Prime Summary:
A look at the secret life of a sitcom wife.
FYA Summary:
If you’re of a certain age or live with people who like CBS/FOX comedies, you’ve seen the shows. King of Queens. Everybody Loves Raymond. Last Man Standing. Dumpy sitcom husbands who just want to hang out on the couch with a beer crackin’ bad jokes while their smokin’ hot wives nag them about the chores they don’t do and fix them supper every night.
Allison lives in such a world…sometimes. When Kevin is around, hanging out with his loser friends, making a mess, and making excuses for why he doesn’t want to move to a nicer place, she plays her part of the put-upon but loveable wife. But when Kevin is out of the room, Allison is left alone with her thoughts, and those thoughts are dark as hell.
After Allison finds out the reason they can’t move to the nicer neighborhood she’s been saving up for years for is because Kevin secretly siphoned off money, leaving the account as empty as her dreams, she snaps. He’ll find her wherever she goes. He won’t let her divorce him. So the only logical thing to do…is kill him.
Familiar Faces:
L to R: Brian Howe as Pete McRoberts, Annie Murphy as Allison McRoberts, Alex Bonifer as Neil O’Connor, Eric Petersen as Kevin McRoberts, and Mary Hollis Inboden as Patty O’Connor
Annie Murphy is best known for ditzy Alexis on Schitt’s Creek, but don’t count out her dramatic chops. I really enjoyed her, even if I didn’t always like Allison.
Petersen has the PERFECT bug-eyed look to play Kevin; I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him before but he alternately enraged and creeped me out. I’m not sure I even want to see him do anything else, because he IS Kevin (sorry, Eric). Howe embodies Kevin’s mooching, enabling father, and I suppose you can say he acts it well, because I also hated looking at his face.
Mary and Alex play siblings who live next-door to the McRoberts, and, at the start, they’re both minions to Kevin’s evil “genius”. But Mary takes pity on Allison and tells her about Kevin using up the savings, and suddenly they find themselves as something they never thought they’d be: friends. Their pairing was my favorite part of the show.
Couch-Sharing Capability: Misery Loves Company?
I binged by myself but it’s a story ripe for discussion, so I found myself looking up internet opinions because no one I knew had watched it. So if you can find the right person to watch with you, it’d be worth it. There’s only sixteen episodes over 2 seasons and it does have a definitive ending, so it’s not a huge time investment.
Recommended Level of Inebriation: A Drink To Get You Through The Day
A drink to toast the fact that your relationship isn’t as bad as Allison’s? A drink celebrating getting through a tough episode? Or because perhaps you see some of yourself on screen? There’s so many possibilities; just drink responsibly.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: Good But Dark
This is a unique show, and one that won’t be for everyone, but it felt kinda important to witness and support it because of what I think they were trying to accomplish. The “gimmick” is that the moments with Kevin are shot as if they ARE in a “real” sitcom, with bright studio lights, a laugh track, and overly-loud, punny lines. But when Allison steps into a room without Kevin, the shot immediately switches to a grittier, “real-world” filter, showing us her reality as it truly is: darker, dingier, and lonely. It’s visceral and uncomfortable, but it’s successful in showing the audience how draining it is to live with an emotionally abusive narcissist.
Kevin is a horrible person, no doubt, but, frankly, Allison doesn’t come off smelling like a rose either – she’s manipulative and self-absorbed in her own ways, and often lacks self-reflection. To jump immediately to “I need to kill my husband” versus any other option out of the relationship is, well, quite extreme, and she can be hard to sympathize with. But all of this feels very intentional, as there is no such thing as a “perfect victim” of domestic abuse, and I think the writers made the harder and more interesting choice in making Allison this messed-up individual, instead of some saintly woman quietly suffering.
What I found so fascinating about this show was the discourse surrounding it. It needs to be watched and discussed for that reason alone, because MAN, OH MAN was it ever eye-opening to see the reactions online. It’s not a perfectly done show, by any means—some episodes can meander more than I’d like—but the POINT went over SO many heads. You can critique the show in its execution, sure, but the amount of people who “didn’t like it” who said a variation of, “but Kevin isn’t even really that abusive! I mean, he didn’t even hit her, so what is her problem??” makes you want to turn around to a fake audience and yell, “THIS. THIS IS WHY WE SUCK.”
