Comedy is liberating in the second season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a notable improvement for Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s tonally ambitious sitcom.
The series, about a spunky young woman’s recovery after having spent fifteen years trapped in a bunker with a madman, is stylized and paced in accordance with its creators’ last project, the Emmy-winning 30 Rock. Yet in effect, the two couldn’t be more different. Where 30 Rock was as light underneath as it was on the surface, Kimmy Schmidt deals with trauma in large and frequent doses, riskily but also provocatively spinning it with crisp banter and enviable naiveté.
In Kimmy’s first season, that depiction often led to inconsistencies: Kimmy’s (Ellie Kemper) behavior – and in turn, the extent of her abilities – was largely dependent on where the story would take her. Fey and Carlock struggled to settle on a durably believable character, and it didn’t help that the season’s concluding arc delved into the absurd, a courtroom spectacle with forced echoes of the O.J. Simpson trial. The show was at its funniest when at its purest – in observing Kimmy’s unquenchable excitement as she integrated herself into the New York grind, or in paralleling her stories with such amusing supporting characters as her aspiring-actor-roommate Titus (Tituss Burgess) or her Upper-East-Side-boss Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski, formerly of 30 Rock). Fittingly, it was at its most substantive when at its loosest.
That second point is what Fey and Carlock seem acutely aware of throughout Kimmy’s sophomore run. They give up the outlandish for the simplistic – the extraneously hyperbolic for the vitally humane – and fill season one’s now-empty plot stockings with bags of cutting jokes and uproarious gags. Part of this may have to do with moving beyond the groundwork – in season one, throwing Kimmy into a love triangle and putting her back in school felt like obligatory stops on the road to stability, both for the character and the show itself. In contrast, Kimmy Schmidt radiates comfort in season two – from its sense of place, in the gentrifying uptown neighborhood of New York, to its confidence in character. Titus and Kimmy’s zany landlady Lillian (Carol Kane) gets a kooky but genuine arc this time around, unwilling to let go of the grungy, dangerous neighborhood she’s long called home. The show doubles-down on the controversial identity-crisis arc of Jacqueline, a Native American passing as (and – again, controversially – played by) a white woman, as she shifts from ignorant and repressive to ignorant and well-meaning, striving to honor her roots and right her wrongs. These storylines, particularly, would reek of familiarity (in Lillian’s case) and miscalculated nobility (in Jacqueline’s), were Fey and Carlock not so skilled in sketching them out, and were Kane and Krakowski not such self-aware, hilariously committed performers.
Then again, that goes for a lot of Kimmy Schmidt. There’s no denying that the perky score from composer Jeff Richmond, the radical decency exuded by Kemper or the aggressive topicality that defines the show’s comic beats could turn cloying in a different context. Fey and Carlock get away with a lot – this season alone: cranky critiques of Internet culture, therapy sessions undermined by ethical problems and simplistic “fixes,” continually hit-and-miss takes on the politics of race – in-part because they write with intelligence that extends beyond the page. You can sense them goading their more socially-sensitive viewers; they all but acknowledge the psychological issues that characterize Kimmy’s trusted relationship with a drunken, lonely therapist (played by Fey). Going back to those uneven later seasons of 30 Rock, it feels as if Fey has finally reclaimed her mojo: her jokes come by the second, relevant and unyieldingly incisive. Specifically, her take on the Upper East Side housewife crisis – reported in distressing detail by the New York Times last year – is brilliantly vicious, with the rivalry between Jacqueline and frenemy Deirdre (a spectacular Anna Camp) a perfect encapsulation of Fey’s penchant for social commentary with a maniacally funny edge.
