Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s latest television endeavor, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, reinvigorates all of the features we loved most about their previous groundbreaking show, 30 Rock — fast-paced dialogue, unashamed cultural references and exaggerated stereotypes. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt began streaming its first 13 episodes on Netflix on March 6 and has been signed for a second season.
The premise of the show is darker than those of most comedy sitcoms. After spending 15 years in an underground bunker and held captive by an apocalypse cult, Kimmy Schmidt comes to New York City to shed her past and relinquish her label as one of the “mole women,” a term the media has sensationalized.
Very few writers would be able to intersperse references to Kimmy’s traumatic experiences while living in captivity (including physical, sexual and mental abuse) as efficiently and as shamelessly as Fey and Carlock do. What helps the show most is its eclectic cast of characters that Fey and Carlock have reimagined to fit into this new series.
Titus Andromedon (Tituss Buress) is a gay aspiring Broadway performer and Kimmy’s roommate when she comes to New York. Titus is analogous to 30 Rock’s Jenna Maroney — both are unabashedly self-centered characters with overly-inflated perceptions of their talents. Yet miraculously, Titus is as lovable as Jane Krakowski’s Jenna.
Meanwhile, Krakowski returns in this new series to play Jacqueline Voorhees, a stereotypical rich New York trophy wife. Jacqueline’s character represents the social mobility that Jack Donaghy represented in 30 Rock. Jacqueline’s transition from her Native American reservation to the Upper East Side largely echoes that of Jack, from public school in Boston to Princeton and, ultimately, the top of the Rock.
Fey and Carlock, by throwing in a bit on Jacqueline’s Native American heritage, provide a subtle (albeit controversial) social commentary on white people with slight Native American roots laying claims to ethnic diversity.
Regardless, both Jack and Jacqueline are members of the New York gentry, and both are almost completely cut off from those outside of their social class.
As with Titus and Jenna, 30 Rock fans will also inexplicably love everything about Jacqueline — including her shameless efforts to be as “mean and cool” as her stepdaughter’s friends and her assertions that she is the “perfect foot slut.”
If Titus is the “Jenna” of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Jacqueline is the “Jack,” then Ellie Kemper’s portrayal of Kimmy Schmidt is definitively 30 Rock’s Kenneth. In the pilot episode, Kimmy is rescued from the apocalyptic cult in which she had been trapped for about fifteen years.
After traveling to New York to be interviewed on national television, Kimmy leaves behind her fellow “mole women” to stay in the city and build a life for herself. Like Kenneth, Kimmy is wide-eyed and childish, elated to be eating candy for dinner, to ride the subway and to simply be outside.
If 30 Rock was centered around the perspective of the cynical outsider Liz Lemon, Unbreakable’scentral focus follows a more upbeat, optimistic outsider: an outsider who had been cut off from mainstream society since childhood. Kimmy’s fresh interactions with New York’s environment facilitate some of the show’s most observant social commentary.
Although it is a comedy, escaping oppression is a common theme in Unbreakable. We see this when Kimmy escapes from the bunker and enters the real world; we see this in Titus’s backstory as a closeted gay black man married to a woman in his small hometown in Mississippi; we see this when Jacqueline divorces her husband, on whom she depended for money and her sense of self-worth.
This powerful message of resilience in the face of oppression manifests itself strongly when Kimmy and Jacqueline break free from their domineering spin class instructor and when Titus learns that he receives better treatment dressed as a werewolf than he did as a black man.
Despite Kimmy’s childishness, we quickly learn that strength rather than naivety is her defining quality.
“I do understand the world,” Kimmy asserts after Jacqueline accuses her of innocence. “It’s tough. But so are we.”
Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The News-Letter.