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The Profoundly Well-Timed Return of ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’
A pre-#MeToo show about survival has exactly the right spirit for 2020 — and offers some hope, too
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was a show made for dark times. When it premiered in 2015, its premise — Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) a teenage girl held underground by a John Jamelske-esque kidnapper, escapes and moves to New York City, still with the mindset of a small child — sounded like a mean-spirited rape joke. Laughing at what happened to Kimmy was cruel; laughing at her was worse. Instead, in what feels like a minor miracle, the show did neither: It told a story about class and gender and the difficulties of navigating a world run by predatory, powerful men that also managed to be profoundly fun.
Its newly released special, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. The Reverend, comes at a time when those questions of power and violence are on everyone’s mind: Both of the men running for president have been accused of sexual assault, the #MeToo movement has been declared “dead” many times over, and the world is falling apart so theatrically that Kimmy’s manic, irrepressible cheer feels unthinkable. As Kimmy would probably insist, that’s a sign we need her now more than ever.
Gimmicks aside, the special is about Kimmy’s drive to make sure that her own trauma isn’t visited on anyone else.
Unbreakable was ahead of its time in several key ways. Its focus on stark class divisions came before the populist turn in modern progressive politics. Its New York was a place where women, queer folks, and people of color were forced into unlivable apartments and humiliating, sub-minimum-wage jobs servicing the craven rich. Years before #MeToo, it was a show about surviving sexual assault (Kimmy admits to, and was clearly scarred by, “sex stuff” in the bunker) which never flinched from its depiction of the elite as a cadre of profoundly depraved, wealthy men; just about every character on the show, from trophy wife Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski) to aspiring actor Titus (Tituss Burgess), was reduced to a sexual commodity at some point. Kimmy’s demented optimism held the whole thing together: The world is awful, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt…
