So who else has been watching this? I’ve always been kind of torn on this show and the finale left me feeling the same way. On the one hand, from a technical standpoint, its central gimmick is brilliantly pulled off. The contrast between harshly lit, three-camera Sitcom World and grungy, single-camera Drama World was always executed well, and watching actors mode-switch from one acting style to another, often in mid-scene, could be thrilling.
Speaking of acting, the performances were stellar. Annie Murphy made Allison sympathetic without obscuring how destructive she could be in her own way to the people around her. Mary Hollis Inboden was effortlessly natural as Patty, and Alex Bonifer all but stole the show as Neil. And Eric Petersen, finally forced into Drama World by Allison threatening divorce, showed what a real-life Kevin would be: jolly and laughing on the surface — pleasant enough as long as you let him have his way and never called him on his shit — but hard and controlling underneath, a user of people. Like Allison says, a goddamn cancer.
All that being said, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the whole sitcom/drama world gimmick never rose to be anything more interesting than that — a hook to make an otherwise conventional Good Girls knockoff stand out. If the whole point of it was to signal that the kind of behavior laughed off in sitcoms would be abusive in the real world, the show fulfilled its ambition in the first episode. I kept waiting for the two-worlds thing to carry some greater resonance, or say something more compelling about unhealthy relationships and why people stay in them, or how we as a culture make a joke out of female pain, or … something. Instead, the real suspense driving the show was not what would happen to Allison, but what Kevin would finally be like when we “really” saw him. And as well-played as that scene was, was it really worth all that?
I’m not reading the OP because I haven’t watched last night’s episode yet (and I didn’t realize it was already the last one).
Personally, I liked it right from the get go. It’s different…I’m not sure if it’s 100% unique, but it’s different and I think they did a good job with it.
Just glancing at wiki, they were getting less than a quarter million viewers per episode. For comparison’s sake, The Conners and Young Sheldon are getting 5+ million viewers per episode. Life In Pieces, a great but under rated sitcom with an all-star cast, was getting over 3 million on their way to cancellation.
I wonder if it wasn’t ‘accessible’ enough since the comedy parts could be almost over-the-top cheesy while the dark parts got really, really dark (again, haven’t seen the last episode, but Neil looked like he was heading towards suicide since they hit him). It may have been hard to find an audience that could swing back and forth between those two extremes.
What I was surprised at is how much I grew to like Patty. I don’t know her from anything else so I have no idea how much of what I saw was her character vs her, but throughout the first few episodes, I didn’t really care for her. She was just a one-dimensional tomboy that didn’t get along with Allison. By the end they had fleshed her out so much I think she was a bigger character than Kevin.
Something that I’ve been meaning to ask is, was there a reason given as to why killing him was the only option? I understand she wasn’t happy, but it’s not like he was going to hurt/kill her. I feel like there was an explanation that I’m not remembering as to why she couldn’t just walk away. The “I have to kill my husband, it’s the only way” seems more like the premise for a show with an abusive husband, not the stereotypical sitcom husband.
This is my preemptive apology for the following Wall Of Words. I started writing this yesterday when I actually finished the show and kept coming back to it.
Okay, just finished it.
I really liked it. Both the series and this specific episode.
One thing I noticed is that this episode (the finale) seemed like an entire season crammed into an hour. I’m wondering if they assumed they had a third season and when it got cancelled they didn’t have time (or didn’t want) to rewrite this season. To me it felt like she should have been leaving at the end of season 3, returning to Worcester in the last 1 or 2 episodes and create all kinds of chaos leading into Season 4.
That might also explain some other things. Like why bother having Kevin start dating that other person? That sort of felt like a dropped story arc. It felt like there was a lot missing between Allison tracking down Kevin’s girlfriend and talking to her (off camera, we never found out what was said) and her walking out on Kevin.
I think Neil would have left at some point. Probably like he did here. I’m not sure the show is quite dark enough for him to spiral like he was and end in suicide.
Regarding Tammy, what was the point of her tracking down, and confronting, Allison?
I’m not entirely sure Kevin’s complaint would or could be anonymous. Maybe if he did it through a lawyer or journalist, but Kevin seems like the type of guy that would march right to the police department and demand to speak to a manager and then make a huge scene. One way or another, I feel like she’d find out it was him (and Allison).
With that in mind, that is, with her knowing full well that the McRoberts are willing and able to rat her out (and honestly, even if she didn’t know that), she still put herself in a compromising position. Considering that Allison could resurface at any time, I think she should be worried that Allison could tell the police Tammy has been aware that she’s alive and knew where she was living/working for quite a while. Whether that constitutes a crime or not, I’m not sure.
Also, I can’t think of a single good reason, not even as a plot device (based on anything that’s already aired), why Tammy would involve another officer (civilian friend?) in this. That gives Allison a witness to corroborate her story.
Maybe Tammy trying to keep Allison from reporting her was going to be a future arc.
What I assumed was going to happen is that Tammy would, as a way to help Patty get some closure and move on, say to her “I don’t want you to respond because I don’t want to know, I’m only going to say this once and then the entire subject will never be spoken of again, I found her, she’s happy, she’s safe, she’s going to be just fine”, cut to Patty and Tammy living in their new house in a drastically different neighborhood.
What else?
I felt like ‘that trucker had pills on him’ and ‘the guy who broke into your house had the same pills therefore there’s a connection between them’ was a bizarrely huge leap. Unless there was something really specific about these pills, the exact same pills are probably found in dozens of burglar’s pockets or cars every single day in the US.
