Kevin James Explains Why He Killed Off Donna
For the last few weeks, I've taken a deeply unhealthy interest in the CBS sitcom Kevin Can Wait. Specifically, I wanna know what happened to Donna. Between Season One and Season Two, Donna was unceremoniously killed off - reduced to a passing ghost on the show, where mentions of her tragic death are shouldered off with jokes about kung fu lessons. We're three episodes into Season Two, and the show has not explained what happened to Donna. Actress Erinn Hayes was replaced by Kevin's former King of Queens co-star Leah Remini, creating a rift in sitcom space and time (and possibly the connections of a King of Queens Cinematic Universe). Instead, Kevin spends his time rollerskating in a dinosaur costume and making problematic jokes about the glass ceiling. But I want closure. I want #justicefordonna.
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Now, a new interview with Kevin James (who plays the titular patient man, Kevin), has me rather concerned that we may never learn what happened to Donna. James says that he's not sure if the show will ever really address how Donna died, because people don't like to think about unhappy things like death.
"I get that people are like 'Whoa, why would you do this?' But it really felt like a thing like this was needed for this show to drive forward," James told the New York Daily News. "The plot of the show didn't have enough drive. If we got through a second season, I wouldn't see us getting through a third one. We were literally just running out of ideas."
Savage, Kevin.
And now with Donna out of the picture, Kevin can get into family friendly situations like deliver divorce papers to a Carnie and tell Son that it's bad to fake a nut allergy to make friends. More specifically, he can have a somewhat antagonistic and somewhat flirty relationship with King of Queens star Leah Remini.
Yet still, we don't know what happened to Donna in the greater Kevin Can Wait canon. My theory is that Remini's character Veronica had Donna killed in order to get Kevin to save her failing security business. It's also possible that Donna and Kevin were forced to split up the family when Kevin was forced into witness protection program after a case went bad during his time as a cop.
But when will this mystery finally see some closure? It's possible that the answer is: never.
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