‘Kevin (Probably) Saves the World’ needs rescuing
ABC’s spiritual fantasy tries hard but comes up empty
The world doesn’t need Kevin to save it.
ABC’s new drama Kevin (Probably) Saves the World (Tuesday, 10 ET/PT, egEE out of four) is certainly well-intentioned. The spiritually focused series aims for feel-good with a story about a down-and-out man doing good, but it inevitably misses the mark. The end result is sappy, confusing and often dull.
Kevin stars Jason Ritter ( Parenthood) as our hero, a former finance guy who lost his job and his girlfriend and tried to kill himself. While staying with his sister Amy (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) and niece Reese (Chloe East) to get his life back together, he’s visited by Yvette (Kimberly Hebert Gregory), a self-proclaimed “warrior for God” who arrives via meteorite to tell him he’s one of the few “righteous,” meant to spread goodness in the world.
Tuesday’s premiere is all over the place in plot and tone. It’s a spiritual fantasy, sure, as Yvette tricks Kevin into destroying his car and sends him to “spread good.” But also — because Amy is (somehow) a university professor who’s airlifted by helicopter in the middle of the night to advise the military — it flirts with the thriller genre.
The series also brushes over some more earthly concerns in favor of its spiritual narrative. At one point, when Reese sees Kevin talking animatedly to no one ( because only Kevin can see Yvette), she smiles instead of being seriously concerned about the mental health of a recently suicidal person. The pieces don’t fit together into something coherent.
Even when it’s focused on “saving the world,” Kevin is maudlin. Even worse, it’s boring. Shows have successfully mixed spirituality into their drama — Ritter’s own 2003 to 2005 CBS series
Joan of Arcadia managed it well — but the biggest sin Kevin commits is inauthenticity, never fully committing to, or believing in, its own concept.
Ritter has an endearing quality as an actor, but he can’t quite sell the emotion required to make the series effective, despite its outlandish conceit. Whether he’s giving hundreds of dollars to a stranger or miraculously fixing his sullen niece, forced feeling can’t quite trick viewers into caring for the self-centered protagonist.
It’s also hard to ignore that the series is essentially about an ethereal black woman falling from the sky to help a misguided white man. (Gregory took over the role of Yvette from Cristela Alonzo after the pilot was filmed.) Creators Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas have said in interviews that they are trying to avoid turning Yvette into a “Magical Negro,” a term coined by director Spike Lee to describe wise black characters written into stories in the service of white protagonists. Although the writers may be trying to avoid the stereotype, in the first episode Yvette can’t escape it.
There’s nothing wrong with a feel-good series that focuses on family, optimism and hope. But there are plenty of ways to feel good without forcing something down our throats.