The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Special is … Well, it’s no 30 Rock
Why comedy lives in the lesson it’s trying to teach
I woke up early this morning because of a ping notification from Netflix recommending that I watch ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs The Reverend Interactive Special,’ and after disabling Netflix notifications, I did just that.
It’s a movie that feels like a ‘Dora the Explorer’ episode for the child inside all of us, with a light-hearted tone that’s well suited for the hellscape in which we’re all living.
The original Netflix series was Tina Fey’s first long-scale project after wrapping 30 Rock, so anticipation was very high.
It was fairly well-received, ran for four seasons, and has now been concluded with a brand new interactive special.
By interactive, I mean that periodically throughout the special, viewers can choose what happens next. It’s exactly like a ‘choose your own adventure’ novel.
It’s a Fey-off: Kimmy Schmidt vs 30 Rock
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt starred many of the principle and supporting cast from 30 Rock, including Tina Fey herself in two different supporting roles.
While the show was generally well-received, it didn’t have the magic of 30 Rock. The jokes were spaced much further apart and seemed simpler.
Kimmy Schmidt is a show where an already established character who’s either “good” or “bad” is put in a sequence of situations they need to get through while being overdramatic for laughs.
30 Rock is a show where a cast of characters need to grow as the nature of business, TV, and politics change all around them.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt still had the Fey style of set-up and immediate punchline, but the jokes were written in such a way that a wider audience could comprehend them more easily.
Where 30 Rock made a lot of political and socio-economic jokes, the jokes in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt seemed to centre more around pop culture and celebrating inclusivity.
One example is Titus Burgess, who plays D’Fwan in 30 Rock and Titus Andromedon in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Even the way the characters have been named should be an indicator of how the jokes were written.
D’fwan is a gay stereotype, and his character is written as a way to parody both gay and reality TV culture.
He himself is so ridiculous that he doesn’t really resemble a real person, which mirrors many of the other supporting and cameo cast in 30 Rock. Entire characters could be written as walking jokes that poked fun at society, TV, politics, and new normals.
Titus Andromedon actually has a full name and a fleshed-out backstory. He’s still a gay stereotype, but his drama is celebrated and always accepted. His actions don’t have consequences, which is true of a lot of comedies. But because his only character flaw in season one is his unemployment, he only has that way to grow by the end of the final season.
(He has many more character flaws, but none of the other characters seem to be bothered by them, so they’re never addressed).
His jokes don’t seem to go any deeper than the message of “gay is good” and “we all have someone dramatic in our lives.” But it’s a message that I already agree with, so I don’t feel like I need to be reminded.
In 30 Rock, the D’fwan character arch (which was part of Angie’s arch) was a statement about how reality TV is replacing network scripted comedies because they’re easier and cheaper to make, and generate higher ratings and more revenue.
The unfortunate reality of reality TV was that it’s far more lucrative than scripted TV, which directly impacted 30 Rock’s main character who relied on scripted comedy to generate a living.
The main character in Kimmy Schmidt has higher stakes in theory because she was locked in a bunker for 15 years.
Her trauma led to a lot of issues, and those issues are played out through a number of comedic hijinks.
But the message these higher stakes ultimately lead to is that women are powerful and can do anything, which is once again not something I needed to be convinced of.
It was also the most shallow message possible in a set-up that could have had a stronger message about mental health and interacting with people who’ve suffered trauma.
Kimmy Schmidt’s message is simple, so as a result, the story progression is slow and jokes are more basic and less frequently delivered.
Kimmy Schmidt doesn’t have anything critical to say. Instead, it preaches a message of love and acceptance for everyone, but it preaches this message to those of us who choose to watch this show; people who already believe this message to be true.
Then we arrive at the special, and even the simple message of empowering women has been thrown out in favour of a video game style fetch-quest plot.
Everything we wanted to know more of from the main plot has been tossed aside, including Titus’ relationship and Kimmy’s theme park.
And was anyone else holding out for the return of Dong?
Instead of the stuff we care about, Kimmy puts her life on hold to find another bunker filled with more women held against their will; which should make you realise how dark this story really is.
Kimmy’s Innocence
The strange premise of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is one that would normally be reserved for horror movies and Lifetime network dramas.
We follow Kimmy as she journeys her way back from trauma induced insanity. Except as I mentioned earlier, she didn’t seem to make much progress on the journey after four seasons of trying.
Even after four seasons and an interactive special, she still acts like a child, the damage to her psyche seeming permanent.
The mere inclusion of her anthropomorphic talking backpack that only she (and strangely her fiancé) can see is evidence that her mental state really hasn’t improved after all this time.
The special takes place sometime after season 4, and since the series finale she has met someone and become engaged.
This person seems to have as many issues as she does, but you’ll discover those in the bizarre B story.
The special rolls out with Kimmy leading a simple but funny A story, her fiancé stumbling through a bizarre B story, and poor Jacqueline painfully stretching out a comedy cliche C story.
The C story is made up of all the misunderstandings and physical humour you’d expect from a storyline that seems to have been included only to fill out the time and add a few more choices for the viewers.
I’d say that the special would be better off if they’d cut the C story, but then we’d see a lot less of Jane Krakowski, and I’d never stand for that.
I tried to include more of Jane earlier in the special by making choices that favoured her, but doing so leads down a dark path that I don’t want to spoil for you.
Decision Making
The decisions you make while watching the interactive special will only affect cosmetic details at most.
Making the wrong decisions will cause the special to prematurely “end.”
The show could have made these endings boring, but I’m glad to say they didn’t.
Instead of just ending the special with credits every time you mess up, one of the supporting cast comes in and makes a joke that relates to how you screwed up.
A few of them are laugh-out-loud funny. So by the time I was about halfway through the special, I started intentionally making choices I thought would screw things up so that I could see something funny.
If you take away the hilarious premature endings that play out whenever you screw up, the story is fairly predictable.
It follows the same beats as the show, with humour being extracted mostly from characters over-reacting to everyday situations.
Somehow, making decisions for the characters turns standard jokes into much funnier ones.
During one scene, you can either read to the baby, or make Titus “read” the baby. (If you don’t understand what “reading” is, go watch a season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race).
Basically, “reading” is insulting someone based on observations, it’s essentially a roast.
So if you decided to “read” or “roast” the baby, it’s made a lot of funnier because you chose to do it. It’s also funny because doing so made you not read an important book, and you’re punished for it later.
I liked that the show seemed to remember the bad choices I’d made, and made a commentary about my choices and how many wrong ones I’d made.
But there’s one moment when one of the supporting cast made me realise why Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt felt empty when compared to 30 Rock.
After making a wrong choice, the person on screen reminded me that Kimmy is a “good girl” and that the choice I made was something she’d never do.
I realised that a character can’t simply be good and have any depth. Kimmy is good, sweet, and kind. But I can’t relate with a character so simple.
Alternatively, Liz Lemon from 30 Rock is good sometimes, and super mean other times. She’s complicated and messy, which is something we can all relate to.
But 30 Rock would be an awful choice for an interactive special, because you can’t make easy choices in under 10 seconds for characters that are anything more than one note.
Kimmy Schmidt is a show where an already established character who’s either “good” or “bad” is put in a sequence of situations they need to get through while being overdramatic for laughs.
30 Rock is a show where a cast of characters need to grow as the nature of business, TV, and politics change all around them.
So while I liked the interactive special, it’s not something I’ll ever come back to or will even remember.
