"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" Season 2 Review

I've never done a TV show review on here before, mostly because I haven't had time until recently to actually sit down and watch an entire new show. But I was excited for the second season of this show ever since finishing the first one, and this is one of few shows that I actually plan on watching through a second time very soon after finishing it. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a comedy series exclusively on Netflix created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock as sort of their spiritual successor to the excellent 30 Rock, and stars Ellie Kemper, Tituss Burgess, Carol Kane, and Jane Krakowski, with Ki Hong Lee, Amy Sedaris, Jon Hamm, Tina Fey, Mike Carlsen, Anna Camp, Lauren Adams, Sarah Chase, and David Cross all playing the series' huge cast of recurring characters. For the uninitiated, Unbreakable begins with Kimmy Schmidt, an aggressively optimistic Midwestern girl in her late twenties, being released from a doomsday bunker that she and three other women were held in at the command of Hamm's "Reverend". Season 2 begins one year after Kimmy's arrival in New York City to live in a shitty apartment with a crazy landlady named Lillian (Kane) and a flamboyantly gay small-time actor named Titus (Burgess), working for a wealthy, closeted Native American gold digger named Jacqueline (Krakowski), and dealing with the loveless green card marriage of her illegal Vietnamese immigrant ex-boyfriend Dong (Lee).

The first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt gained popularity for its bright and cheery tone and unabashedly strange storyline, as well as for Fey and Carlock's signature bizarre satirical humor that made 30 Rock such a hit. The second season, to my surprise, did exactly what a second season should do - expand on its characters and stories while doing new things with its tone, humor, and themes. Season 2 is considerably darker and more direct in its humor than the first season, and is not afraid to lay the satire on thick with topics ranging from the Greek government debt crisis to gentrification to modern-day social justice activism (in which a group worried about Asian representation puts Titus on their list of "top 5 Hitlers", which doesn't include the actual Hitler). Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt does for 21st century New York City culture what 30 Rock did for the modern American television industry - that is, it observes the absurdities that permeate it and then cracks them wide open to let the jokes flow, no matter how weird.

Unbreakable, like its NBC cousin and predecessor, also does what all great silly comedy needs, and very funny characters. The main cast's interactions with the recurring side characters, especially Dong, Titus's Italian boyfriend, and a rich Jewish businessman played Cross, are perfect examples of Tina Fey's uncanny ability to create characters that are at once incredibly bizarre, as well as oddly grounded and endearing. (Also, while they're not entirely complex, Anna Camp and Amy Sedaris consistently steal the show as beautiful rich women on the verge of meltdown.)
that is ground its insanity in good characters. Season 1 introduced the audience well to Kimmy Schmidt's undying pluck and Titus's sass, but season 2 succeeds by bringing these characters to places of even further depth, while still maintaining their strange charm. Titus's love life and struggle to embrace responsibility, Kimmy's continued search for sense in an increasingly confusing world that she has been dropped into (or, how she puts it, in New York where everyone is "moral relatives"), and especially Jacqueline's journey of coming to care about other people add some significant dimension to these already very likable and

What makes this season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt near-essential viewing, though, in my opinion, is its overall message, which is that love and care for others goes a long way. Especially during this vitriolic election season, it's refreshing to see a show that so passionately embraces the dark, upsetting aspects of modern American life and still encourages a level of optimism in its face. This message thankfully isn't without its nuance, made clear by the development of Kimmy's character especially in the later episodes with the introduction of Fey's therapist character, but the show's bright, crazy demeanor is just as charming and inviting as that of its title character.

A film major friend of mine noted how one episode supposed to take place in Miami used pretty noticeable green screen, as well as a noticeable desync of dialogue and mouth movement in some scenes, and generally commented on the rather crude production value of the show. But I generally find these criticisms to not hold a whole lot of weight to me here, as this show's primary focus is its humor, characters, and writing, and on all three of those fronts it exceeds the standards of most modern American comedy shows. If it can keep it up, this will make a worthy companion to 30 Rock.

I'm not gonna give a grade for shows like I do for movies, but I'll end by saying I wholeheartedly recommend the first and especially this season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Its bright, satirical, hilarious, well written, strange, and populated with a charming cast of characters. It's one of the best comedy series on the air right now.