Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Laughter and the art of survival

By | May 5, 2015

LaughSpin

 

If the show were a tearjerking Diane Sawyer interview or CNN Crimes of the Century episode, this would be where Kimmy’s story ends. But, being a sitcom, where the goal is tears of laughter, not of sorrow, the ending of her nightmare is really the beginning of her new life, with all its bumbling and awkwardness. And Kimmy Schmidt, played by an adorably winsome Ellie Kemper, embraces living free with the kind of wide-eyed vigor normally reserved for hyperactive toddlers. She moves to New York City, eats candy for dinner, and scores a full-time gig as a nanny/housekeeper/general member of The Help to the wealthy Voorhees family. She befriends a motley crew of Manhattanites and never lets on that she’s a woman with a past; she wants to be accepted as is, without any exhaustive pity from strangers. She is focused on moving forward, even as her fashion sense and vocabulary reeks of the past. (Kimmy has been kidnapped since 1998; she’s full of rainbow-colored garments and Hanson references). She is, as the title asserts, and the narrative demonstrates, unbreakable.

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