  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, strong drug use, extremely traumatic themes, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
Kevin McRoberts is the main antagonist of the AMC dark comedy series Kevin Can F**k Himself. He is the husband of the protagonist Allison McRoberts.
Background[]
Not much is known of Kevin's early years. It's likely that his parents indulged him for much of his life. His mother passed away some years before he met Allison.
Kevin met Allison in 2005 at a bar after being inadvertently introduced to her by his supposed best friend Neil O'Connor's sister Patty. Kevin made Allison laugh and lifted her spirits up some as she was grieving for her dead father. They moved in together a few months later and subsequently married.
Personality[]
On the surface, Kevin seems like a goofy, jovial and good-natured guy who just likes to have fun. In reality, he's a deeply selfish, egotistical and abusive scumbag who is incapable of understanding the needs or feelings of others, including his wife and friends. He has a constant desire to be the center of attention at all times and is a control freak who feels entitled to have everything his way.
Kevin is a very reckless person, having no regard for the consequences of his actions and who they impact, even if it's his wife, his friends, or sometimes even himself. He has no concept of financial responsibility and is quick to waste his and Allison's money on parties, sports memorabilia and his various schemes, which has greatly damaged their financial situation. Many of his antics and schemes will not only fail, but also put him in life-threatening danger, including nearly choking to death on his birthday as he tries to balance an eating contest and eating fast food with Neil, only being saved by Sam's intervention.
Kevin is also very emotionally immature. He often acts like a spoiled child and is bombastic and overly dramatic, treating trivial matters like a chili cooking competition or a missing package as matters of life or death. He'll often take things way too far and cause great harm to other people over it, including getting a reporter for the local Worcester paper fired after dethroning him as a local celebrity.
While careless and childish, Kevin is capable of crude acts of manipulation to serve his own needs. He gaslights Allison into thinking she's not good with money and is a bad driver, just so he can take advantage of their bank account and hog the car for himself. He has also ruined other people's self-esteem and sabotaged their relationships to keep them dependent on him.
Over the course of the show, it's gradually revealed that Kevin is aware of how harmful he and his actions actually are, but doesn't care because he finds it to be humorous.
Throughout the Series[]
Season 1[]
After ten years of marriage, Kevin believes he and Allison are happy and everything is going perfectly fine, seeing the world as a sitcom where he's the main character. In truth, Allison has grown increasingly frustrated with his continued immaturity, irresponsible antics, and disregard for her own wants and needs. When she finds out that he drained their savings on a get-rich-quick scheme, she decides enough is enough and sets out to kill Kevin, who remains completely oblivious to her deepening resentment. While Allison tries to formulate ways of getting back at him (like stealing the Bill Belichick hoodie he was waiting for), Kevin continues to go about his usual harebrained schemes, including a business idea for themed escape rooms.
After Allison and Patty return home from a road trip to Vermont to gain oxycodone pills under the guise of going to a beauty expo, Kevin kicks Patty out of his friend group for not getting him a burger from Top Dog after finding a wrapper in the car. Patty, already aware of the full extent of how horrible a husband Kevin is to Allison, is driven to join Allison in taking him down. Patty convinces Allison to not use the bottle of pills she'd swiped off a trucker at a gas station on Kevin, which she worries won't be enough to kill him, citing an incident where Kevin once drank a pint of moonshine on Christmas Eve and woke up bright and early for breakfast on Christmas morning with nary a hangover. Patty then "gets back" into Kevin's good graces by bringing him a Top Dog burger (actually a replica cooked up by Sam Park) and driving away Paddy, the unstable man Kevin and Neil tried to replace Patty herself with after ejecting her from the group. Allison and Patty then enlist the services of local ex-felon Nick Wyndorff to stage a break-in at the McRoberts' house and shoot Kevin. At his birthday, Kevin engages in his yearly tradition of juggling two dinners simultaneously - a fancy steak dinner with Allison at The Grand Victorian restaurant and playing arcade games with Neil and Pete at the Tricky Ricky's Arcade next door. When Sean Avery visits the restaurant, he and Kevin challenge one another to an eating contest, despite the setbacks from eating a large platter of deep-fried appetizers at the arcade, Kevin is able to finish the Mighty Moo meal and fulfill his original goal of winning the necessary number of tickets to win a cowboy hat at the arcade's prize wall, some of the former he stole from a young boy.
