"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.

"In the Forest of the Night"

With what desp'rate pleas or lies
Was this role put 'fore his eyes?

If you want a piece of speculative fiction that effectively references William Blake's The Tyger, read Watchmen, with particular reference to its fifth chapter, 'Fearful Symmetry.' But hey, New Who can do intertextuality as well, right? Its primogenitor, Doctor Who, did it all the time with regards to classical literature, the golden age of science-fiction and the infinite variety of the English canon. We even got to see some clumsy references to Eliot back in 2007's 'The Lazarus Experiment,' which despite being seven years and two Doctors ago as of my writing this hardly seems old because of how enthusiastically the show has been repeating itself, navel-gazing and treading water for the majority of the time since. So how does a New Who episode reference a pre-Romantic poem which ponders theodicy, the question of evil? Well apparently it doesn't. We begin with a red riding hood girl called Maebh (pronounced "Mave") hurtling through the woods looking for the Doctor. Appropriately enough, Capaldi's not having any of it, but she talks her way into the TARDIS anyway where she more or less reveals that she had some kind of vision or dream where Clara told her to find him. The Doctor drops some crap about being the last of his species which we know from 'The Day of the Doctor' isn't even true anymore, and then when he doubts that the TARDIS is actually in London it plays a satnav voice, which of course caused me to violently evacuate my contents with the hilarity of it all. Shut up, New Who. You suck.

To what goal did they aspire?
When did they editors fire?

We zoom out to discover that London is covered in forest, giving us an intriguing shot of the overgrown metropolis, but if you're expecting a properly post-apocalyptic 'Life After People' type scenario you're going to be disappointed. The Day of the Triffids did apocalyptic London. Why not Who? Well, maybe too many literary references would make their heads explode. Meanwhile, who knows why, Danny and Clara are supervising a very small class of school children at the "Zoological Museum," a place in London that doesn't really exist. Danny's a maths teacher and Clara's an English teacher. Why are they supervising what is surely a science excursion? What's more, why do they need two teachers for this tiny class? Well as we find out later these kids are supposedly what I believe tends to be euphemistically termed the "special class" in education systems throughout the world, although beyond Maebh I'm not sure how "special needs" any of them really are, unless at Coal Hill in 2014 "special" means "a bit annoying." Well, Bradley's first scene is annoying, and Ruby is pretty annoying, but I thought Samson was okay, mainly because he takes the piss out of Mr. Pink. As they're leaving Ruby points out a rather thick tree ring in some fairly clunky exposition. Okay, I'm sure you could justify it, but why would a tree cutting be a front-centre display at a "zoological museum," which one assumes ostensibly deals largely with animals, rather than plants?

And what meaning, and what art
Could hope to thrive in this show's heart?

There's some time wasting as an old caretaker struggles to open a door, with Danny going "No, no, no, no it moved!" in a very stagey way. Then we inexplicably cut to news reports about how the trees are appearing not just in London but all over the world. Who's watching this? Clara and Danny aren't. The Doctor isn't. Maybe Maebh's condition picks up satellite. Clara phones up the Doctor, who slags off Les Misérables. The novel? The musical? One of the many film adaptations? In any event it's of course always encouraging to see the Doctor, a man who notionally uses his brain to solve problems, anti-intellectually slagging off art. Knowing New Who's imperialist nostalgia it's probably because it's French. He does get a decent line here: "I'm a Time Lord, not a child minder," which I'm going to assume is a Star Trek reference. Clara pretends to Danny that she called the school but he swiftly susses that it was the Doctor. I know we're meant to see how irresponsible and self-centred Clara is over the course of this series so I guess this is a good thing in terms of characterisation? It kind of makes you wonder why on Earth we're meant to sympathise with her though. We also find out Maebh's on medication. Danny takes the kids on a wilderness ramble to try to get them home. Unlike Clara he doesn't give a shit about where the trees are coming from because a Taliban soldier shot his imagination during the war and they had to amputate it. The government announces their intention to use "carefully controlled fires" to clear the trees. I don't want to defend the British government in any way - I don't know a terribly large amount about them, but one assumes that like all major political parties of all Western democracies they're lazy, narrow-minded, self-righteous crony capitalist plutocrats who are only better than authoritarian states according to the lesser of two evils principle and who care more about tribalistic "us-and-them-ism" than actually governing, with a blistering contempt and disregard for the very people who elect them - but one assumes that even they would understand that cutting trees down with bulldozers or chainsaws is going to be an infinitely more efficient solution than waiting for them to burn down. So unless this was an active attempt to mock the government's incompetence, it seems like it wasn't terribly well thought through at the writing stage. They also recommend stocking up on fresh water. Are they worried the trees are going to crack the pipes or something? Maybe Frank Cottrell Boyce read Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide and assumed that it applied to all apocalyptic scenarios. There's probably a deleted scene where they recommend destroying any staircases so that the trees can't follow you to high ground.

