"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt"

Why the hell am I writing an article about Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt? I just marathon-ed the whole thing in just over a week, interactive special included, and I think it's worth discussing, if only briefly, because of its quality as something more "watchable" than "exceptional". Does that make sense? I'm not a believer in an approach to entertainment in which you just "switch your brain off", but I'm still capable of watching something I don't think is particularly spectacular while at the same time being engaging enough to keep one suitably entertained. Does that make sense either?

I heard of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt back in (I think) 2015 after I finished watching 30 Rock, but I didn't watch it at the time because it seemed too removed from what I'd just been watching. Having been able to watch the whole thing now consecutively, it's an odd experience, because while the premise of the show is interesting, it doesn't feel to me as if it ever quite met its potential.

The idea of a protagonist who has been kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years is a very dark one, and quite heavy for a sitcom, but I appreciate the idea of the show that it was about people, and women in particular, not having their lives defined by trauma and patriarchal abuse. Yet at times I felt as if the show either couldn't figure out how to treat these issues in a sufficiently sitcom-friendly way, or couldn't think of enough ways to do it, because to me the show, after the first season in particular, felt very unfocused, to the extent that this theme didn't receive the level of attention it deserved due to its need to juggle them against the narratives of the other main characters.

The show has four main characters: Kimmy, whose narrative is to overcome abuse and trauma; Titus, who needs to overcome his own selfishness and defeatism; Lillian, whose main motive is to resist the gentrification of (I think) Lower Manhattan; and Jacqueline, who wants to find meaning and purpose in the shallow world of the New York upper crust, as well as reconciling with her Native American heritage, although the weirdness of a white woman in that role is a whole different thing. Regardless, those are a lot of different character stories to fit into episodes of a half-hour sitcom, streaming or not, some of them quite complex and serious, and in my view, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt never quite got to grips with everything as well as it could.

The premise of Kimmy's story seems absurd but is sadly realistic, with many women having been subject to extended kidnapping and abuse and/or cult religious indoctrination, in this case both. It's a lot to get into. I noticed that the cult element is, with the exception of episodes about the Gretchen character and parodies of Scientology, mostly dropped after the first season (apart from the weird episode about going to church). It's sometimes unclear to what extent Kimmy bought into the cult brainwashing and to what extent she perceived herself before her rescue as a victim of kidnapping, and I think at times that muddles elements of that story, but that's possibly intentional.

But it could also be symptomatic of what at times feels like a "first draft" quality of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt which I find suggestive of either a lack of ideas or a struggle to handle the core premise in an effective way in a sitcom. It's possibly worth comparing to 30 Rock, which was on network TV, generally ran for twenty-ish-episode seasons and had time to focus on the interconnecting stories of Liz, Jack, Tracy, Jenna and Kenneth. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt doesn't have the core premise of being focused on the humorous clashes of large personalities. While Kimmy and Titus are both larger-than-life characters, this is not typically used to generate conflict; in fact it's so rare that I was startled when, in Season 3 Episode 8 ("Kimmy Does a Puzzle!"), Kimmy becomes so frustrated with Titus's selfishness that she loses her temper at him and moves out (for all of five minutes or so).

None of this is to say that sitcoms all have to play to the same formula; of course they don't. But without this kind of structure, I think it can be difficult for a show to have much focus. Watching Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, at times it was almost exasperating how divorced the different characters' stories often felt from each other, with some episodes giving more or less an entirely different story line to Kimmy, Titus, Lillian and Jacqueline each. Given that the show's core concept is Kimmy and the overcoming of trauma and abuse (in addition to the fact that the show was, as I understand it, written as a vehicle for Kimmy actor Ellie Kemper) it seems odd that the show so often feels distracted from her story.

I think often the show was most successful when it (rarely) used the existing characters to enhance each other's storylines; a good example might be in Season 3 Episode 2 ("Kimmy's Roommate Lemonades!") in which Lillian and Jacqueline are competing over a local political issue and discover that Kimmy (who is involved in her own separate story line in the episode) is the district's only registered voter — of course she is, because she's the only non-cynical member of the local community. This kind of writing in which the character's stories overlap and intersect feels a lot more effective than each character going off on their own or perhaps pairing up with one other. A lot of the time I found myself getting impatient when the stories were digressing onto individual plot lines and wishing it would focus more on Kimmy. I also found myself wondering if certain plot elements and gags were written because they couldn't think of what else to do or a more elegant analogy for a theme, such as Kimmy joining Jacqueline's spin class in Season 1 Episode 11 ("Kimmy Rides a Bike!") or the parody of old 90s Mentos commercials in Season 2 Episode 6 ("Kimmy Drives a Car!"). While I understand that the former plays into the idea of fraudulent men manipulating women and pitting them against each other, the actual concept still feels clunky and sitcom-y; the latter feels almost entirely pointless, intended to be funny purely by being a reference to something old and cheesy.

