Thoughts on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

I finished watching The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt last weekend. I was mixed on it. I liked Ellie Kemper a lot in it. She was very charming and likable, and I appreciated how positive, strong, and smart Kimmy was. She overcame a trauma and limited knowledge of the world beyond a middle-school education to be resourceful and mature. The theme song is upbeat, and I love the intro of voices rising as the women rise from the bunker into the "new" world.

The actor who played Titus is very good, he made the character sympathetic and funny and likable. I appreciated how he wasn't just a stereotypical sassy gay sidekick, but had storylines of his own and his own journey to follow. I just found out today that he played Sebastian in the Broadway production of The Little Mermaid, and his rival in an episode in real life played the Genie in the Broadway version of Aladdin.

The show isn't always laugh-out-loud funny, but there are several moments I really liked involving an old Hollywood musical, a Babysitter's Club book, the Spider-Man musical, scenes where the women play make-believe in the bunker, and other moments. The parts I don't like in the show are the racial jokes. I know that the jokes are meant to make the racist look bad, but it bugged me. The depiction of Dong (even if he is better developed later on, it doesn't excuse the initial depiction of him as an immigrant who speaks broken English who is good at math and has a name that sounds like "penis"), the stereotype of Native Americans, and scenes where a Black or Hispanic person speaks mostly to comment on how dumb white people are, tokenizing them in the process. The show is charming and likable, and doesn't need that crap in it. Hopefully the second season won't have as many of those jokes.

I don't want to give much away, but the finale with the cult leader on trial was really good, and it mirrored real-life trials where accused rapists can charm the jury, twist victims' words around , and manipulate the court's opinion in order to get off free. This is a comedy, but I still found it disturbing as how that can really happen.

So, I give the show 7 out of 10 stars. Good acting and storylines, needs work on ridding it off racist humor, and I am interested in the second season.