The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a great TV show, that honestly surprised me with how good it is. Kimmy Schmidt, played by Ellie Kemper of The Office, is a girl who was kidnapped into a Doomsday cult when she was in eighth grade. Kimmy and three other women were held hostage in a bunker underground by the insane Revered Richard Wayne Gary Wayne, who told them the world had ended. They are finally rescued fifteen years later and have to now rejoin society, which is where the show picks up. The women become known as the “Indiana Mole Women” and gain popularity in the news. Kimmy decides to move to New York City, where she finds an apartment and a job as a nanny/all around assistant to a rich woman, played by Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock. Kimmy tries to live successfully in New York City, despite that fact that she is somewhat stuck in 8th grade, as she was removed from society at that time. She wears a lot of hot pink and carries a backpack, which nicely accents her bedazzled sneakers.

The cast of this show is amazing; every character is perfectly cast and the actor fits the character extremely well. I loved Ellie Kemper on The Office and I’m glad she has found success playing a similar, though not identical, character in Kimmy Schmidt. She plays a naive, innocent, and weirdly out of touch young person trying to adjust to the adult world, as Erin in The Office was also trying to do. Jane Krakowski as the wildly rich and incredibly out of touch Jacqueline Vorhees is perfect, as she really sells that she would just throw away water and be unable to cook anything. Kimmy’s eccentric roommate and sketchy landlady are also perfectly cast. The trope of the sweet old lady who turns out to be a hardened criminal is something I will never get tired of.

Kimmy Schmidt can at first seem like any other sitcom you could see on TV. There’s some weird, but not too weird, characters, a silly situation, an out of touch rich woman, a rebellious teenager, yawn. However, this show goes beyond that into the realm of kind-of-weird comedy that I really like. Every seemingly tired and worn out sitcom situation takes a weird turn, making it new and unique. I had high hopes for the show, as it is created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who was the showrunner for 30 Rock. The show lived up to and surpassed my expectations, as I thoroughly enjoyed every episode I watched. I actually watched the whole show in one weekend, which is slightly concerning, but I digress.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was scheduled to air on NBC this spring, but was instead sold to Netflix, which put the show up for streaming in March. The whole first (and only) season can be watched on Netflix right now, with another season scheduled to air at some point. I don’t know when, my encyclopedic knowledge of television shows sadly does not extend to future TV shows, but Netflix did schedule the show for two seasons.

When watching the show I heard a few jokes I thought sounded a little  dated. They sounded like they would have made more sense a few years ago. The theme song, for instance. It is incredibly catchy, I had it stuck in my head every time I watched an episode. It’s an autotuned version of someone talking, like those “Autotune the News” videos that were really popular a few years ago. Then, I realized, Kimmy has been trapped in a bunker for years. These are the references she understands. The “dated” jokes are something that really stood out to me, and almost bothered me, until I realized why these seemingly dated jokes made it into the final script.

This show is very similar to 30 Rock, in my opinion. The characters are all crazy, but not crazy enough to be unbelievable. The jokes keep coming and can be very subtle, which I’m a big fan of. I really enjoy the unique premise of the show and the characters, who are unlike any you typically see on TV. It feels like everything on screen is a reference and a joke, and I’m sure I missed a lot of them. There’s also a lot of strong female characters (they’re unbreakable) and we all know how much I like strong female characters. Everyone go watch Kimmy Schmidt, it’s witty and really funny, and I don’t have anyone to talk about it with.  I’m all alone, like an Indiana Mole Woman in an underground doomsday bunker.