3 hours ago
6
We need to talk about Kevin. We need to surround ourselves with soothing furnishings and sturdy stress toys and – deep breaths, everyone – discuss how and why Kevin has happened and what steps must be taken to stop Kevin, or anything like Kevin, from ever happening again.
But first, the unfortunate facts. Kevin is the title of a new adult animation from Prime Video and the name of the series’ protagonist; a self-doubting house cat who, after his owners’ breakup, opts to move into a chaotic pet rescue centre.
The show’s credentials do not in themselves provoke horror: the co-creation of comedian Joe Wengert and the previously unimpeachable Aubrey Plaza, its cast includes Jason Schwartzman as Kevin, Amy Sedaris as Napoleonic power-pug Brandi and John Waters (yes, that John Waters) as a louche, medallion-festooned Persian cat named Armando. Patti LuPone and Cary Elwes are in there somewhere too. And is that Whoopi Goldberg as Cupcake, a brassy alley cat with intimacy issues? Why, yes. It is. But oh, the script. The awful, awful script. So blunderingly crude is it, so sluggish its attempts at emotional depth, and so mean-spirited its approach to everything else, you may, like me, find your shoulders sagging and your soul slumping like a winded beanbag.
Without recourse to pie charts, animal noises or words of more than 19 syllables, it’s difficult to convey just how bad this eight-part comedy is. But convey we must.
So here is Kevin, an unremarkable cat who lives in an apartment in New York City with unremarkable human couple Dana (wears a T-shirt) and Dan (has beard). Kevin doesn’t like being outside and has lower back issues in lieu of a personality. Kevin also has a protuberant anus, a fact that is repeated with a fervour that suggests the writers believe it to be powerful enough to merit a “long-running gag” badge. “Stop talking about your deformed anus,” slurs Kevin’s alcoholic goose friend, Chuck. “It’s not deformed,” shouts Kevin. “It’s prolapsed!” And lo, the soul begins its inexorable decline.
When Dana and Dan split up, Kevin is thrown into an existential crisis. Who is he? What does he want? Determined to prove he doesn’t need human company to thrive, Kevin and his prolapsed catchphrase move into Furrever Friends, a rescue centre in Queens run by tyrannical dog Brandi and her wimpy human partner, Seth (Gil Ozeri). Here he finds a number of foul-muzzled misfits, including ageing rake Armando, drug-snorting sexual incontinent Cupcake and ditzy naïf Judy. Peripheral characters include a failed actor horse desperate to interest passersby in her dive-bar strip routine (“I show hole!”). Together, they – and we – suffer storylines including The Air Conditioning Breaks Down Briefly and Look at the Size of Glen the Squirrel’s Scrotum.
Laugh-wise, it’s a washout. Punchlines collapse mid-punch. Other jokes make no sense. Here, for example, is Cupcake on why she is called Cupcake: “Because if you like what’s on the bottom, you are insane!” This is not a joke. This is a handful of words in a raincoat.
Kevin appears unsure whether to commit to gleeful grossness (a la Big Mouth) or emotionally profound dramedy (see: BoJack Horseman). Its unwillingness to engage in character development and its favouring of cruelty over empathy, however, ensures it succeeds at neither.
There is the suspicion that something has gone very, very wrong in the writers’ room. Perhaps there weren’t enough biscuits. Perhaps the show was written by biscuits. As for Kevin’s heart (a given, you’d think, since it’s a show about traumatised cartoon animals), one can only assume another cat knocked it off the sideboard, having perhaps just seen the scene in which Cupcake contracts an STD from a pair of lobsters.
God, it’s all so depressing. Why does the sad horse keep trying to show everyone her bum? Let the horse put her pants on. Why does everyone bully sweet-natured idiot Judy?
What a wasteland of imagination it all is; its heart and soul as irretrievable as Kevin’s anus.
Now, please, let us never speak of it again.
