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Reviews
Kevin Can F**k Himself (2021)
Disappointing
Watching the pilot for this show is like reading some of the more obnoxious women's forums on Reddit. Apparently, even if a husband is affectionate, faithful, and gainfully employed, a wife might still be entitled to jam a shard of broken glass into his carotid artery. The show is a soapbox for hot topics lifted from feminist media and academe: emotional labor, gaslighting, unfair household chore division, internalized misogyny, etc. But in case all that wasn't enough, they threw in financial mismanagement by the eponymous Kevin, which the protagonist didn't catch because she's "not good with numbers" (subtext: society has brainwashed her into believing this) so she didn't even check her and her husband's savings balance for years (a viewer would have to be brainwashed to find this plausible). In addition to its hamfisted misandry, the show's portrayal of working-class people, their communities, and their aspirations or lack thereof is condescending if not contemptuous. The F-bomb in the title is crass (other critics have noted that it seems to be a slam on "Kevin Can Wait", a sitcom that otherwise would have completely faded from memory). That said, I appreciated the show's experimentation with genre boundaries, and Annie Murphy is always fun to watch, even if the material is lame.
Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski (2018)
Surprising gem
I knew nothing about the subject, S. Szukalski, before watching this documentary. This is the story of an extraordinarily talented sculptor and his collision with history. That would be interesting enough, but it covers much more than that. It is about genius and the responsibility it entails; the uses and misuses of great art and great artists; the dark side of talent; love and friendship. Finally, it is about redemption.
There are images and archival material, but the story is told mainly through interviews with Szukalski himself and those who befriended him later in life and rescued him from obscurity in the US and possibly from a distorted legacy in his native Poland.
Spoiler, sort of:
An unexpected bonus for me personally was the interviews with Robert Williams and Jim Woodring or underground/alternative comix fame.