Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was too raunchy and weird for
HBO, so they moved on over to Netflix, where now you can binge-watch all 13
episodes and discover Ellie Kemper’s comedic genius. For those of you who
haven’t seen it, Kimmy Schmidt is your average, happy-go-lucky girl who's been
convinced to live in a cellar for several years with three other women (one who can’t
even speak English... supposedly). The apocalypse has occurred, but – when the
FBI has found them – they realize they’ve been duped.
Convinced
she needs to break out of her “mole woman” image, Kimmy ventures off to New York
in order to make something of herself. She finds a roommate, Titus Adromedon
(Tituss Burgess), a gay, black, bald drama queen with a fabulous voice and debonair
demeanor. She finds a job working for Jacqueline Vorhees (Jane Krakowski), an
uber-rich New York woman who is as incompetent as she is superficial.
Many
characters round out this world of utterly absurd figures, from fellow mole
woman Donna Maria Nunez (whose brand of
“Mole” sauce is now a big hit, after her publicized exodus) to the insanely
paranoid landlord Lillian Kaushtupper (Carole Kane), who wants to stop New York
gentrification at any cost. The Titus Andromedon exploits run the satiric gamut
from werewolf gayness to union galvanizer for the costumed pamphalteers at
Times Square. They're all clever subplots which draw us into this strange and
fascinating world the extremely Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have provided for
us.
But
Ellie Kemper’s Kimmy Schmidt grounds the show, and all of the incisive and
sharp writing simply would not work with out her dynamite timing and
unshakeable optimism. She is the predecessor of Will Ferrell’s Elf, riding a
subway with utmost glee and kissing boys with girlish enthusiasm. This is a
show about a woman coming to terms with the new world, and it’s certainly at
its best when she’s trying to add up change on a delivery run or confiding in
senile billionaires about her PTSD in the bunker.
The
satire in this show lands effortlessly from the very beginning, and the
characters never feel overwrought or off-putting (that’s saying something,
considering how over-the-top everyone is). Let’s consider Jane Krakowski, whose
Jacqueline Vorhees is about as ridiculous a person as they come. Kimmy
encounters her by accident, mistaken for the dog masseuse who never showed up.
I can totally picture the majority of actresses botching up this role by making
her larger-than-life or lifelessly opaque; Jane Krakowski provides us with
refreshing humanism, fashioning out a character who is at once utterly absurd
but recognizable. It might be easy to overlook her performance, given the
amount of talent present on the show, but, from such insane scenarios as
burying a robot at a dinner party to doing calisthenics while repeating, “I'm
not here, I'm not here,” to being, in her past life, a Native American teenager
with a desire to be a white girl, a vulnerability is always present in her
eyes. She gives this satiric role its astounding believability, and that is
quite an accomplishment. My favorite line of the show is hers:
Son: Mom, we used to own people! (On
planning his family tree)
Jacqueline: We still do honey.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
is dense
on jokes, drawing on the vast and absurd panorama of contemporary America. It
feels original, unchartered comedic ground, a meta-exploration of how the
culture of media shapes our perception of the world. But it’s still very
30 Rock, down to the surprise cameos. (When Martin Short appeared as her
dermatologist, a man whose face is literally made of plastic, who found it
almost impossible to talk without pursing his lips together, I almost died.)
Perhaps
where the show is weakest is when it engages in more serialized efforts, as in the love triangle with Dong and Logan, or the drawn-out trial which I'm
convinced could have been handled in an episode (even if Jon Hamm is an
absolute revelation as the cult leader, someone who we now know is equally, if
not more so, adept in comedic roles than he is in dramatic ones). The show
tends to feel static if the writing doesn’t take the characters to new places.
Unlike 30 Rock, which has the
advantage of being a show grounded as a work-place comedy where the plot can
easily string along, Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt is mainly reliant on spectacle and the-next-funny-thing.
The
worst criticism I can give the show is that it’s humor and first six episodes
promise more than it can deliver, given that it aspires to be more sitcom-like in
tone than we’re originally led on to believe. Yet it’s never not entertaining,
which is a good thing. But why did it feel more serialized by the end than it
did in the beginning? Perhaps it was the mistaken notion that plot is what will
keep a viewer hooked, something that the Netflix model is based around: “addictability.” Attempting to fit this mold, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt does a disservice to itself, rather than
sticking to its strengths, we’re all too-aware of its weaknesses by the very
end.
Okay,
this sounds negative, but, overall, it’s still a great show. The ensemble
has immediate chemistry, rare for even the best sitcoms. Titus Andromedus
singing ‘Pinot Noir’ as a tribute to the black male penis is hilarious; Kimmy and Dong dancing at what they believe to be the Friends fountain; Lillian ready to kill Jacqueline; Logan on a small and incompetent horse: all
hilarious moments!
But plot
is not this show’s strength; comedy is, and social commentary is. David wrote that maybe a show like this is simply not meant to be binge-watched. I
disagree. The show, given its platform, just needs to take more risks, both
structurally and comedically. I’ll definitely be re-watching my favorite
episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and I’ll be looking forward to the next
season where, hopefully, it will have a better sense of what it wants to be.
“Kimmy
Goes Outside” A
“Kimmy Gets a Job” A
“Kimmy Goes on a Date!” A-
“Kimmy Goes to the Doctor” A-
“Kimmy Kisses a Boy” B+
“Kimmy Goes to School” B+
“Kimmy Goes to a Party” A-
“Kimmy is Bad at Math” B
“Kimmy Has a Birthday” B
“Kimmy Rides a Bike” B – (Jon Hamm A +)
“Kimmy
Goes to Court” B – (Jon Hamm A +)
“Kimmy
Makes Waffles” B +