Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Even people that never watched a single episode of Kevin Can Wait’s first season were shocked to hear that the show was going to kill off Erinn Hayes’ character and turn Kevin James into a widower. That’s heavy stuff for a lighthearted CBS multi-cam sitcom, and shows rarely kill off characters midstream. Even more shocking: the show was doing all that to pave the way for Leah Remini to join the cast, essentially turning the new show into a weekly King of Queens reunion. The “Wait, what?!“-ness of the whole cast shakeup just deepened after the Season 2 premiere where Hayes’ departure was dealt with in under a minute.
In an interview with The New York Daily News, Kevin James opened up about the decision to kill off his TV wife, and the answer he gives is pretty straightforward: “The plot of the show didn’t have enough drive. If we got through a second season, I wouldn’t see us getting through a third one. We were literally just running out of ideas.”
So yeah, the KCW writers were running out of ideas, so the solution was to kill off the wife and pair up two leads that went on 207 adventures together from 1998 to 2007! Sure…!
What kind of stories does this move allow Kevin Can Wait to tell? “Now, I have to deal with my daughter in a different way, and she’s gonna go to college, or one’s getting married, or the holidays,” said James. “And it deals with things in a different, weightier way.”
James also noted that, apparently, Kevin was supposed to be a single dad in the original Kevin Can Wait pitch, but the show added Hayes as his wife during development. So maybe this is the Kevin Can Wait that was meant to be all along, just with bonus Remini? Either way, James gest why people were so surprised.
“I get that people are like ‘Whoa, why would you do this?’ But it really felt like a thing like this was needed for this show to drive forward.”
Kevin Can Wait continues to drive forward every Monday night on CBS.
