The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was released this weekend on Netflix and here’s why it deserves your attention!
Tired of watching the same reruns of 30 Rock, The Office, and Friends? Well, grab some snacks and cancel your plans for the next five and half hours, and start buffering The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is brought to you straight from the minds of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock. Originally presented to NBC, the network gave us all a gift, choosing to pass on the comedy allowing Netflix to step in and give it a home. For that you can be grateful. Kimmy Schmidt is the type of comedy that would suffer with commercial breaks and a poor Tuesday night time slot. It would go the way of A to Z never quite hitting those key notes in the final few episodes either because viewers forgot about it, or the network did.
But, just as a psychic pig found Kimmy and her three other captives in a bunker, Netflix found Kimmy Schmidt and presents it in all its 13 episode glory for you to watch at your leisure.
Here are 10 reasons why The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt should be your next Netflix binge!
1. Ladies, ladies, ladies
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt goes above and beyond putting a female in a leading role. Ellie Kemper is just the tip of the unsinkable ship of female leading ladies that make Kimmy Schmidt a vessel to watch out for. Sharing the spotlight with Kemper are Jane Krakowski as Kimmy’s socialite boss looking to pump up her self-confidence, Sarah Chase as the Indiana Mole Woman who takes the fame for all it has to offer, and Lillian the not-all-there landlady. Each leads pulls off the comedic and strong willed performances necessary to avoid playing a caricature, but complex characters we care to know more about.
As the theme song says, “females are strong as hell.” Speaking of…
2. The theme song
If you are a serial binger, you know the importance of a good theme song. The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt has perhaps one of the best theme songs, with lyrics, that Netflix can offer. Based on a Songify remix of the news cycle from the pilot episode, the theme song is short, catchy, and doesn’t make you want to figure out the timing to skipping ahead.
3. Baton down the hatches, things get heavy
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is, at its heart, a comedy series. But the comedy extends from a dark place, namely a bunker 20 feet underground. The show does not use the bunker as just a way to set Kimmy as a novice to the modern day. Instead it opts to explore how the situation affected not only Kimmy, but the other women, the families of the victims, and on a larger scale the Indiana town under the spell of the smooth talking Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne.
Their abduction was very real and very traumatizing, and Kimmy doesn’t shy away from that reality. In the pilot she says, “the worst thing that ever happened to me, happened in my own front yard.” The series pulls at those frayed edges. Kimmy suffers from PTSD, her optimism does waver. But from the darkness of the bunker, comes a comedy that focuses on reclaiming Kimmy reclaiming her identity that was taken from her the minute she was abducted.
4. The best friend
Kimmy has not been exposed to anyone or any new idea since her kidnapping 15 years ago. Enter Titus Andromedon. Rounding off the leading roles, Titus is a black gay man trying to live out his dream of seeing the city from the Broadway stage and, of course, making enough money to sustain his doll and cassette tape collection. Titus is brutally honest, apologetically self absorbed, and the type of person you want to have his own web series spin off.
5. Jane Krakowski’s best role since Jenna Maroney
There isn’t much to say about Jane Krakowski beyond how brilliantly she fits into the role of Jacqueline Voorhees. On the surface Jacqueline could easily be a character Krakowski’s 30 Rock character, Jenna Maroney, plays on TGS. Kimmy may get the best outdated one liners of the series, but Jacqueline deserves a nod for her brilliant flashback sequences and desperate attempts to save her marriage. Her purpose extends way beyond providing Kimmy with tasks to keep the episodes moving.
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