While Allison plans out how the staged robbery will go and takes steps to throw suspicion off of herself (including ending the affair she was having with Sam, going to a fertility doctor to give off the impression that she and Kevin are trying for a baby, and planning a trip to visit her mother), Nick runs into trouble at his work, so he accelerates on the plan and breaks into the McRoberts' home much earlier than Allison's scheduled date. Kevin survives however, having found a gun Allison and Patty had previously acquired during their Vermont trip in the backyard with Neil's metal detector, and shoots Nick, rendering him comatose. After this, Kevin is deeply shaken and distraught at what he just went through and did, but after getting praise from other members of the community for shooting a known criminal, he becomes inspired to run for a seat in the Worcester city council. Neil gets bored during Kevin's campaign rally dinner at Sam's restaurant, so Kevin sends Neil off on a game of "ultimate hide-and-seek" to get rid of him. Neil crosses paths with Allison and Patty hours later when they have an explosive argument about the murder plot. Neil tries to warn Kevin and violently throttles Allison when she tries to stop him, necessitating Patty to hit him over the head with a bottle to stop him.
Season 2[]
While Neil recovers in the hospital, Kevin tries to plan his campaign out. He films a badly made campaign ad that gets him disqualified for the election but goes viral, making Kevin a local celebrity called "the Worcester Wild Dude". After recovering and returning home, Neil tries repeatedly to warn Kevin about Allison's murder plot, but is either ignored or brushed off by Kevin, which starts alienating Neil. Allison in the meantime decides to give up on having Kevin dead and instead decides to find a way to fake her own death. Kevin's father Pete has moved into the McRoberts' house as well, so to occupy his time, Kevin signs Pete up for dance lessons for senior citizens, where Pete meets Lorraine and begins a relationship with her, to Kevin's annoyance.
Kevin tries to capitalize on his local celebrity status as the Worcester Wild Dude, booking an interview with a reporter from a local paper and getting Neil on as his assistant. His antics don't impress the reporter. While Allison and Patty, with help from a private investigator named Billy Terrell, work to get Allison a new fake identity she can use once she fakes her own death, Kevin plans out his annual Halloween tradition of watching scary movies with Neil and Pete, with Neil inviting his sister's girlfriend Detective Tammy Ridgeway to join in. Kevin kicks the front door into Allison's face when thinking she's a robber about to break into the house, leaving her a with a nasty bruise on her face.
Kevin later causes a city-wide power outage to ensue when he tries to get his status as the Worcester Wild Dude back by trying to start a bonfire after Kelly, the reporter who had interviewed Kevin earlier, crowns a random horse as the new Worcester Wild Dude. He takes Pete, Lorraine, Neil, and Diane to Sam's diner (where Allison was asking a reluctant Sam to help her escape Kevin) with a generator to wait things out until the power comes back on, with Patty arriving shortly afterward. Due to having no fuel for the generator, Allison and Patty go out to grab the fuel to cover up that they’re actually going to City Hall to get the death certificate Allison needs to help her forge her new fake identity. While they're out, Kevin discovers that Sam has been living out of the back of his restaurant while he and his own wife Jenn are separated. Kevin takes it upon himself to impart marriage advice to Sam, who finds his patience and limits of frustration tested as the night goes on. When they exit the storage room, Kevin finds that the generator has gone missing and gets to interrogating everyone to pinpoint the thief. His crude investigation leads him to conclude Neil stole the generator, much to Neil’s anger. Kevin insults Neil and Neil storms out with Diane following him to comfort him; unbeknownst to the others, they kiss. Sam calls Kevin out on his behavior and says he should apologize, as Kevin is responsible for the city-wide power outage, holding them hostage, destroying Lorraine’s hearing aid, falsely accusing his best friend of theft, and slamming his father’s hand in a door. Kevin refuses to even acknowledge their pain and makes excuses for himself. The power then comes back on and he finds the generator, having been moved by Diane.
Seeing that he's still not the Worcester Wild Dude anymore, Kevin gets retribution on Kelly by getting her fired from her job and places the decapitated head of a horse plush and a bunch of fake blood on her windshield in the style of The Godfather. He also believes that Allison’s been working a lot at the diner and Sam’s “working her to the bone”, leaving her too tired to attend to her household duties such as cleaning. When Sam returns home to try to make things right with Jenn, she tearfully reveals that Kevin stopped by the house, telling her that he believes Sam is working Allison too hard and that Sam keeps the diner open to avoid his “disastrous home life.” After a long discussion, Sam and Jenn decide to divorce, though problems arise when Jenn’s parents put forth a lawsuit wanting to claim ownership of the restaurant. Allison weaponizes Kevin's unique ability to ruin things by informing him of Sam's “terrible divorce settlement” in the hopes the latter will find a solution to Sam’s problem. It works with Kevin issuing a fake lawsuit against the diner for a “slip and fall”, and since Jenn’s parents would’ve been on the hook for the payout, they relinquish their move to seize ownership of the restaurant. Allison decides to try to use it to get Tammy, who is investigating the Worcester oxycodone drug ring Patty was inadvertently a part of, off her own case so that she won't have to go through with her plan of faking her death. She tries to get Tammy to look into who started the fire that caused the city-wide blackout, which drives Kevin to find a way to throw her off his own trail. He finds that Tammy has often planted evidence at the behest of her former partner and acquires an affidavit he and Allison need to sign to get rid of her; Allison is unable to go through with it, however. When Tammy reveals she has a video recording of Allison and Patty assaulting the trucker and taking his oxy pills at the gas station in Vermont, Allison goes through with her plan to fake her death to take the heat off Patty by pretending to go on a hiking trip.
