’ll have to drive out there to see.
I liked that Kevin had a moment of almost clarity, but overall I dislike the Kevin scenes immensely. I find them an enormous waste of time. Even the non-Kevin scenes in this episode were often about characters whining about how others were treating them.
In comparison, it just so happens that I just watched The Banshees of Inisherin. You could say that it covers similar themes – twisted, unhealthy human relationships, how people misunderstand each other, and so on. But I really enjoyed The Banshees of Inisherin. I suppose you could say the acting was stellar in The Banshees of Inisherin. But the screenplay there also got enormous praise. There’s just something about the writing and acting in Kevin Can F Himself that I don’t find compelling. I absolutely feel that the story of a marginalized wife in this situation SHOULD be told. I’m just not appreciating how in this particular series it IS being told.
Here’s my video on this episode:
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