Oh, and I thought the ‘audience’ gasp when she said she wanted a divorce, and the second gasp/applause when she reiterated it, was too much, even for this show. It felt like Saved By The Bell. It was almost jarring since she was very clearly leading up to that. It should have taken exactly no one by surprise.
But, again, to be very clear, I really liked this episode, in spite of or maybe because of all those things.
Now, regarding Kevin’s transformation. I don’t know him from anything else so I have no idea if this was in his wheelhouse, but he did an amazing job changing from lovable dolt to a person almost on par with Michael C Hall/Dexter. I wonder if he [Kevin, the character] was always like that.
And I really liked his beard. I keep trying to imagine him in some of those scenes without it and it doesn’t feel right.
I completely agree. Right from the get go I was amazed that she could portray a character that IMO had a lot of similarities to Alexis Schitt while putting an entirely different spin on it.
Again, agreed. She seemed like she’s that neighbor we all have with a bit of an edge but just like anyone else once you get to know her. I bet she was a goth kid in high school.
Funny I mentioned this before watching it. This goes back to the question I asked myself at the beginning of this post. Was he was like this? Has he always been like this and no one else knew? Was he always like this and only Allison knew? Was he abusive, above and beyond just being your standard narcissistic jerk, and she kept it hidden? What about Neil? Was he a victim as well? We were led to believe Neil’s transformation was due to Patty and Allison. But maybe Kevin had a hand in it.
I saw the finale yesterday and it was interesting, particularly when Allison demanded a divorce from Kevin (while in the multi-cam sitcom world) but then he got angry and for the first time, was in the single-cam dark world. (And did I miss a clue or did the show leave ambiguous whether he died in the fire?)
BTW, regarding Molly, Kevin’s new girlfriend, you may not have noticed who played her. (Note that I didn’t pick up this but learned it from reading the AV Club recap.) She was played by Erinn Hayes, who was the wife of Kevin James’ character in the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait (which was basically a real-life example of the sort of sitcom this whole show was about). She was written out after the first season and when the second season started, her character was dead.
I wasn’t sure of that either. In fact, while watching show I opened up a reply in this thread and started making some notes. I remember I wrote ‘did Neil die’, but then I decided he probably didn’t and changed it to ‘did Kevin die’ .
IIRC, it didn’t feel like that at first as I think he was still moving around getting the fire going. It’s not that (as I recall) they cut away as he was going into the basement or passing out on the couch from all the booze. But then they had some odd zoom into the burning house that made me second guess myself.
Maybe that’s their backdoor into a third season. If the show ends, we can assume he died and Allison won. If another network/streaming service picks it up, he’s still alive and we can expect a season long increasingly intense battle between the two of them, and then Allison wins.
I think the finale ended up kind of answering this — she actually didn’t need to kill him, she just didn’t think she was strong enough to fight Kevin for a divorce and win. Once she believed in herself sufficiently, she no longer needed to resort to deceit or violence.
One thing I really appreciated in hindsight were how the details of Kevin’s demise were foreshadowed: not only were the people who could have saved him steadily driven away, but it was established previously in the season that a) Kevin is a firebug, if not a full-blown arsonist, and b) he took the batteries from the house’s smoke detectors to run his generator.
That’s a bit deeper than what my theory was. I feel like something in the first episode prompted me to think this, but the only thing I could come up with was that she was believed Kevin would track her down no matter where she went. Not because he was evil, but because he was moron and he wouldn’t have comprehended that she [really] left him. I was going to mention it in the post I made before I watched the show but I didn’t and now I’m kicking myself since that was Kevin’s initial reaction to her, saying/hoping that she was joking.
I’m sad it’s over over. I can’t say I ENJOYED it per se, but I thought it was good. I’m not from Worcester, but I am a Masshole (multi-generational townie trash) and it just hit so true. The accent work was… well it wasn’t convincing BUT it wasn’t off-putting Cliff Clavin.
Kevin was the worst, even when he was wearing a Market Basket sweatshirt. At least in the end, everyone saw what Allison saw.
I thought hers was one of the better ones. With Boston accents, less is more. Sometimes we sound full Townie/Good Will Hunting/etc, but usually when we’re upset. Even around full locals, I don’t often hear a real thick one who isn’t upset or drunk or excited.
Late to the party, but my wife and I recently discovered this show and just finished S2 last night, so I went looking to see if there was a thread on it.
I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about about the conceit of the sitcom / drama contrast at first, whether it was gimmicky or brilliant. I eventually decided on something closer to brilliant. The sitcom parts were kind of like the happy face we put on to the world, especially in areas of our life such as our social media postings. Or the personas we create to cope with situations, such as the dimwitted teddy bear Neil played or pretended to be, when it was eventually revealed he was both much more intelligent, angrier, and borderline violent. It was interesting seeing characters like Allison and Neil, after showing their darker selves, re-entering ‘sitcom world’ and putting their happy personas back on, with the darkness still peeking through somewhat.
One thing is for sure, I will never watch a 3-camera sitcom the same way ever again! Take ‘Full House’ for a random example…what darkness, angst and horror was hiding behind the wholesome, corny exteriors of Danny Tanner, Uncle Jesse, and the other guy, the one played by Dave Coulier?
My wife and I just got done watching it. My theory on it was that Kevin saw himself like the loveable lunk, center of everyone’s universe, the fun-loving party guy (the sitcom), but in reality everyone hated him because he was manipulative, verbally abusive, a raging alcoholic and just an all-around piece of shit. How he saw his life was nothing like reality. Reality was dark and grim and unpleasant, mostly because of him (for Neil, his dad, Allison)
You know, I kept thinking they were building up to a big payoff with his dad’s ‘priestly’ background, but it never really seemed to go beyond occasional throwaway gags.