Kevin Can Wait is a show about the Gables, a nice-enough Long Island family that mostly hangs out at home, around the neighborhood, or an Italian restaurant. There's a dad Kevin Gable, a retired cop who is allegedly neither Doug Heffernan from The King of Queens nor Paul Blart from Paul Blart: Mall Cop. He mostly stays at home and does lovable manchild things like start his own pho truck, go to Billy Joel concerts, and stumble his way through fathering three children of varying interest. There's a mom, Donna, played by Erinn Hayes, who is way out of Kevin's league and works overtime to support her husband's boredom.
Or at least there was a mom, because she's dead now.
In what's the weirdest decision in recent sitcom history, Kevin Can Wait showrunners decided to abruptly kill off Donna between Season One and Season Two. As a replacement, they brought in Leah Remini, the same actress who played James's wife on The King of Queens, essentially creating a mildly fucked-up reboot a decade later. But even though it's like the sitcom version of some Interstellar bullshit, at least the move has created some truly wonderful Kevin Can Wait conspiracy theories. For example, some truthers, including myself, believe this show takes place in the King of Queens Cinematic Universe (which places KCW after the Paul Blart events and before TKOQ events). Remini plays Vanessa Cellucci, who is Kevin's rival from the force and is now his boss/friend/source of awkward sexual tension.
Anyway, ahead of the Season Two premiere, Executive Producer Rob Long promised that the death would be handled with the utmost class: “Out of respect for the character of Donna—and certainly the way that Erinn Hayes portrayed her—it seemed like the only right and fair way to treat her character.”
So how'd they handle this very delicate transition in last night's Season Two premiere? Well, it was only really passingly mentioned. Early in the episode, after chanting the family name and filling their lunch with jerky instead of fruit—"It's chocked full of protein and will keep them out of the dating pool for a few years" (What???)—Kevin is going through the mail. He comes across a letter mailed to his dead wife from her gym. "Haven’t seen you. We miss you," he reads. Then he turns to Daughter: “Ya know what? So do I.”
"It's been over a year since she died—they shouldn't be sending this," Daughter says.
This is it—that tender, emotional moment, where even a gym letter can trigger the grief of a shattered family. And Kevin looks at the pain in Daughter's eyes and says: “But don’t throw that out, on the bottom is a coupon for a kung-fu lesson. I wanna go there.”
*Laugh track*
Then they move on immediately to some British dude—Daughter's white boyfriend—facing deportation, not because of anything political, but because Kevin never sent in his sponsorship letter. There's also some wedding planning for Daughter, where Remini just kind of becomes the mother figure—planning everything, with no questions asked, and almost no mention to the dead mother who tragically didn't live to see this moment in Daughter's life. "I wish mom were here, too," they say before Daughter's marriage for immigration purposes.
And that's it. Presumably, they'll get into a little bit more than that as Season Two continues. My fan theory is Donna got hit by an IPS truck (the fictional UPS from The King of Queens).
It doesn't really matter, though, because millions of people watched it anyway.
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