CBS’s Kevin Can Wait is feeling the heat from fans for being too similar to Kevin James and Leah Remini’s former hit King of Queens following all the drama that ensued producers’ decision to kill off Kevin’s TV wife Erinn Hayes earlier this year.
As fans of the show will already know, Remini formally played Kevin’s wife on King of Queens (which also aired on CBS) for nine seasons of the show between 1998 and 2007 and was then given a starring role on James’s new sitcom earlier this year after it was announced that Hayes had been fired from the show and her character killed off.
Now, after Erinn appeared to urge fans to boycott her former show last week via her official Twitter account, fans have been slamming the comedy for its blatant similarities to the former sitcom now that Leah has been promoted to a more prominent role.
A slew of viewers took to Twitter to joke that Season 2 of CBS’s new sitcom is basically just a reboot of Kevin and Leah’s former show ahead of the October 23 episode, titled “Grief Thief,” joking that the network should instead have green lit the former series to return with the original characters.
“CBS’s Kevin Can Wait is astonishing,” wrote @mstallknecht41 of the comedy, joking that the series is “a bizarro world filled with old King of Queens characters in nonsensical roles.”
“ Kevin Can Wait is basically King of Queens part 2,” Twitter user @whoiscostanza added on October 22, while another wrote , “I remember this show……. WHEN IT WAS CALLED KING OF QUEENS !!! — watching Kevin Can Wait .”
“Still haven’t watched Kevin Can Wait after the dirty deal given to co-star [Erinn],” angry fan @JimClarkPBP wrote of why they’ve turned off. “If I wanted to watch King of Queens , I’d watch Nick.”
“Can CBS just change the name of Kevin Can Wait back to King of Queens and bring Arthur back already?” another fan then asked , referring to actor Jerry Stiller, who played the father of Leah’s character Carrie.
Fans’ slams come after a whole lot of drama followed Erinn’s firing earlier this month.
A number of viewers made it known that they aren’t exactly happy with the way the actress was fired – seemingly in order to give Leah a more prominent role on the series – and have since called out those behind-the-scenes for how they decided to handle the sudden death of her character, Donna.
Erinn herself seemingly called for a boycott after liking a number of angry tweets about her departure on social media, which came just days after Kevin controversially claimed that they had no choice but to kill off Donna because the show was running out of ideas.
“It really felt like a thing like this was needed for this show to drive forward,” he told New York Daily News of letting Erinn go and upgrading Leah’s role, admitting that the plot “didn’t have enough drive” to see the series continue to a second or third season.
“We were literally just running out of ideas,” Kevin added.
Kevin Can Wait Season 2 airs on CBS on Monday nights.
[Featured Image by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]