Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is Excellent
Ellie Kemper as Kimmy Schmidt on her first day at work. Photo courtesy Netflix.
March 20, 2015
It would have been so easy to make Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt terrible, but through the magic of Ellie Kemper and Tina Fey, a cultural successor to the old NBC comedy lineup is here.
The show begins in an underground bunker where Kimmy (Kemper) and three other women in prairie dresses live in a doomsday cult. A SWAT team busts down the door, and suddenly, the women are freed. After being underground for 15 years, all Kimmy wants to do is move to New York City and eat candy for dinner (she was kidnapped into the cult when she was 14, by the way).
Now at 29, Kimmy is ready to make up for lost time. She quickly finds an apartment in the city (does that happen?) owned by the loopy, lovable Lillian (Carol Kane) and inhabited by the force of nature that is Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess). Titus, who is one of the best supporting characters in recent television history, is a poor, flamboyant, musical prodigy that can’t seem to find better work than as a fake Iron Man in Times Square. She meets the incredibly wealthy, incredibly funny Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) who offers her a job as an assistant almost immediately.
Ellie Kemper makes a perfect Kimmy, bringing her innocence and energy from The Office and making it darker. As Kimmy, she works in ‘90s references and a huge sense of self-righteousness (this should be annoying, but Kemper works it). Some of Kemper’s best lines are her comebacks to insults thrown at her. Kimmy has no idea what’s going on, but that doesn’t stop her.
Kimmy combines the best of 30 Rock (absurdist humor, Jane Krakowski) with a new, darker world (post-apocalyptic cults, kidnappings). The New York these characters occupy is different than the less severe city of other shows like Broad City. The main characters really are poor (an ATM spits out negative one dollar at Titus), the rich are so rich they’ll name their children Xanthippe and Buckley, and the landlady really will chase out gentrification with a nail-studded baseball bat.
Though on its surface it’s a candy-colored sitcom, Kimmy has an unusually poignant bite. In one episode, Titus walks the streets of New York in a werewolf costume and finds he is treated much better as a monster than as a black man. Catcallers also get their due when a construction worker finds that the reason he calls out women is because he envies them (I won’t spoil the rest of this plotline, but Titus gets in one of the best sight gags of the season).
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is odd, but it’s one of the best new comedies on TV. It’s going to be big.
