Member-only story
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…
