In the office over its run every character underwent a significant degree of flanderisation Dwight turned from being someone who was a little quirky but really just wanted to get on with his work despite Jim turned into some sort of Amish maniac. Toby became the guy Michael hated who was in love with with Pam, but this all served a greater purpose since with such a large ensemble cast you needed to be able to identify how characters would react to given stimuli reliably, that meant turning a few background members into a few characteristics allowed for significant payoff and sub diversion in 20 minute episodes because we knew how these characters would most likely act given the situation they found themselves in.
Since if 12 very intricate and deep characters were constantly interacting in the space of twenty minutes a lot of the intricacies would be lost on us, for example in game of thrones Oberyns' hatred of the mountain would make sense as he was accusing him of raping his sister. Yet the anecdotes he tells Tyron about her and what the mountains men do at Harenhall have already explained to us how dramatic this confrontation is and why its so heated .However to keep a scene funny we would only need to know why certain things would be perceived to someone gay and Mexican like Oscar but would not need any further character development as there is no time in the show for all characters to be fleshed out entirely. Which is why we got some very touching moments with well developed characters like Pam and Michael but Kelly and Ryan ran away from her child in the last episode. Since what we know of Kelly that is totally consistent of what we have seen ,and was funny unlike her forced uninteresting relationship with Daryl, so there is room for a few very developed characters to have heartfelt scenes but it's ok for the writers to simplify "background" characters to be reduced to a few key characteristics in service of brevity and comedy
However it isn't ok to strip away all key characteristics bar one basically transforming a character into someone else entirely, which is where we get to Kevin.
Kevin started the show being a relativity competent accountant who was a little dim witted, and took pride in being good at things like poker yet getting beaten accidentally. Which was the heart of his character a well meaning employee who failed despite trying.
Eventually her just descended into being mentally retarded so much so that holly believed he was upon meeting him which, despite being quite funny, implied the writers were fully aware of what they had done with his character.
Early on the series Kevin would be used for comedic effect by being the member of a band where despite being a proficient singer and drummer he's played no events beyond Phyllis' wedding and the wedding of two other band members. This is funny because we know Kevin to be to be slowed witted but this is sub-diverted by him being proficient at tempo intensive instrument that sets the pace of the band, yet the band is awful through no particular reason other than he's a member .
This played on multiple established character tropes :
- Kevin's immaturity ( we see this as he treats conflicts like Jim and Roy as if it were a playground fight ), in not giving up on his childhood dream of the band despite them being clearly unsuccessful
- Kevin is slow witted but not incompetent, ( shown when he recognizes that Angela hasn't sent the tax forms yet he's not sharp witted enough to piece together that she is lying)
- Kevin fails despite claimed proficiency ( as can we seen through his betting and poker playing).
Then later on in the series we get possibly the least satisfying kevin joke of all time where he drops chili , by dropping the container which shows how they just turned him into an idiot reliant on slapstick and dropped all other pretenses.
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| Here we see the epitome of lazily written Kevin |
