From a young age, I found the face of comedian-actor Kevin James strangely calming. On weekdays, my mother and I watched reruns of the CBS show. King of Queens together as part of our primetime network. It was one of the few sitcoms for adults. Reba– which she thought was appropriate for my viewing, outrageous in its humor but not too crude or obscene.
Part of me believes that my mother is secretly involved with protagonist Doug Heffernan’s (James) more competent and unabashedly capricious wife Carrie, played to perfection by Leah Remini. However, my mother was much more vocal about how much she loved James, his affable personality and his ability for physical comedy. Along with Cliff Huxtable (woof) and Laura Ingalls’ hot-blooded father, he was the high-profile TV husband in our family, even if he was the downright infuriating husband on screen.
It looks like the Internet appreciated James’ resemblance too – or maybe it always has. If you look at Twitter (now called X) right now, you’ll see Adults actor in a series of Kevin Hart-style reaction memes that have everyone remembering his massive but generally underrated CBS show, during the series’ 25th anniversary, by the way.
According to the site Know Your Meme, the phenomenon apparently began on September 21, when user @ChampagneAnyone posted a promotional photo of James as Doug, with an innocent grin on his face and shrugging his shoulders at the camera. It’s a look that says, “I ate too many Oreos from the cookie jar” or “I forgot to take out the trash”—both typical behaviors of his deeply irresponsible but somehow still sympathetic sitcom character.
Incongruous publicity photos from James’ time as a CBS star have also surfaced online, including one of him emerging from a sower and photo shoots featuring his TV wife Remini. Some even made fan cams for Hollywood’s most avid comedian and one-time movie star. All of these memes seem to highlight the unspoken gratitude for Paul Blart: Mall Cop an actor who has earned a reputation as a poor man’s Adam Sandler.
Although I can’t defend a film like this Zookeeper or the most unfortunate thing I’m now pronouncing you Chuck and LarryI’ve always thought James got a surprisingly bad rap. His negative reception as a performer always reminded me of the classic and fatphobic ridicule that Guy Fieri received in the mid-2000s before he became a beloved internet icon and was later exposed as an obvious right-winger. (Knock on wood, the video doesn’t appear of James flirting with Donald Trump.)
Much of the recent backlash against James seems to have been fueled by his star inclusion. King of Queens. Along with such programs of the early 2000s as According to Jim And Still standingThe series perpetuated the sitcom trend of sloppy, lazy husbands who miraculously acquired hot wives and made their lives miserable due to their incompetence. (Although there’s a lot of fatphobia baked into this criticism.) This trope has been lampooned on shows like Inside Amy SchumerLouisand most notably the AMC meta-series Kevin can fuck himself, the premise of which is a direct reference to James’s supposed problematicity.
Photo archive CBS/Getty Images
As a defender of Kevin James, I still can’t bring myself to binge the Annie Murphy-led show out of spite. (It also looked like the musings of a white feminist!) The two-season series was famously inspired by the infamous casting decision on James’ 2016 CBS show. Kevin can wait satirizing the sitcom stereotype he embodied in King of Queens.
It’s highly controversial that James and the rest of the show’s producers killed off his character’s wife Donna (Erinn Hayes) and hired Remini as the show’s female lead in season two before this. Kevin can wait was cancelled. The low-key but largely inconsequential story came to light in the midst of Hollywood’s #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, which portray James in a misogynistic light. However, I would argue that the comedian casting Remini in a big acting role during her crusade against the Church of Scientology was actually a feminist move.
Columbia Pictures/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
Also, accidental misreading King of QueensThe central relationship is tightening up a bit. Anyone who watched the show knows that Doug and Carrie’s marriage was more complicated than the annoying husband-passive wife dynamic, as they were both comically flawed people and Carrie was unlikely to tolerate Doug’s immaturity.
Yes, as the series progresses, Carrie becomes increasingly irritable. On a superficial reading of her plot, this may seem like a sexist choice by the writers, including James. However, one could just as easily interpret her behavior as the result of an ungrateful marriage and the couple’s financial immobility as a working class family. Her anger never seemed unjustified. At least it was very realistic!
Sony Images/Courtesy of the Everett Collection
In 2023, everyone seems to be much more comfortable expressing their love for the show and the silliness at its center. Is a meme enough to start a Kevin James renaissance? Who knows? I definitely thought a series of dramatic short films on his YouTube channel a few years ago would give him the level of virality he is getting now. However, if a simple photo of James shrugging in a flannel is enough to capture the attention of social media, I’ll take it.
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