A Review of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Season One, Just in Time for Season Two
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Bright News on a Gloomy Day
April 15th is that dreadful day when our taxes are due. It is not that most of us mind paying them. We generally have more than enough yanked out of our paychecks every payday. It’s the enervating tedium of having to fill out our tax returns, which we have invariably put off until the deadline, that brings us so much angst. My theory is that the reason we do spring cleaning, rather than, say, fall cleaning, is that, compared to the task of doing our taxes, cleaning our toilets seems to offer a far greater appeal.
Well, this year, we have a spoonful of sugar to help that medicine go down, even though a certain Ms. Poppins probably had nothing to do with the provision, even of the spoon. Why is this, you may well ask? Go ahead, ask—did I not just grant you untrammeled permission to do so? It is because April 15, 2016 marks the day that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt arrives at the Netflix warehouse for a second season. Say what you will about Netflix, this is cause for celebration. Kimmy Schmidt is, without question or doubt, the best comedy in the Netflix inventory, and—keep in mind—they also have 30 Rock. In fact, it may be the best comedy on any sort of television today.
Funny I should mention 30 Rock, I mused, getting beside myself, but not necessarily with rage. A lot of the people and a lot of the writing are associated with both shows. Tina Fey is a co-producer and writer, for starters. Jane Krakowski, who had a featured role on the earlier show, also has a featured role in this one. In both cases, she plays a character who has a hard time with reality, although the two roles are far from congruent. Likewise, Jon Hamm, who showed us his comedic ability in a few 30 Rock guest appearances, showed them to even better advantage in Kimmy Schmidt. In fact he, along with Tina Fey, who also did guest appearances as comically inept prosecutor Marcia Clark, received an Emmy nomination for best acting in a guest appearance. Both of those nominations were well-deserved, to say nothing of the notion that either or both should have won the prize. Oh well, rules are rules. Only one nominee in each category can go home with the bubble gum sampler.
The show features four strong actors, three of whom I had heard of, although the fourth one also got an Emmy Nomination. Ellie Kemper (probably best known for her excellent work on NBC’s The Office) plays the title role and plays it superbly. Even when the joke is on herself—or maybe especially then—she carries it off with not a trace of trepidation. Jane Krakowski—yet another Emmy nominee—plays Kimmy’s employer, Jacqueline Voorhees, brilliantly. One of the running jokes in this first season is that Jacqueline (born Jackie Lynn) is actually a Native American. Her parents, Native American actors Gil Birmingham and Sheri Foster, are excellent in the two episodes they were part of. Of course they, like everyone else in the cast, were assisted with superb writing. At one point, Jackie Lynn’s father remarks sadly about how his daughter took the great iron bird to New York, then pointed out he was just kidding—he was an Air Force veteran. It did seem a little incongruous that the lovely, but comparatively pallid Ms. Krakowski could pass for Indian, but that was somewhat alleviated in the season finale, when she seemed to take out her tainted contact lenses, but actually inserted two lenses that made her pupils appear to be black. Another of the quick jokes is that, without her “prescription lenses,” Jackie Lynn is blind as a bat.
Another of the main characters is Lillian, who functions (in the broadest sense of the word) as Kimmy’s landlady for her shabby New York basement apartment. Carol Kane practically steals the show in this role, which would be difficult to imagine, considering the fourth main cast member. That would be Tituss Burgess, who plays Kimmy’s black, flamingly gay roommate, Titus. Note, only one S in his character’s name, which is fine. Every good actor should be made to stretch. No, all kidding aside, Tituss Burgess absolutely deserved his Emmy nomination. Again, thinking of the 30 Rock crowd, think of him as a gay version of Tracy Jordan, not for the two characters’ respective antics, but for the nature of their zaniness. As the first season comes to a close, though, we learn that the character Titus may not be as gay as he would like people to believe.
These four carry the biggest part of the load, but there is not a clunker in the entire cast. Some of the outstanding actors appearing less often are Tim Blake Nelson, who plays Kimmy’s clueless stepdad, and (speaking of Mr. Hamm) Kiernan Shipka as Kimmy’s half-sister. Veteran character actor Richard Kind has a very entertaining guest role, as does Dean Norris. Jennifer Euston and Meredith Tucker, who did the casting for the first season, deserve the highest praise for their efforts.
As for the comedy, there are a number of standing jokes that bolster the somewhat incongruous arc of the story. For example, one of these, particularly as evidenced by Kimmy herself, is that people in Indiana are incapable of anything approaching profanity. They cannot even say the Lord’s name when it is not in vain. At one point, during the trial scenes, Jon Hamm’s character asks the jury if it is wrong to believe in Gosh or his son Jeepers.
Standing jokes and odd plots are all well and good, but what puts this comedy over the top are what some people would call the “throw away” lines: jokes so quick and casually inserted, you have to be paying attention. For example, at one point, early on, the necessarily oblivious Kimmy tries to encourage Titus by telling him that, if he puts his heart into it, he can one day realize his dream of performing with Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston. These fast takes are too good to miss. If you decide to multi-task by rotating your lightbulbs while a given episode is airing, you will probably be cheating yourself. In the words of Roger Miller, or, more accurately, Henry Miller, “attention must be paid.”
If you are not a Netflix fan or subscriber, I would strongly recommend that you re-consider, just on the basis of this one show. That is not to say that Netflix is a one-trick pony. They have quality product of their own (such as House of Cards and Orange is the New Black) and from outside sources (Foyle’s War, for example). Granted, some of their own shows have been gobbling turkeys, and their inventory of shows produced elsewhere in not as extensive as many of us would like, it is worth the lousy eight bucks a month for Kimmy Schmidt alone. Anything else is just icing on the cake.
Important Closing Note: If you somehow imagine I have come up short on the specifics, you have somehow imagined correctly. This show is too good to spoil. The second season won’t start until tax day, but you can watch the first season now. Don’t just sit there, start binging.
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Thomas Cleveland Lane
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