And when that heart began to beat,
What dread jokes! And what plot cheat!

Enough of my complaining. We get some indications that Maebh is psychic, and then cut to her mother freaking out about her absence. We also discover a few snippets about the student supporting cast with, needless to say, side-splitting cutaways to them being daft and poorly behaved at school which is pure sitcom, like something out of Family Guy. We learn that the trees grew overnight given that they have no rings, and the Doctor, joining the others, considers that it must be a natural event like an ice age, the Earth's history involving a "series of catastrophes." This one, however, seemingly involves messing with time, a fact the Doctor reveals after Clara muses on the way that "he pretends he's not interested," in this episode's serving of self-congratulatory self-referential pseudo-postmodern shite. Why don't they just have a bit where Moffat walks in, breaks the fourth wall and says straight to camera, "This is brilliant television and if you don't think so you must be a shithead," gives you the finger and then walks off again? Capaldi gets another amusing line, however, about an "arboreal coincidence," evocative of the "boyfriend error" of a few episodes previous. In the TARDIS, Danny finds Maebh's homework book, which is full of those stereotypical child's drawings that children never actually do, here depicting the sun and trees. Isn't she meant to be in year eight? Why does she draw like she's five years old? Anyway Capaldi starts running around like a fruit loop trying to figure out which one of the kids is Maebh who, much like Mario in 1992, is missing. We find out that Maebh hears voices, and has been taking psychiatric medication since her sister disappeared. The Doctor deduces from her drawings that a solar flare is heading for Earth. Clara complains that the sonic screwdriver isn't a magic wand, which is presumably the writers listening to criticism and ridiculing it. As the Doctor and Clara go looking for the missing small child-type person, Nelson's column collapses for no particular reason, which might actually, now that I think about it, be a reference to Shelley's Ozymandias, or even Horace Smith's Ozymandias, written in contest with Shelley, which specifically contemplates London becoming one day like Ancient Egypt.

What the pacing? How explain?
In what furnace was thy brain?

For reasons I didn't feel were entirely clear Danny hustles the kids back out of the TARDIS again, with smoke everywhere. Why did the collapsing column affect the TARDIS? Maebh's mother starts cycling through the forest yelling randomly for her. London's a pretty big place. What does she expect to happen? Unless somehow their suburban terrace is on a prime piece of real estate only a few blocks from Trafalgar Square, I can't help but feel that she might be being a bit optimistic. The Doctor and Clara find Maebh's phone, following a breadcrumb of clues, but instead of following it they veer off in an arbitrary direction. The Doctor claims that "the forest is mankind's nightmare." Is it, though? Or is that, actually, Mr. Cottrell Boyce, faux-poetic bullshit that doesn't really mean anything and is just meant to sound impressive? What about human societies that didn't develop in forested areas? Clearly New Who being Eurocentric. That's intended as sarcasm on my part, but it's actually worth thinking about in terms of New Who's tunnel-vision. I really can't help but feel that this would work more successfully as some kind of fairytale if the forest was better realised, rather than mostly looking like Peter Capaldi stumping around in a copse. The lighting doesn't help. It's just too bright and airy. I just looked up the place where the location shooting was done, the satisfyingly Welsh-sounding "Fforest Fawr Woods," and there are way more interesting looking bits than these, although I suppose they're meant to convey still being in the middle of London. Not sure where all the buildings went. The Doctor and Clara somehow find Maebh's stuff despite the fact that she's not moving in a straight line or leaving the clues in a straight line either, and they encounter some hazmat guys trying to burn the forest. This doesn't work, of course, their very "controlled" looking flamethrower failing to ignite the wood. Capaldi argues that "the whole natural order's turning against this planet." Is it? How? Against human infrastructure, maybe. He also tells off Clara for worrying about her relationship. The Doctor reveals that Maebh predicted the future in her homework book and Clara tells him that the "gifted and talented group" are actually the special kids. I think we would have been better off with Form K from Bad Education. Then some wolves start howling because the zoo's been broken open. Maebh gets menaced by the wolves but escapes through an unexpected gate, and the Doctor tells them to look big. From what I've read this would probably achieve jack shit. The wolves piss off nonetheless and he gets another good line: "Told you there were rubbish." Then the poetic references come to a head when what scared the wolves is revealed: a big stripy cereal-loving cat otherwise known as a tiger shows up looking surly, but Danny flickers a torch in its eyes and it too says "Blow this noise," and trots off, having no further relevance to the episode, not unlike the late war German heavy tank which took its name.

What the plotting? What sad cast
Dare its deadly script read past? 

