By MORGAN DANNA
COLUMNIST
If you desperately miss the occasionally offensive yet utterly uplifting humor of 30 Rock, I may just have the fix for you. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt aired its entire first season exclusively on Netflix in early March. Although the basis of the show is nothing like the aforementioned 30 Rock, the series was created by Tina Fey (30 Rock’s Liz Lemon) and stars Titus Burgess and Jane Krakowski who also added humor to NBC’s above-mentioned sitcom which wrapped up in January of 2013.
Fey’s new show introduces Kimmy Schmidt, played by Ellie Kemper (best known for her role as Erin from the NBC series The Office). Kimmy was rescued along with several other women from an underground bunker where she lived for fifteen years under the watch of a man referred to as the Reverend. During these years, the women were introduced into the Reverend’s doomsday cult and taught to believe that the rest of the world had been destroyed.
When Kimmy and her friends are reintroduced into modern day life, Kimmy chooses to move to New York City and teach herself how to become an independent member of society in the hopes of losing her newly acquired label as a victim. To this end, she moves into a small apartment with an aspiring actor who goes by the name of Titus Andromedon. Kimmy quickly becomes a babysitter and housekeeper for Jacqueline Voorhees, a satirical representation of wealthy New Yorkers, who finds the phrase “you look like a million bucks” to be an offensive sentiment.
This show appears to be an overall parody of the variety of individuals to be found in the metropolis of New York City, from Kimmy’s unnecessarily aggressive landlady to her excessively rich boyfriend who buys her a dolphin simply because she once mentioned how cute the animals are. In the midst of the madness of the city sits Kimmy, with a seventh-grade education and no idea as to how the real world functions. Her clueless one-liners, such as “hash brown no filter,” are sure to put a smile on any viewer’s face, although the comedy sometimes runs the risk of going too far.
Nonetheless, if you are looking for a way to reincorporate Liz Lemon’s goofy lifestyle back into your days, or to merely have a good laugh, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a worthy place to start, and, since the series aired solely on Netflix, you have the entire first season automatically at your fingertips.