The show can still get bogged down. Its attempt to correct course on one of last year’s clearest misfires – Dong (Ki Hong Lee), Kimmy’s equally naive love interest with a heavy Vietnamese accent – still doesn’t work, especially seeing as it ends abruptly, and a little too bleakly, on his deportation. And Fey, as an actress, is far too broad and distracting for what emerges as the season’s most sensitive and grounded component, of which she is a primary player. The “unbreakable” spirit of Kimmy, and by extension the world around her, often contrasts with the undisciplined approach that the show takes: its willingness to veer from pop culture satire (in the vein of 30 Rock) to divisive social commentary to fleshed-out character study is, without a doubt, its blessing and its curse.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is, for that reason, unlikely to ever strike the perfect balance. But its mix of funny and sweet – of Titus juggling a lovely new romance with his continued larger-than-life exploits, or of Kimmy coming to terms with both the beauty and nastiness of the real world – goes deeper than you might expect. Every one-liner and set-piece is buttressed, dramatically, by attempts at recovery and quests for satisfaction. Indeed, for these characters – for this world – comedy isn’t just an outlet. It’s a coping mechanism. B+
Unlike Kimmy Schmidt, the new Amazon-Channel 4 co-production Catastrophe arrived fully-formed last summer. At just six half-hour episodes, the spiky rom-com established a dynamic rapport between its trapped-in-love leads, British schoolteacher Sharon (Sharon Horgan) and American executive Rob (Rob Delaney), against a lush cinematic aesthetic and with a wicked edge of raunchy comedy. My only issue was wanting more; season two couldn’t come fast enough.
That brevity is unfortunately more problematic in season two, which jumps ahead several years to Rob and Sharon married and exhausted, as new parents of two babies. The creative freedom of season one matched its characters’ sense of freedom, as a one-night-stand turned into a five-night-stand and, eventually, an unromantically romantic marriage proposal. Along those lines, the constriction that defines their new situation – Sharon, boxed-in as a stay-at-home mother; Rob, floundering at a soulless, money-making, long-hours enterprise – similarly constricts the show. Rob is pushed into a conventional, if well-handled, temptation-at-work storyline, while Sharon amusingly – but also familiarly – struggles with the combined overwhelming-and-boring nature of new motherhood. Coupled with time spent on underdeveloped supporting characters that’s too limited yet too lengthy – again, consequential of an exceedingly short season – the new episodes lack the lean-and-mean nature of season one’s. We’re left with bulky, workmanlike storytelling that aptly gets at broader themes, but fails to emotionally ignite.
Catastrophe remains more than worthwhile, however. There’s plenty of great stuff between Sharon and Rob, even if it’s relatively low on spice. This is somewhat intentional, anyway: episode one opens on the two of them watching bad reality television, purposelessly continuing on in what Sharon identifies as the indefinite gap between Mad Men and Game of Thrones. They’re having sex less, and they’re paranoid about having sex less; their energy levels are drained by 5:00 p.m., but they’re constantly wanting more from one-another. In that regard, their journey together is endlessly well-observed, with some notably astute commentary on sex and intimacy. An instantly-decided-on getaway to Paris covers episode three, and as it slowly adheres to the principles of Murphy’s Law, the two – curiously, forebodingly, sexily – fall back into each other’s rhythms, and regain a sense of security. Appropriately, given its title, Catastrophe is most in-the-zone when things are at their most spectacularly disastrous.
On multiple levels, Catastrophe’s challenge is innovation, from its time constraints to its backwards approach to romance. Constantly, Horgan and Delaney – creators and sole writers here – have to make it work. And whether they can is often dependent on how they construct a given episode; the more time spent with a tertiary character, the less on Rob and Sharon, and in turn, the less the principal storyline can really land. It’s particularly evident in season two that this show does not yet have the bones of a full-fledged series, both in ensemble and in structure. Its installments work best as miniature indie-films that build in succession. The show itself works best, season-to-season, as a snapshot of a couple – a sliver of story without much of a beginning, middle or end. That part of Catastrophe, given the performers’ chemistry and the writing’s clever honesty, will never die and will always thrive. But in season two, it doesn’t dominate enough. Once more, I was left wanting more by the end of a Catastrophe season. And this time, that’s more complaint than compliment. B