The Doctor insists that they not give Maebh her medication - make of that what you will - Danny cracks out some "funny racism" when he claims that she's been "abducted by a Scotsman," and then she runs off with everyone else in pursit. "You won't find your sister out there!" Shut up Ruby. They come upon a poky-looking ring of saplings and the forest starts communicating with Maebh, although the Doctor reassures her that she wasn't responsible for it. Bradley has to shoosh at one point in this as well. The problem with the kids isn't so much that they themselves are bad as that the writing and editing is clunky and lacks timing. Somehow the Doctor "turns up" the gravity or whatever with the sonic screwdriver, and this in turn somehow causes some firefly-looking things to appear which represent the consciousness of nature or something to that effect, which claims that it's answering a call from the sun. Clara wonders why the trees want to kill them. What gave her that impression? Isn't the solar flare the thing that's going to kill them? The Doctor's toothless response is "you've been chopping them down for furniture for centuries." Were they scared of upsetting climate change deniers or something? He believes that Earth's future is going to be erased. They go back to the TARDIS, Clara tricking the Doctor into thinking that he's going to save them when actually she wants him to just save himself. She doesn't want to be the last of her species and thinks the kids will never be able to cope with the loss of everything. He declares, however, that "this is my world too," in a resolution of the issue from 'Kill the Moon.' I still don't fully understand why they assume everyone's going to die. The Doctor, however, realises that in fact the forest is filling the atmosphere with extra oxygen which will be burnt off by the solar flare. Uh... okay. Right. Well, no, it makes no sense whatsoever, but what do we expect from New Who, really? Capaldi has a few chances where he could have completely hammed it up here and he doesn't, which is all we can be grateful for these days. He compares the situation to the Tunguska event, which was a meteor strike and therefore almost totally irrelevant to the matter of oxygen and solar flares.

When these trees ate solar spears
And Moffat drank the fanboy tears

There's a minor panic when they realise that the government is planning to start defoliating. Surely, given that they know the solar flare is very soon to hit, it's unlikely that they'll be able to do enough to make a difference? Nonetheless Murray Gold's comedy music starts playing as the kids write and recite a lovely message to the world about courage and trust. The Doctor offers a trip to check out the flare in all its glory, but the kids don't give a shit about going to space and just want their parents. Danny doesn't care either, outright stating "I don't want to see more things," and arguing that "one person is more amazing than universes." So are we, as Doctor Who viewers, meant to agree with that sentiment? It's a typical false dichotomy where notionally you can't both experience new things and simultaneously appreciate them with depth. Lao Tzu said that the farther one travels, the less one knows. Then again, Sarah Jane said that travel broadened the mind. Anyway, let's not give Danny any further unnecessary airtime and join the Doctor and Clara in space where a big fire gushes harmlessly all over the Earth. Missy is watching this too for no particular reason. Back at Clara's apartment our dashing protagonists observe the trees vanishing in clouds of typical New Who all-purpose golden fairy dust, the hallmark of quality plotting. The Doctor argues that humanity's super power, among the many we've heard about this series, is forgetfulness, and that they'll put the event into "fairy stories." Spare me. He also cracks out the inexplicable remark "if you remembered how things felt you'd have stopped having wars and stopped having babies." Not even going to touch that one. Maebh and her mother go home and, clumsily, we end on a shot of a random extra playing Maebh's missing sister who appears out of a bush. Not only is the shot of this young woman whom we've never seen before totally devoid of meaning or profundity, but the music and Maebh's mother's reaction makes this one of the most embarrassing and cringeworthy moments in all of Series 8.

Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who wrote 'Blink' showrun thee?

I'm afraid to say that at least in my books "In the Forest of the Night" is probably going to go down as one of the weaker episodes of Series 8. It's lacking in structure, poorly paced for the first half and simply insubstantial. On the other hand it has some nice moments for the Doctor, some decent imagery and it's a good indicator of the fact that the show doesn't need an identifiable monster, or even the idea of one, as in 'Listen,' to at least be in some respect functional, but 'functional' is probably the highest compliment I can give it. The kids are a bit pointless but nothing worth worrying about, and the dilemma doesn't seem to be terribly well thought through, but if you like your New Who with loads of arseing about then this is the episode for you. It may seem a bit rich for me, Old Who devotee that I am, to criticise arseing about, but at least Old Who's arseing about generally involved some kind of plot. This just has lots of meandering back and forth. As an experiment it's okay, but I think if you're going to do this kind of thing it needs to have a good deal more atmosphere, which ironically this episode rather lacks, the brightly-lit forest and humdrum supporting cast making the whole thing feel like nothing more than a traipse in the woods. Maybe this is what they were going for, and maybe some people like it, but for me this didn't even function as a "fairy tale" because it was all too vague. Being the second in a hat-trick of three present day Earth stories doesn't endear it a great deal either. I took a break for about a week or more in between watching halves of this episode and I found that very telling. It's not offensive particularly in dramatic terms, although you can take your pick when it comes to matters like mental illness, but it's not exactly compelling either. Maybe you could torture parallels to Blake's poem out of it, but in my view this is less "problem of evil" and more "problem of budget."