I think the show also did reasonably well in demonstrating a number of its core ideas: abuse does not define you; being optimistic and resilient is undervalued in modern society (while not being a universally healthy approach to life); abuse and harassment are endemic to society, not restricted to isolated individuals; reactionism typically arises from ignorance and emotional immaturity; encouraging people to be compassionate and kind will produce a better world. At the same time, I thought there were issues that it treated very oddly for a show that started as recently as 2015: a white actor playing a white-passing Native American character; a Vietnamese character being called "Dong" and having a thick stereotypical accent; Asian protestors being depicted as irrationally outraged over a play and then enjoying it so much that they "offend" themselves; and university students being obsessed with intersectionality. At times the show feels like it's entrenched in a Gen X social worldview in which certain perceived problems in society are horrific and need addressing (as they indeed are) but that others are "taking it too far". And that gives the show a weird vibe at times, such as in Season 3 Episode 6 ("Kimmy is a Feminist!") which implies that Kimmy's college friends only care about the things they do because they're young and trying to find a sense of belonging by parroting cliché intersectional talking points, rather than considering that maybe they're important too.

It almost seems odd to think about a comedy like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ending after only four seasons, but I couldn't help but feel by the third season that the show had either started to run out of steam or was struggling because the foundations set by the first two seasons weren't strong enough. I think season one on its own would have been quite solid as a one-and-done Netflix experience, like the commendable Norwegian single-season Netflix sitcom Home for Christmas (which now has a second season, so this comparison didn't age well), or the single-season US Netflix comedy drama Living with Yourself. I think in Kimmy Schmidt this seemed especially possible with the closure provided by the final two episodes of the first season. However, as it played out, I think the show would have had more of an impact if it had focused more on Kimmy's story and used the other characters to support that rather than trying, as felt more and more common as the show went on, to play as a traditional sitcom ensemble piece. I'm almost inclined to argue that the premise would have worked overall as a comedy-drama, and a more light-hearted approach like a sitcom would have been better served by one of the unused ideas for Kimmy's backstory which was later touched upon in Season 4 Episode 9 ("Sliding Van Doors") in which Kimmy was in a coma for years. But maybe I'm being defeatist myself in thinking that a sitcom wasn't the best way to tackle the issues that Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt wanted to address. Yet I think that when the show does address these issues it does it well; I just felt like it didn't focus on them enough.

I will say that Ellie Kemper and Tituss Burgess are both great in the lead roles. The Kimmy character is one that I've thought in the past would be a good sitcom role, i.e. a character whose defining trait was being positive, upbeat and eager to help and befriend everybody, and maybe a little naïve, without (as such characters often are) being stupid and completely gullible. And the show also does a good job of showing that positivity isn't everything, and it needs to be moderated with a healthy acceptance of negative emotions. But I think the show would have been stronger if it had focused on these two together more. As a matter of fact, this is why I think the 2020 interactive special was in some respects more enjoyable than the actual series finale, which I found to be rather anticlimactic, because not only did it keep Kimmy and Titus together, but it focused on Kimmy's character and her story as the driving force of the plot and thematic exploration, and used the other characters more in supporting roles. I still at times found the cutaways to the other characters to be a bit exasperating, especially Jacqueline stalling outside Titus' trailer on the film set, but Daniel Radcliffe is always good value. John Hamm is also good fun in all of his appearances throughout the series. I also enjoyed the recurring gag (which culminates in the special) of sentient androids becoming a mainstream part of society. When Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was good, it was good: funny, charming, empowering and insightful. But at other times I found it to be slow, unfocused, clunky and tone-deaf, and a few times too often I think I found myself mousing along the thumbnails in the Netflix timeline so that I could anticipate when the story of an episode would get back to Kimmy.

I don't mean to be too down on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; I watched the whole thing, after all, and am spending the time writing this blog post about it. I think that a lot of what it addressed and had to say was important and relevant. And maybe I'm not giving the show enough credit, and the thematic consistency of the plots would emerge were I to apply more critical rigour to what I watched. I just think it also is a good example of where a show can maybe not recognise its own strengths or have a degree of mismatch between premise and mode. It was, I think, the first significant sitcom to be released on Netflix, and it was originally developed for network television, so it really stands between the worlds of traditional TV and streaming services. Maybe in that respect it's a good example of what does and doesn't work in the current era; for instance, I appreciated that the show was less likely to have guest stars for a single episode, instead letting their stories play out over a few, and having a stronger sense of continuity than is typical in, for instance, syndicated shows. But from a thematic perspective, I think focus is important and I think that was something Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt demonstrates the need for, if only due to its (at times) noticeable absence.