It’s a classic multi-camera sitcom setup. The first shot in the pilot is a sunny exterior of a standard suburban house.Inside we’re in the familiar living room set, with couch and table, and three guys goofing around throwing ping-pong balls into plastic cups.

The female characters don’t seem to get the joke. One of them enters carrying a laundry basket and seems to grit her teeth but there’s a laughter track so we just assume we’re supposed to laugh along with the lad’s infantile and semi-abusive behavior. The mood abruptly changes when we exit with the woman to the kitchen. Now it is dark. Very dark. She accidentally cuts her wrists in anger on a glass. Or was it a deliberate cry for help?

AMC’s Kevin Can F**k Himself is as much a poke at the lazy stereotypes of sitcom suburbia as Blue Velvet was to the macabre underbelly of picture-box America. The series’ title refers to CBS sitcom, Kevin Can Wait, which was criticized after the lead character’s wife was written out of the show in the second season. Kevin Can F**k Himself is a broader deconstruction of the sitcom genre and of drama conventions which relegate female characters to subservient wives, sisters or girlfriends.

Creator Valerie Armstrong, who also serves as an executive producer (and was previously staff writer on Seal Team and story editor on Lodge 49) deploys both the conventions of multicam sitcom and single-camera narrative to play against expectations.

“The idea that we were going to mix multicam and singlecam was exciting to me,” says Dan Schalk, ACE, who cut the pilot, titled “Living the Dream.” “I’d not done multicam before but the script was so strong and so different I just wanted to do it.”

This stylistic mash-up was a concern for the show’s creators. “The big worry was whether we were going to alienate the multicam audience who don’t get what they expect and the drama audience not used to watching multicam [who] might expect something like Breaking Bad. It was a balancing act.

“There was conversation about whether we should open Episode 1 in multicam with the obnoxious husband and putupon wife. My concern was that when you come across an overthe-top sitcom as a first-time viewer you can lose people pretty quickly. I thought it would work better for a new audience if we start in single-cam and show this woman in the kitchen wanting to kill herself which sets up the audience for wanting to learn why,” Schalk explains.

“Clearly, we went the other way and we pulled it off in the pilot but it’s a fine line. There’s usually that gap between what you read in the script and what you see in the dailies but here it really delivered what was on the page.”

That’s not least a testimony to the casting and the performances of, among others, Annie Murphy (Schitt’s Creek) who plays Allison, Eric Petersen (Kirstie) as Kevin, and Mary Hollis Inboden who plays Allison’s best mate Patty. Schalk had a dual entrée to the project. He was initially invited by Lynn Shelton who was on the verge of directing the show when she tragically passed away in May 2020. Schalk also knew showrunner and EP Craig DiGregorio from their time working on comedy Shrill for Hulu.

Schalk had spent the early part of his career in features, cutting the likes of School for Scoundrels and She’s Out of My League for directors Todd Phillips and Jim Field Smith. He sought a change in working patterns from the on-location demands of features to the more flexible editorial arrangements of TV in order to spend more time with his family.

That led to work on series including New Girl, Parks and Recreation and Love. He is one of three lead editors with Kenneth LaMere, ACE, and Ivan Victor, ACE, on Kevin, all of whom also worked with multicam specialist Joe Fulton (assistant editor, Will & Grace).

“Joe is mostly responsible for assembly of the multicam and turning it over to us to incorporate into the single-cam and to take each episode forward as a single project into director’s and producer’s cuts,” Schalk says. “Joe comes from the sitcomworld and is just tremendously comfortable in terms of coverage which in our case was four cameras rolling for up to 10 takes.

Single camera was leaner and generally fewer takes. He adds, “With the sitcom you want it to be broad humor about this horrible ’90s sitcom husband whereas the single-cam is much more cinematic and slower paced.”

The transition between the two is clearly signaled visually as the lighting shifts from super bright studio to dimly lit drama and the colors from primary to much cooler greys, greens and blues. “We didn’t want to do any flashy transitions because the worlds are obviously very different sonically and visually. We employ a hint of tinnitus – a ringing in the ear – as stress trigger when things are going bad (this happens during the very first transition in the pilot). When we chose that we might start the transition in the multicam and finish in single-cam but mostly it is just straight cuts.”

Aside from the pilot, Schalk also edited Episode 4, ‘Live Free or Die,’ for which he and Fulton won the Eddie for multi-camera comedy series. In fact, Kevin dominated its category with all three nominations, including ones for LaMere and Victor.

“If I was going to do a movie it would be that movie,” Schalk says of Episode 4. “The performances were great and I love the whole road trip storyline. To me that was like Thelma & Louise. The pacing of the drama was a little slower to match the tensionand to help the audience get into the characters.”At the very end of this episode, the show’s second ‘rug pull’ takes place. We learn that Allison has been on a mission to buy drugs because she wants to murder Kevin. Putting this narrative pivot halfway through the series is another brave break with convention.

Going remote, staying remote The show was originally planned to shoot in March 2020. COVID put an end to that but the cast and crew reconvened in October with the editorial team working remotely. In that period, Schalk had bought a house in Wisconsin with a plan to move there from L.A. He set up his Avid in the basement and shared assemblies and live reviews using remote gear like Evercast and messaging system Slack.

“You have your moments where things will freeze up and someone will have to reboot but overall it worked really well.” Over the two years of COVID he also cut comedy feature The Bubble for Judd Apatow and A Good Person for director Zach Braff. When Braff asked him to come back to L.A. for the director’s cut, Schalk was only too happy to oblige.

“I was very excited to get back into the cutting room again because it’s just terrific to have the option of seeing people you are working with face to face but I’m now cutting the second season of Kevin back home in Wisconsin. The directors and producers are absolutely on board with that. Frankly many executives prefer not to fly between cities and to review at their home office. For me it’s a better life balance. It means I can have lunch with my wife or dinner with my kids and still go back to work afterwards as needed.