Following Allison's disappearance and supposed death, Kevin holds a memorial service for her at the local bowling alley, where he meets a woman who works there named Molly. Two months later, Kevin asks her out and they begin officially dating. Though their relationship seems stable and loving, it's clear Kevin is only dating her so he can have a new female paramour around to take care of him like Allison used to. Four more months pass and Pete announces to Kevin that he's moving to Florida, where Lorraine has bought a new apartment; he refuses to tell Kevin the address since he's grown fed up with Kevin making him wait on him with the excuse being that he's still mourning Allison's "death". Kevin searches for Neil and walks in on his friend in the middle of a make-out session with Diane, which makes Kevin laugh. Diane is forced to pay Kevin alot of money so he doesn't tell her abusive and unfaithful husband Chuck. Kevin accuses Neil of neglecting spending time with him in favor of Diane, whom he insults as being "too old" for Neil. This is the last straw for Neil after months of having his eyes opened to how selfish and uncaring Kevin is and breaks off their friendship.
The next night, Kevin sits alone at home in silence. He starts to feel disturbed with no one else around to bounce off. Molly enters the house, and Kevin immediately tells her she’s moving in with him. Molly, rattled by both her previous conversation with Allison, who has returned to Worcester after realizing she can't keep running away from her problems and told Molly the truth about Kevin, and his clingy behavior, backs out of the door and claims she’s leaving to get cigarettes. Kevin realizes quickly that she’s dumped him and he starts to become perturbed. Allison then appears before him, alive and well. Kevin ecstatically hugs her and tries to get back together with her, but Allison immediately shoots it down and reveals to Kevin that she hasn't loved him for years, faked her own death to get away from him, and she's now returned so she can officially divorce him. Kevin initially refuses to believe her, but when she makes it clear she's serious about leaving him and nothing he says or does will change her mind, Kevin's sitcom audience turns against him by applauding and cheering for her, forcing him out of his sitcom delusion. The mask of an oafish goofball drops completely, exposing Kevin for what he really is - a cruel and loutish bully who sees other people as existing solely to cater to his wants. He flies off the handle, first attempting to manipulate and verbally put Allison down to make her reconsider leaving him and then getting physically violent. Allison stands her ground and brushes off his attacks, stating her decision is final. When Kevin threatens to destroy her, she tells him to do his worst and leaves the house.
Alone with only his rage to keep him company, Kevin drinks copious amounts of alcohol before grabbing whatever belongings Allison still has lying around the house and tossing them in a trash can. As he gets ready to light Allison’s belongings on fire, he starts calling Pete, Neil, and Molly, leaving them increasingly vicious and hateful verbally abusive voicemails after none of them take his calls. After Kevin sets fire to Allison’s things, he passes out from drinking too much. The fire quickly spreads out of control and consumes the McRoberts' house, killing Kevin in the process.
Relationships[]
Romances[]
Kevin, being deeply selfish and immature, is a terrible husband to Allison. He treats her more like a maid and a surrogate mother rather than a partner while also constantly cutting her down and making her utterly miserable. While he initially made her laugh at the start of their relationship, such as cheering her up after her father's funeral and pantsing the priest during their wedding, any attraction she's had to him has completely evaporated by the time of the series.
Similarly, his relationship to Molly is just as one-sided. Despite claiming to be grieving for Allison's supposed death, he moves on quickly to date Molly just so he can have a new female paramour around to take care of him like Allison used to. Molly is attracted to his goofball personality but hasn't seen the worst of him due to how short their relationship has been thus far. When Allison returns to Worcester and gives Molly the full picture, Molly immediately breaks up with Kevin.
Trivia[]
- Kevin is heavily inspired by the actor Kevin James' prior roles as the main characters in sitcoms, including Doug Heffernan in The King of Queens and, most pointedly, Kevin Gable in Kevin Can Wait. He also has similarities to other sitcom characters like Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners and Peter Griffin in Family Guy, but without any of their good traits.
- "The Way We Were" reveals Kevin actually got his prized Wade Boggs rookie card by stealing it a few years ago from a girl named Brenda.
- Kevin and Neil had another friend in 2005 named Doug. It's unknown what happened to him after Kevin met Allison, but it's revealed in "The Problem" that Neil and Doug are still in touch, implying that they're still friends, but it's never specified if Kevin is still in touch with him, although it's likely Doug realized how toxic Kevin is and ended his friendship with him.
- Kevin is only actually seen in the single-camera gritty drama twice in show; once as a daydream by Allison, and another in the finale, "Allison’s House" when he's finally forced out of his sitcom delusion.