‘Kevin Can Wait,’ Do Other Things Instead

When I think of Kevin James, I think of a strangely affecting image from early on in “Paul Blart: Mall Cop”: James, alone at a modest dining room table, breaking down over his shambles of a life, sputtering uncontrollably, his chin pressed to his chest. Yet no matter what search engine I type “paul blart crying” into, I can’t seem to find a clip of it anywhere. I’ll probably never know if this scene exists (life’s too short to revisit “Paul Blart”), so I’ll just say it’s my brain answering the question, “What does Kevin James do in his spare time?”

This profound sadness seems to inform James’ latest opus, “Kevin Can Wait.” The title plays on the phrase “heaven can wait,” an idiom which essentially means, “I think I’m gonna hold off on dying for now; I’ve got stuff to get done.” Unless James also wants us to postpone any dealings with him, it’s hard to tell what he can wait for and why he’s so proud of it. I imagine him mumbling to himself in the third person as he patiently awaits the sweet release of death. “It’s okay. Take your time. Kevin can wait. Kevin’s always been waiting.”

“Kevin Can Wait” is reportedly a sitcom, but James’ sunken eyes tell otherwise. He appears haggard, exhausted—a strange look for a multimillionaire most Americans find reasonably diverting. Yet James has made a career out of merely ridiculing his size in the decent CBS sitcom “King of Queens” and in consistently miserable Adam Sandler anti-comedies. It’s bound to be soul-sucking work. When I was a younger and especially undiscerning kid who somehow gravitated toward filth (“Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2?” Sign me up.), I used to find his turns as Doug Heffernan and Paul Blart endearing. James himself does not seem to share this sentiment. This apparent resignation colors his performance: He delivers his lines with an appropriate energy, but his expression remains hopelessly lost.

James plays a character named Kevin, which either means that he’s given up entirely or that he was just itching to get the pun “Kevin can wait” out to the masses. I hope for his sake that it was the latter. Kevin Gable is a cop desperately awaiting retirement, but he can only afford it once he manages to rent out a room in his house; only then may he dedicate time to his hastily sketched cop friends and non-cop children. However, trouble arises when his eldest daughter reveals she has dropped out of law school and taken up her old job at a diner to support her fiancé, Chale, who is developing a “visionary” app that no one bothers to outline in the slightest. While Kevin is at first outraged by Chale because of his name, English accent, and reluctance to ramble about football, he learns to accept the relationship, even offering the couple the spare room so that his daughter may return to her studies. In the process, he nobly sacrifices his retirement.

The drama works surprisingly well; it’s perhaps the most effective element of the show. Yet “Kevin Can Wait” is foremost a comedy, and in this regard it stumbles. The dialogue is lively but uninventive and not really that amusing, reminiscent of the dull, genial patter one can overhear at every family get-together ever. The characters are more peppy than clever, and all are poorly defined save for Kevin and his wife Donna, played by the admirably game Erinn Hayes. The overriding impression that the people onscreen give is that of their utter normality, and “Kevin Can Wait” begins to feel like a glimpse of the most deeply ordinary family imaginable. However, this impression is problematized by the extended bits, which grow bizarre no matter how familiar they are: Kevin dwells on the fact that he wants to eat four burgers, then on the fact that he has eaten the four burgers. There is protracted product placement for an unspillable bowl within the first few minutes of the episode. Perhaps the one good gag was the grisly murder scene cake at Kevin’s retirement party, complete with a decapitated figurine. I appreciated its incongruity (What’s a murder cake doing on CBS at 8:30 p.m.?), as well as its insight into James’s troubled state of mind.

Despite the near-absence of good material, the laugh track comes in far too frequently—to a shocking degree, in fact. “I’ve been battling a pretty good sized drinking problem,” confesses a potential tenant during his interview, as unseen beings tumble violently into hysterics. “Blackouts, mouthwash, the whole 9,” as the feverish laughter escalates. It almost feels like a punishment for the characters onscreen, haunted by disembodied cackling as they go through deeply mundane motions. Perhaps it’s the ghost of James’s conscience, shadowing him for the rest of his days, reminding him of what he has had to kill within himself in order to have this career. My question: Who are the humans on these laugh tracks? Are they in fact humans? And what’s making them laugh? Because whoever they are, they are certainly not watching “Kevin Can Wait.”