I know, I know, not a movie but I found this interesting enough to write about.

Kevin is your run of the mill sitcom main character. He is utterly incompetent and self-absorbed, but things still tend to fall his way. However, his wife, Allison, is living in a hell. She has to live in constant humiliation and as a servant despite having a job of her own. In return, she is seen as a simple side character by her husband. However, when Allison gets away from Kevin, things change. She doesn’t have to just have a cringe-y sitcom response. She can actually feel things.

And that’s the beauty fo the show. When Kevin is around, the show is a classic sitcom. You know the kind: shot on multiple cameras so that you can have an audience and choose the right angles in the editing. I don’t think they had an audience, but you know the style. The colors are strong, there’s canned laughter and we have weirdly ever-present gang of characters who always hang around. When Allison gets away from this, we move to a much more muted world and single-camera setups. In this world, Allison can actually have her own thoughts and plans. One of the first being the need to murder Kevin after finding out he has blown all of their savings on some scheme.

Allison is stuck in a nightmarish patriarchy where her husband just keeps on trucking, because he is the main character of this world. He is a white man, so the world is built to protect him, while Allison being kept down. This is the way characters in sitcoms have been since the 50s. The women have been vilified for this and are often seen as bad people by the audience, even if the actions of the men are deplorable. Women are just supposed to have this nice domestic existence, while the men are free to do as they please. The women can’t criticize their husbands for this even if the husbands are risking the future of the family for something stupid. If the wife is given permission to get angry within the context of the story, that’s always fixed with an inane gesture of love.

Is this horror comedy? I would say so. Allison is trapped in a marriage where she is seen as an accessory or a hindrance, depending on the situation. She looks for moments of happiness. At one point she tells her friend that she is actually happy her husband has this yearly tradition of juggling a dinner with her and party next door with his friends, as at least she gets some time for herself in those situations. Otherwise her life is basically just dreading the next situation where she will be demeaned in a new, absurd way.

Allison also makes plans not unlike people in horror movies often do when stuck in a horrific situation. Of course, there’s no supernatural entity they need to understand, except that maybe you could interpret it that way. I mean, there is a screenwriting team behind sitcoms who protect these men. Maybe that is the evil Allison should be planning against, but just doesn’t realize that.

The show is beautifully implemented. There are those who are woke about the patriarchy and those who are not and each experiences the world differently, except that when the patriarchy is around that takes over everyone’s perceptions.

Kevin has a friend called Neil. At one point Neil finds out that Allison attempted to get Kevin killed, so Neil attacks Allison. However, Allison is protected by Patty, Neil’s sister. Neil ends up in a hospital after being kept as a prisoner by the women for some time. This leaves him scarred both mentally and physically (the scar on his head is visible throughout the rest of the show). He also starts to realize that there is something wrong with the hierarchy of this world. He too starts to see the world in the more dramatic light. Again, literally.

There’s only two seasons of eight episodes each, but I feel that’s quite enough. Sure, there is a lot to mine here from over sixty years of history of these sitcoms (they seem to really evolve slowly), but the concise nature of the show compared to something like The Simpsons or Modern Family is beneficial. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

This is an excellent show. It’s a nice deconstruction of this genre in a way that has never been done before. Sure, others have subverted this trope before (like in How I Met Your Mother, where Marshall and Lily are actually a functioning couple), but this goes so much further. Also, the performances are great. The actors need to switch between portrayals of the same characters in different genres. I don’t usually even pay attention to things like sound design, but that works great here as well, especially when we move from one world to another.

Even if this show was bad, I would be glad someone tried to do something like this, but since it is very good, I don’t even have to like it purely for that reason.